With 23,500 students, 6,000 staff and many thousands of visitors to our campuses each year, the University is size of a small town, so we look for every opportunity to have a positive impact on our environment.
To achieve this, we bring our students and staff together to deliver ground breaking sustainability projects. From the Southampton Blackout, which sees more than 250 volunteers take part in the biggest campus-wide energy audit in the country, to our Waste Wars events, which have helped us to recycle over 70 per cent of our waste.
We believe that our graduates should leave the University as sustainable citizens – in the broadest sense of the term. Our innovative sustainability module is open to students from a wide range of programmes and includes a UN-style summit every year. While our BEES initiative gives our students the opportunity to review and transform the ethical and environmental practices of local businesses.
We’re an ISO14001 University, which means we’ve reached the international standard for managing our environmental impact. We encourage our students and staff to come forward with ideas to improve the sustainability of our campuses, and we ensure that students have a voice at every level of the organisation, because it’s through our combined commitment that we will we meet our ambitious targets.
The Carbon Management Fund is a great way to get involved – it is there to support staff and students get new initiatives off the ground. Chemistry, in particular the ‘Try before you buy’ project, has been supported well by this fund. The general details can be found here but do check out this neat prize winning project that powers down our fume hood extractor fans when the wind is blowing in the right direction!
To find out more and get involved, follow the University’s sustainability page on Twitter @Sustainable_UoS or email us at sustainability@soton.ac.uk