An Interview with Lee Taylor, Environment and

Environment and

Katie Moncur: What does your role as Environment and Social Justice Officer entail?

Lee Taylor: “My role is two-pronged, the first side of it is operational so I deal a lot with policies, with strategies to make the uni and the Union more sustainable. I work to empower the student voice. The other side of my role is the student-facing side, so I chair the ESJ Network and coordinate all of the sustainable initiatives for students. It’s a weird role but it’s fun.”

KM: The Union aims to become carbon neutral by 2028, how will this be achieved?

LT: “In terms of our carbon neutrality, operationally we don’t have control over where our energy comes from in this building, but we have control over how much we use. We can look to ensure our supply chains are fully sustainable, that we’re not bringing massive trucks onto campus all the time. That the food we’re providing is as sustainable as possible; our recycling as positive as possible. We can look to carbon offset all our travel as staff members. You make small but effective changes everywhere and then, once you’re as good as you possibly can be, [carbon offset] the rest.”

KM: How are you going to implement these changes and encourage student groups to become more sustainable?

LT: “The operational side is fairly easy. We have the new staff sustainability committee. We’ll be writing a sustainable strategic action plan as well for the Union. We’re going to bring in a carbon auditor to do a full audit of everything and see exactly where we are, so we’ll have a proper baseline to go off. In terms of student groups, there are going to be some difficult decisions, but I don’t think there should really be any push back on that. Everyone wants to be sustainable. I think it’s important when we do it, that we do it in such a way that it’s not just us as a Union saying, ‘no you can’t do this’. What we have to do is look at alternatives, help student groups make more sustainable choices and provide them with positive feedback when they do so.”

KM: This year Sustainability Week is being hosted by the ESJ Network for the first time. What are the plans for that? How are you going to engage people and empower them to make change?

LT: “Plans for it are not 100% decided yet. We’re working to see whether we can collaborate with Nottingham Trent and make it bigger than just UoN but actually Nottingham Sustainability Week. The ESJ Network will lead key-noting events. The only one we’ve announced so far is the awards ceremony. We’re working on a few others including some incredible guest speakers that I won’t say on record. We’ll be looking to unveil some se cret projects I’m working on. Some of the things we’ve been talking about are a march for Women’s Rights on campus during the week. I can confirm that we’ve been given approval by the BBC to screen David Attenborough documentaries on the Portland screen so that will be amazing. We’re looking to engage all of our partners too. So UoN Sport have a few ideas,Playerlayer are really keen to get involved.

with Lee Taylor, NEWS 13

Social Justice Officer

We’re really trying to make it bigger than us in the Portland building, bigger than the SU. My vision for it is to showcase how much opportunity there is but not in a way that’s necessarily overwhelming but in a way that’s inspiring.”

KM: What do you mean by a ‘bad bank’?

LT: “Many banks have heavy investments in the fossil fuel industry. A lot of them have significant investments in supply chains that end in modern slavery. It’s the poorest people in the world that feel the effects of the Climate Emergency first. You can think of the Climate Emergency as a match with rich people at one end and the poorest people at the other and it’s burning away at the poorest people already. A really scary fact: 71% of global emissions are caused by just 100 businesses and pretty much all of those are fossil fuel businesses. It is often our huge financial institutions that are investing in them. Financial institutions hold so much money and with money comes power, yet they wield it in a way that is detrimental to everyone, detrimental to the poorest people right now. But the poorest people have no power, they have no voice. I see it as my job to empower students, but I see it as the students’ job to empower everyone. If it carries on the way it’s going, who knows if we’ll reach retirement age. For want of a better word, the planet’s f****d. We just need to do something as soon as we can.” KM: What are your three main goals and what would you like to see come out of this year as ESJ Officer? image and illustration by Nina Shasha

LT: “I see my goals as empowering students, developing the Union and holding the uni to account. I’ll feel successful if I know that student voice is loud on sustainability, social and environmental. If the Union has concrete plans and actual tangible changes, and if the uni is also following through with the changes that have been verbally made, then I’ll see it as a successful year. I’d also quite like to see the role become full-time for next year.”