About
Green Impact Universities and Colleges works within 46 Universities and Colleges across the UK, to engage staff and student teams in simple, tangible actions to green their institutions and communities. The annual programme reaches more people and makes more impacts every year.
This year, we have engaged 978 teams, reaching 44,655 staff
Of those, 4,807 people have been directly involved in a Green Impact team or committee.
These teams have collectively completed 35,625 greening actions, with 20,107 as a direct result of Green Impact!
And to top it off, over 800 student and staff auditors will have been trained to verify the programme and offer further solutions to improve performance.
We have now opened registration for the 2012-13 programme, so download our rate card and supporting information here to sign up.
Look through our News and Achievements pages to see what has been happening acroos the country this year.
Project cycle
Green Impact Universities and Colleges works on an annual cycle, to enable yearly development and longer term sustainability. The Green Impact team works with a lead contact at each institution and support them, their teams and their higher management throughout the whole process.
Essentially the year is a 5 stage cycle, though exact timings are flexible to each institution:
Our fantastic online workbook outlines carefully selected criteria that teams can work through together and gain points according to their difficulty.
Over the course of the programme they accrue points, and submit a completed workbook. We then train students to audit the departments and verify their work, providing unique employability skills and voluntary experience for those taking part.
And finally, we reward each and every department with Working Towards, Bronze, Silver or Gold awards, each presented at institution specific awards ceremonies to celebrate the impressive variety of green practices achieved across the year.
Find out if your Union, University or College, or Community Organisation is already a participant.
Not already taking part? Get Involved!
History
Building on the success of Green Impact Students’ Unions, in summer 2008 NUS partnered with the University of Bristol to adapt the environmental accreditation and awards model to green departments within the University. A workbook of simple and tangible criteria was tailored to common issues relevant to all departments.
Green Impact University of Bristol was run over the 2008/09 academic year, attracting 50 departments covering 3,000 staff.
Like the students’ union scheme, the departmental evolution was very successful in delivering measurable change.
As a result of the success of the Bristol pilot, in 2009/10 NUS partnered with the EAUC to roll Green Impact Universities out to 22 more universities via NUS’s Degrees Cooler programme, funded by Defra’s Greener Living Fund. This saw 15% swings in behaviour, and over 19,000 behaviours enacted across the project!
Following this incredible achievement, in 2010/11 we rolled the programme out to a further 13 institutions, including three Further Education colleges – creating a grand total of 35 institutions, 600 teams and departments, covering 30,000 members of staff.
Achievements
Over the last 4 years, GIUC has been going from strength to strength. For a simple summary of our achievements across UK universities and colleges, check out our Portfolios for 2009-10 and 2010-11 (tbc!)
Explore our award gallery and team gallery to see the showcase of participating universities, their teams and their fantastic awards ceremonies
Keep informed with our News and Achievements page. We will constantly update this throughout the year to give you the latest news and case studies from some of our universities and colleges from across the UK.
Sponsors
The Green Impact Universities and Colleges Innovation Award is sponsored by Office Depot.
Each year the winning deprtments from across the country are entered into a national competition to win the Office Depot Innovation Award. Read more about office Depot’s sustainability work here.