Green Impact Students’ Unions Excellence Award

Introduction

Green Impact Students’ Unions (GISU) launched in 2006 and has successfully grown from strength to strength. Over the last six years, through the use of the Green Impact workbook, students’ unions have been creating positive environmental change. In 2011/12 over 100 students’ unions participated in the programme for the first time, and it has been fantastic to see that 90 achieved at least a Bronze standard, and 22 reach Gold for a second consecutive year. However, environmental sustainability is about constant improvement, rather than reaching a pre-set endpoint, so we are developing Green Impact to ensure our member students’ unions remain engaged with the agenda.

Our ethical and environmental strategy seeks to green our students’ unions, helping them to green their students, institutions, and communities. We know that students’ unions have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and bags of energy and enthusiasm of staff and officers alike, that can help us achieve our strategy. We seek to build on these attributes and harness this energy through Green Impact Excellence.

Green Impact Excellence is our new bespoke programme for students’ unions that have demonstrated leadership and commitment to environmental sustainability, defined as having achieved Green Impact Gold for at least two consecutive years[1]. Through Excellence, we will be giving these unions the chance to get involved in a larger scale project, over and above the accreditation criteria, embedding themselves as a key player in greening their wider institutional or off-campus community. This is a year-on-year-off programme, with unions needing to submit a Green Impact workbook every two years to ensure they retain their Gold standard accreditation.

The Results: 2012-2013

Green Impact Excellence’s first year is over with our greenest students’ unions making it over the finish line to create 18 unique sustainability projects.

Students’ unions up and down the country have been putting all of their creative efforts into devising and delivering inspiring projects. From the home grown Cheltenham Chilli Jam Company at Gloucestershire through to an eco-hub with chickens and an outdoor pizza oven in Lancaster, our unions have not failed to keep us entertained as we’ve watched their projects grow.

To see for yourself check out our Green Impact Excellence video, showcasing a few of our unions’ work:

Congratulations to each of this year’s winners. For more information about each of their projects please click on each union’s name to see a case study of their work:

Biodiversity
- Goldsmiths
- Kent
- Notthingham Trent
- Portsmouth
- Sheffield Hallam
- Winchester

Community
- Bradford
- Gloustershire
- Reading

Eco-buildings
- Liverpool

Education for Sustainable Development
- Birmingham Guild
- Leicester
- MMU
- Warwick

Recycling
- Staffordshire
- Sussex

Transport
- Bangor

For more information on Green Impact Excellence and how your students’ union can take part, download the full guidance document or get in touch with Laura on laura.williams@nus.org.uk

[1] This includes Gold accreditation for Green Impact Students’ Unions and/or Green Impact Universities and Colleges or a combination of both