The Buy Right campaign – 2011
This year we are taking part in the “Buy Right” campaign, aiming to defend human rights by monitoring Manchester Metropolitan University’s supply chains & make a real difference. As part of this we will be running fun events to promote our aims, in a hope of gathering enough support to effect real change in the university.
- Remove Coca Cola from our student union. To achieve this we need 500 to start a referendum and 1,500 people
to sign the petition that will start in March 2011 online.
- Join the Worker’s Right Consortium (WRC), an independentmonitoring organisation that ensures a safe workplace and fair treatment of worker’s. In signing the WRC, the University cannot play a part in the abuse of workers in the garment industry.
- Ensure MMU’s Fairtrade steering group of staff and students keeps human rights on the University’s agenda.
The E4SL Forum
Our P&P group set up a Going Greener Steering Group called the Education for Sustainable Living (E4SL) Forum. Together with the uni’s Environment Team we created a monthly forum that allows students and staff to express their ideas regarding environmental issues around campus. Monthly meetings have included workshops from Emerge and the Environment Team.
We’ve started by focussing on the area of waste, one of the areas that MMU massively needs to improve. We’ve sent letters to the VC and the uni’s Directorate regarding paper usage; enabling double-sided printing and procuring recycled paper. So far our ideas have all been received with great enthusiasm and a commitment to create a university-wide strategy!
The Forum is involved in planning Go Green Week 2010 and at our next meeting we’ll brainstorm other manageable waste-related tasks that the Forum can change around campus. We’ve also set up a new Mug for Life initiative, helping students to save 112g of CO2 with every refill.
To promote the E4SL Forum and make it as accessible and easy as possible for everyone at MMU to join in (both staff and students) we’ve set up a blog, a facebook group, a twitter feed and created posters and short videos to advertise our meetings and work.
Zero Waste Recycling Project
The MMU group is focussing on one of the four key low-carbon transition behaviours being targeted by Degrees Cooler – recycling more. Working closely with staff from their Environment Team, MMU People & Planet have coordinated the Zero Waste Recycling Project. The project is now in its second year and has been extended to cover three halls of accommodation and recycled over 10 tonnes of waste.
“It involves recycling and redistributing to charity all the shoes, clothes, food, cutlery, electrical equipment and even matresses that students don’t need when they move out of halls each year. The group took a new approach to the project this year to get students into the habit of doing their own recycling – instead P&P members doing it for them.
Robert-Masih Croll from people and planet is also the project manager of zero waste and the big student switchoff. He says,
“Big green banks were placed outside halls and boxes for electrical equipment, food and cutlery were put inside MMU halls. The group then held two big recycling days to sort through all the materials collected, go through bins and clear out things that were left in flats to make sure than nothing was missed. The project carried on throughout the summer to ensure every last item was recycled.”
Sophie Corfan, 21, commented:
“This year we are aiming to extend Zero Waste to even more halls. We couldn’t do this without the help of the Environment Facilities Team and People and Planet- we’ve established a great working relationship that has been instrumental to the success of the project”
Every year People & Planet coordinates a national week of student action to raise awareness of climate change and help the education sector cut the carbon.
It’s a perfect opportunity to unleash new transition projects, showcase the practical improvements that action groups have been working towards and to get everyone in the community clued up Going Greener – and that’s exactly what Manchester Metropolitain University are using Go Green Week 2010 for.
Their week of activities will highlight different elements of greener living and behaviour each day, including food, waste, transport and energy. Their programme this year includes:
- Low-Carbon Diet Day – providing vegan & vegetarian food tastings followed by a film on the environmental impacts of food in the evening
- Recycling Day – helping people get creative with plastic bags during the day, followed by a Carbon Speed Dating event to fundraise for People & Planet.
- Go Bananas for Fairtrade and Haiti – attempting to break records with a banana-eating event and fundraiser for victims of Haiti.
- Clothes Swap Shop – running all week and followed by a green graffiti night on Thursday.
- Critical Mass – linking up with Manchester’s critical mass cycle ride to get people out of their cars and onto the streets.
Check out MMU’s full programme of activities
Big Student Switch Off
A key partner of in the Degrees Cooler project is the Student Switch Off campaign which recruits eco-power rangers to run energy-saving competitions in halls with the aim of cutting 10% energy in 2010.
Alex Fountain writes about their involvement in this popular campaign to get everyone saving energy
“People & Planet have coordinated the Big Student Switch Off at Manchester Metropolitain Uni, working closely with the Environment Team. We started off by making sure the project would reach everyone by putting a flyer and ‘switch it off’ stickers in every student’s halls pack. We designed and distributed over 500 posters so that every student in halls at MMU had a project poster in their kitchen.”
We also managed to get local incentives such as free weekly tickets from 5 popular nightclubs to encourage more students to try and win prizes. To remind people of the project all year round, we made 5 giant Switch Off banners which are hanging on the side of the halls of residence buildings.
The numbers game
For Freshers Fair we made around 500 goodie bags with thermometers, stickers, key rings and information about the project and signed up around 400 eco-power rangers. We then coordinated a series of lecture shout-outs and did some door-to-door canvassing to get more people signed up to the scheme. In total now we have signed up 1200 eco-power ranger which is the highest from all 33 universities taking part.
Results
We’ve also continued signing up eco-power rangers all year round on all 3 MMU campuses: All Saints, Didsbury and Cheshire and the response has been fantastic. We **saved over £3000 in energy bills just in October, and by November we had saved 4.3% of MMU’s energy bills (inc. Didsbury) and 7.3% of Cheshire’s energy bill.
People and Planet at MMU have also been up to lots more………so please read on!
Sound impact
People and Planet have worked with the student union officers, staff and the environment team to facilitate the sound impact awards, filling some of the criteria from lobbying the university, getting recycling bins for the student union etc. We have been awarded a silver for sound impact, the same as last year but with higher points.
Fairtrade Bananas event, November
The Environment team and people and planet promoted fairtrade in November by handing out Bananas for a whole week in the Geoffrey Manton Building.
Recycling Cardboard Day, September
We held a recycling day in September with the environment team to recycle all the cardboard that students throw away when they get to university. This was a good opportunity to promote the student switchoff and we recycled over two skips of cardboard. Pictures are attached.
RBS Recruitment event, Manchester University.
In November we joined up with P&P from Manchester University and infiltrated an RBS careers event to ask them questions about their energy portfolio and to warn other students of the dangers of working for them. RBS gave us a platform to speak, so we told prospective graduates of RBS’ irresponsible investments and then got a number of students to sign action cards.
The Great Climate Swoop, Nottingham
Members from our People and Planet group were involved in organising meetings, fundraisers and promotion to get people down to the demonstration. Manchester did well in getting over 100 people on a coach down to the event with a number of people also going separately in minibuses.
Tree planting, Hebden Bridge
25 Students from Manchester and Man Met went to Hebden Bridge for a weekend of planting trees with ‘treesponsibility’
Keith from treesponsibility commented,
“Hey, I can’t wait for the next one either. Check our website for more dates, and please please please come again, it was a real pleasure meeting you all……..”
