On Wednesday 29 May we celebrated the amazing 37 teams who completed the Sustainable Essex Awards 2023-24.
The Sustainable Essex Awards programme invites teams to embed sustainability action into their working practices, in ways that fit with their priorities and deliverables. The scheme began as Green Impact in 2015 and has grown into a flourishing community of environmentally-conscious colleagues.
Teams can complete Bronze, Silver or Gold award levels, designed to increase their experience and confidence with sustainability over time. This year a number of teams even pushed themselves to complete more than one award level.
Bronze teams successfully incorporated the fundamentals of sustainability into their work, across themes including energy and carbon literacy, water and waste and recycling. Teams who completed Silver took things to the next level, and reviewed opportunities to develop sustainable practice in their teams and departments, by their own environmental policy and action plan.
Gold award winners bring together all this experience and demonstrate how they have then put this into action and delivered change through projects they devise themselves. This year, projects covered a range of great initiatives including:
Each and every action that teams complete adds up to make a big difference. The University of Essex community can collectively contribute to positive change in so many ways – whether that is taking a reusable cup when you buy a hot drink on campus, reducing waste in processes or embedding awareness into teaching. The Sustainable Essex Awards programme for 2024-25 will launch in the Autumn – contact the Sustainability team to find out more: sustainability@essex.ac.uk.