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UCL has the most ambitious sustainability commitments of any UK university; by 2024 we will be a single-use plastic-free campus, have zero carbon buildings, 1.5 football pitches of additional biodiverse space and every student will have the opportunity to study sustainability.

This year we've been working  to make the Union more sustainable, but to achieve this we need your help! There are so many different ways to get involved with opportunities for all commitment levels across a wide range of sustainable development activity.

You can visit the Sustainability Hub here for further details, but here's a bite-size summary of how you can get involved...

Come to Sustainability Day, 26th Sept

Find out what Sustainability at the Union is all about - come to Sustainability Fair!

From Vegetarian and Vegan Society and Climate Action Society, to the Green Economy Society and the Conservation Society, there are a variety of different student groups focused on sustainability - check out our clubs and societies directory for more information, and come and have a chat with them at the Welcome Fair if you want to find out more

Become a member of the Student Sustainability Council: 

This Sustainability Council gives you the opportunity to provide directional guidance on the Sustainability agenda across UCL and the Students’ Union. We will be looking for new members at the beginning of the academic year, but don’t worry we will let you know when applications open in the weekly Union newsletter you get sent every Thursday so keep an eye out for these. 

Become an ambassador

Sustainability Ambassadors join staff members to assist them in making the university more sustainable. For some students this will be supporting staff teams to complete Green Impact, UCL's sustainability engagement programme, for others it will be working to implement sustainability projects for the SU, or UCL's food contractor CH&CO.

Propose policies to shape your Union

Any student can propose policies and ideas for discussion for any one of our Policy Zones, so you can write your ideas for change and easily submit them online for debate at any point next year.

You can find our Sustainability Strategy here, shaped with the help of student input.

Cafe sustainability

Our cafes are constantly making moves to be more sustainable - we replaced all plastic cutlery with wooden cutlery, we've got rid of all plastic water bottles, and we stock an increasing number of sustainable brands.

If you can't live without your morning coffee, remember to bring your re-usable cup along with you when you visit any of our cafes. You'll save money on any hot drink you purchase, so it's really a no-brainer! We've got our very own Students' Union UCL branded e-coffee cups on sale at all of our café outlets. Treat yourself and feel the benefits when you're getting your coffee cheaper than your mates without re-usable cups are.

Using a reusable e-coffee cup every working day for a period of one year results in 88% less emissions compared to a the same use of single-use cup made of cardboard linked with bioplastic, regardless of how many drinks a day you have. This is based on so called Life Cycle Assessment, so from cradle to grave of the product (the entire production and post-disposal included).

Small changes you can make

As you can see, there are so many different opportunities and ways to get involved! In the only world we have, looking after it and taking care of something that takes care of us is so important. We might not think that little old us can make a difference to such a big wide world problem but there’s about 40,000 students at UCL. If we all made a small change in our lives and were able to influence the friends and family around us then the ripple effect would be huge. Here’s some big and small ways from Sustainable UCL that we can make a change... 

Browse volunteering opportunities

Our Volunteering Service has tons of sustainability-related opportunities for you - take a look at them all here. From working on local farms to community gardening to research, there's bound to be voluntary roles you thought never existed before!

We also support students who set up their own volunteering projects, the #Zero Food Waste, an amazing initiative started by UCL students to re-distribute food that would have been thrown away in our cafes to local homeless shelters, the Green Walkers who organise regular litter-picking walks to clean up Bloomsbury and The Climate Collage who educates students in local schools about the far-reaching impacts of climate change. 

Dissertations

Talk to the Sustainability Officer

Our Sustainability Officer works part-time alongside their studies, volunteering their time to champion sustainability within the Students’ Union and working to make sure UCL is as sustainable as possible. They work closely with me and are supported by a team of Sustainability Ambassadors. To get in touch, simply email su.[email protected]