LMH has achieved the highest possible 2020 Green Impact award - Beyond Gold.
Green Impact is an environmental engagement scheme in which staff and students come together in teams to make their workplaces more sustainable by taking simple actions. Teams make their way through workbooks designed to suggest positive changes they can make.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made it much harder than usual to take part in Green Impact, but numerous teams rose to the challenge, in many cases continuing to work from home to make sustainable changes and promote environmental awareness among their colleagues.
LMH was the only University of Oxford College to achieve Beyond Gold this year. Three Colleges achieved Gold and one achieved Silver. This follows on from last years success when LMH was the first and only College to reach the previously named Gold Plus level.
Some of the things LMH has been working on to achieve this award include:
- We have recruited new members to our Sustainability Working Group.
- In Spring 2020 we held another Green Week in College, which is now an annual event. This included a schedule of events to promote sustainability and encourage engagement such as bike repair workshops, zero-waste pop-ups with OxUnboxed and a flagship Community Swap Shop event. We have also promoted Fairtrade Fortnight and supported Oxford Green Week with a ‘switch up your lunch’ vegetarian food campaign.
- We have worked with our student representatives to make further improvements to recycling signage in residential areas, in order to make the information clear, simple and consistent.
- We have increased our range of Fairtrade products available in Hall and secured a contract for a coffee machine which will vend Fairtrade beans. This year we also collaborated with the Fairtrade Foundation on one of the FT14 flagship events in our theatre, and contributed to the University’s Fairtrade reaccreditation submission.
- This year we have also replaced our old petrol tractors with electric models, and have confirmed plans to install electric vehicle charging points in our car park.