Empowering Students for Sustainable Change

1. Students’ Green Fund Jamie Agombar, Ethical and Environmental Manager, NUS

2. National Union of Students • 600 students’ unions • 7 million students • 4,700 SU staff; 500 sabbatical officers • 220 NUS staff; 10% full-time on sustainability • The new kids • on the block 600 FE and HE SUs Societies, course reps, trustees 7m students

6. Green Impact Students’ Unions

7. Started in students’ unions • Defra catalyst funding to extend across campus: now 58 TEIs on self-funded basis, plus community organisations • Last year 1,134 teams reaching 48,655 staff; 50,324 greening actions, 24,167 as a result of Green Impact! • 1,200 student auditors trained

8. Inter-dormitory energy competition • 55 HEIs, 130,000 student rooms • Last year average 6.1% reduction; 609 tCO2 • Saved £1m cash for HEIs to date

9. Local food growing scheme on 18 campuses • Local student-led groups, veg boxes schemes and catering • Covertly engaging academics

12. An analysis of the effectiveness of different approaches for encouraging energy-efficient behavioural change and factors affecting behavioural persistence An Action Based Research report completed for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

13. Private accommodation Private accommodation Habit discontinuity hypothesis

15. “It is worth noting that the destruction of the planet is not the work of ignorant people. Rather it is largely the results of work by people with BAs, BScs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs …Education can equip people to be more effective vandals of the earth. If one listens carefully, it may even be possible to hear the Creation groan every year in late May when another batch of smart, degree-holding, but ecologically illiterate, Homo sapiens who are eager to succeed are launched into the biosphere” David Orr

16. Vision for our sustainability work Students’ unions as green hubs: SUs – Institutions – Community Students leave tertiary education as part of the solution to environmental challenges rather than part of the problem // sustainable citizenship

18. NUS HEA surveys: A latent student interest in sustainability

19. A chart from the U.N.’s latest climate report shows the planet’s rising temperatures from 1901 to 2012 Earth’s rising temperatures 1901 to 2012 (IPCC 2013)

21. GreenPad Staffordshire Students’ Union Green lettings agency Engaging landlords Engaging student tenants

22. Greener Gloucestershire University of Gloucestershire Students’ Union New social enterprises – honey co-op, green marketing agency, business support 20 paid student placements in local businesses, and big green gap year Green Impact out into the community, businesses, sports clubs, everywhere

23. Students’ Green Unit University of Exeter Students’ Guild Five student interns: education, research, community and student employability, operations Mini fund - 40 x £1k Blending academic might with student energy to create cultural transformation of the University

24. Cycling 4 All University of Bradford Students’ Union Pathfinder project Engaging students with disabilities in well-being, and environmental wellbeing

25. Sheffield on a Plate Three students’ unions: Sheffield Hallam, University of Sheffield and Sheffield and College City-wide food growing, cooking, eating 83,000 students Master chefs World record soup

26. Impact • 4,000 tCO2/year saved • Increase in pro-environmental behaviours • Engaged institutional leaders and academics • Students become meaningful agents of change • Institutions integrate sustainability into their core purpose Collectively the projects will achieve… • Reach • 25 projects will engage 352,000 students, 15% of the students in English HE

27. A chart from the U.N.’s latest climate report shows the planet’s rising temperatures from 1901 to 2012

28. www.nus.org.uk/greener jamie.agombar@nus.org.uk