Green Impact Excellence for Library sites
By Benjamin Meunier, on 22 September 2017
Last week, the Sustainability Team hosted UCL’s fifth Sustainability Awards ceremony. The event celebrated the achievements of 60 teams and over 100 Green Champions who took part in Green Impact, UCL’s Sustainability Engagement Programme.
UCL Library Services has performed strongly every year since Green Impact was launched at UCL, and this year was no exception. The commitment, creativity and hard work of many teams across Library Services sites was recognised through the award of six Excellence Awards, one Platinum, one Gold and two Silver. Three project awards were also granted to UCL libraries, which is a tribute to the ongoing success of teams engaging with the important agenda of changing behaviour and raising awareness of environmental issues.
This work is incredibly important, and it contributes towards our achievement of strategic objectives under the Sustainable Estate Key Performance Area of the Library Services Strategy. The Library SMT discussed Green Impact at its meeting in May 2017, shortly after the submissions had been entered. It was agreed that new approaches will be explored in the forthcoming round of Green Impact this year (2017-18), particularly to look into the feasibility of a single submission being put forwards for Library Services, bringing together the excellent work from across sites. This will be an agenda topic for the next Library Sustainability Committee, chaired by Phil Watson. On behalf of SMT, I would like to reiterate our thanks and appreciation to colleagues for the large amount of work which goes into achieving such success in UCL’s sustainability drive.
Below is a list of all the sites which have received an award in the Green Impact 2017:
Excellence
Eastman Dental Library
Bartlett Library
Queen Square Library
School of Pharmacy Library
Language & Speech Science (LASS) Library
Ear Institute and Action on Hearing Loss Library
Platinum
Cruciform Hub
Gold
Orthopaedics Library
Silver
Green Comrades (SSEES Library)
Royal Free Medical Library
Project Award Winners
Teams which have previously scored either a Gold or Platinum award are invited to run an Excellence Project. Teams are expected to complete some basic actions to maintain their environmental performance, and can complete more if they wish, but they then undertake a larger project of their choice to retain their previous year’s award. Three Library Services teams were awarded Project Awards:
Silver
SSEES Library – The team focused on educating students and staff on the problems associated with plastic after discovering that a vast amount of plastic is washed up on Eastern European shores. The team have collected plastic, screened films and hosted workshops on the topic. They are planning to build a statue out of bottles in the library to raise awareness.
Royal Free Medical Library – This award recognises a project focused on engaging students and staff in sustainability. The Library organised a variety of events from Meat Free Mondays to trips to ByWaters recycling centre.
School of Pharmacy Library – for creating a medicinal garden. Plants from the garden will be used in the teaching at the School. For more information see this article on the medicinal garden.
For more information on the Sustainability Awards, please visit, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/greenucl/greenucl-news-publication/sustainability-awards
If you wish to get involved in Library Services’ Green Impact activity, please discuss this with your line manager or with the Chair of the Library Sustainability Committee, Phil Watson.
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