Green Impact: staff-led sustainability at LSE

Every year at LSE, staff are invited to take part in Green Impact, a national project which encourages colleagues to team up and undertake sustainability actions in their workplace. This year, two of the most successful Green Impact teams were from the Student Marketing and Recruitment department and the LSE Careers Service. Nazia Taznim and Beth Wilson were among the participants. Here’s how they helped to transform sustainability practices at LSE. Nazia Taznim, Student Marketing and Recruitment Student Marketing and Recruitment have taken part in Green Impact for the past few years. It has been a great way to involve the whole department in sustainable and green practices in the office and in our work, which is why we got involved again this year! As part of Green Impact, one of the tasks involved creating a project that encompassed engagement with sustainability. Our team were already working on a few ideas and so we thought it would be great to include them in our Green Impact project and measure its engagement and impact on prospective students and related stakeholders. The first aspect of our project involved measuring the amount of carbon emissions and paper reduced from our new undergraduate prospectus, which reduced in size in comparison to last year’s. The results were exciting! We found the reduction in size resulted in a 78.62% reduction in paper used and an 89.27% reduction in carbon emitted per prospectus.

This dramatic reduction in both paper and carbon emissions is something we hope to continue! Another aspect of our project was related to our LSE Student Shadowing Scheme, which involves year 12 and 13 students across the UK applying to shadow an LSE student at one of their lectures. In continuation from last year, attendees received an LSE branded Keep-Cup and complimentary hot drink voucher during their Q&A session. As part of our project this year, we created a survey to measure the impact of Keep-Cups in terms of generating engagement with sustainability among attendees after their session. We were really impressed with the results! Among our findings, 85.5% of respondents continued to regularly (either ‘a few times a month, once a month, more than once a week, once a week or every day’) use their Keep-Cup after their session, 70.5% use their Keep-Cups instead of single-use cups, and 72.6% were aware of the environmental reasons behind providing attendees with a Keep-Cup. Our final aspect of this year’s project incorporated highlighting information related to sustainability happening on campus in our presentations delivered to prospective students. Additionally, our General Course team featured information on events relating to sustainability in their General Course e-newsletter ‘The Tembo’, which was sent to 300 General Course students every few weeks. Past newsletters highlighted Climate Emergency events and ‘Vegan Life Live London’. Our hopes for the future are to continue with the successes from our project this year and our sustainable practices within our department. We also hope to develop new ways to embed sustainability in the other activities we conduct. Beth Wilson: LSE Careers During the past academic year, members from different teams across LSE Careers came together to help champion sustainable initiatives within the department and get involved in the Green Impact scheme. The team formed a passionate working group, tasked with multiple ‘green actions’ and creating a sustainable project for the whole department. After brainstorming numerous ideas, we decided to focus on the environmental impact our department’s ‘lunchstyle’ has. Due to the busyness within the department, there was a strong culture of eating out and/or buying food out, which research tells us can be incredibly carbon intensive. We’re all fans of the easy meal-deals from supermarkets,

but we were shocked to discover that the average impact of a ready-made sandwich is two times higher than its homemade equivalent. The team devised a week-long campaign which included home-made communal lunches, a singleuse coffee cup ban, a (controversial) reduction in dairy milk supplies with plant-based milk alternatives provided, and a sustainable bake-off competition. The campaign was to be launched with a morning presentation and workshop which highlighted the key environmental impacts we were working to reduce. Due to the current working situation, we had to reschedule some parts of our in-office campaign week but we were still able to deliver an educational presentation on the carbon impact of our consumer habits. We also hosted a ‘Virtual Sustainable Bakeoff” which not only promoted 16 different lowcarbon recipes, but helped to generate a sense of community spirit whilst we were working from home. As a result of our campaign, staff felt that they were more likely to bring lunch from home, with those bringing it in ‘always’ or ‘frequently’, rising from 58.3% to 95.8%. It also kick-started discussions across the department about what else we could do in the office and whilst working from home. We’re excited to carry out our original campaign plans once everyone is back working in the office but in the meantime, we’re keen to keep sharing top tips on how to live sustainably from home with our department. As the next academic year starts, the LSE Careers Green Impact team looks forward to launching another project, encouraging our colleagues to stay green and working with the wider LSE community to reduce our School’s environmental footprint!