Environmental Engagement During a pandemic

Environmental Engagement During a pandemic Catherine Porter and Anjila Hjasted

Catherine Porter and Anjila Hjalsted are the elected Environment Officers at Goodenough College, a postgraduate hall of residence in London. In March, they organised Goodenough College’s ‘Environmental Week’, and put together a programme of events and talks about environmental sustainability. However, the week coincided with the acceleration of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK, right before the beginning of the lockdown. Here, they talk about how the pandemic impacted their attempts to engage students on environmental issues. Catherine: I decided to apply to be an Environment Officer at Goodenough College because the environment has always been very important to me. I realise that damage to it is one of the biggest threats facing us today, and requires whatever we can do to help. I had lots of ideas about what could be done at Goodenough in order to become a more sustainable community, so I wanted to take on the role to put forward my ideas. Anjila: I feel much the same way as Catherine about this. I applied because I wanted to inform and empower members at GC to take action and be able to make more environmentally sustainable choices. Also, I thought it would be a good way to engage with and contribute to the GC community, which it really has been. Catherine: Running Environmental Week during the pandemic was a bit disappointing but we were pleased with what we managed to achieve despite the situation. We released a video and had a very successful launch event, in which we gave out vegan cake and got a large number of members to take vegetarian and vegan pledges for the week. However, after the first event on Monday, (a vegan dinner and stall at which students could discuss diet and sustainability), everything was cancelled at the last minute. This didn’t give us very long to organise virtual events. We did manage to run an online documentary screening of David Attenborough’s ‘The Truth About Climate Change – Part Two’ from 2008, followed by a discussion. We were pleased that six members managed to attend despite the sudden upheaval caused by coronavirus, and we spoke about how old the documentary was and therefore how long we have known about climate change and its devastating consequences, but how little has changed since then. Anjila: We had really prepared a lot of great events for the Environmental Week, even including a trip to the waste recycling facility that handles our recycling, which I had been super excited about and we had about 20 members signed up for. I hope some of this can happen next year during Environmental Week instead! But this year we still managed to create awareness around the week and the environment despite the pandemic, which I think must count as a success! Catherine: We found that students were still interested and wanted to engage, but because of the circumstances fewer people attended our online event than we were expecting in person. Whilst there are more urgent matters that the government, media and public have to focus their attention on, I was surprised and happy to find environmental issues were still being discussed and thought about by people and in the media during the pandemic. It was interesting to see how the worldwide lockdown and changes in our lifestyles led to such a quick and positive impact on the environment. This gives me a lot of hope for the future if we can make some lasting changes such as working from home more often and travelling less where possible.

Residents at Goodenough College with their vegetarian and vegan pledges during Environmental Week, March 2020.