Environment - How you can Get Involved

The Sound Environmental Impact Awards

Set up in 2006 by the National Union of Students, these awards aim to encourage Unions to become greener by taking practical simple actions across a range of areas from energy saving and waste reduction to ethical purchasing and community engagement. With over 200 criteria the scheme has grown over the four years and now involves over 80 student unions. There are four standards to achieve, working towards, Bronze, Silver and Gold. The first three standards can be achieved by any Union, but only the top five scoring Unions can achieve a Gold standard.

Last year Bristol achieved a ‘Working towards standard', this year we are aiming to achieve a Silver standard.

More details can be seen at http://www.nus.org.uk/sound on the criteria and background.

There are a number of special awards this year including the Ecologist Communication Challenge Award. This involves creating a special 1 minute film to raise awareness of environmental issues. The film will go on YouTube and be voted on by other students and the public. Interested? Contact m.r.wiles@bristol.ac.uk . Films will need to be complete by the end of January 2010.

But if you want to know what you can do to get involved with Sound Impact, contact m.r.wiles@bristol.ac.uk

Student Switch Off

Student switch off is a campaign that gets halls to compete with each other to save energy. There are spot prizes and mini competitions across the year. Want to know more or get involved, see http://www.studentswitchoff.org/ or sign up to the facebook group.

Green Impact

Green impact is an environmental accreditation scheme set up using the same principles as the Sound Environmental Impact Awards, except it is aimed at the University's departments and competition is between those departments. Developed at Bristol with the help of the Student union, Green Impact is now part of a larger project rolled out to other Universities.

The student Union took part in the first year of the competition and got a Silver award, making it one of the greenest departments in the University.

What to know more go to the Green Impact Website.

Carbon Ambassadors

The University of Bristol Student's Union was one of the first Unions to get involved with the carbon academy and has run training on carbon auditing this year and last.

The carbon ambassadors project aims to train students in carbon auditing and then match them with community groups to do audits of their buildings. The project aims to help small companies and community groups to identify and save carbon.