In our last edition we announced the launch of BSU’s new car-sharing website - Car2Spa. Since then 137 of you have joined up. Car-sharing schemes work best when there is a criti-cal mass of people signed up – its simple maths: the more people who register journeys, the more chance everyone has of finding a match.

Here’s a couple of myth-busters for those of you who haven’t yet registered...

1) You need to own a car to join—No you don’t, you can just be a passenger in someone else’s and share the petrol costs. Liftshare has a calculator on their home page to help work out contributions (usually between 5p - 15p per mile)

2) You need to commit to sharing every day—No you don’t, being tied to someone else’s timetable 5 days a week is quite a commitment, so why not give it a go for just one or two days?

3) You’re not sure whether there’s anyone travelling from your local area. There’s only one way to find out… register now!

Here’s the feel-good bit... 25% of the journeys registered so far match. If only half of these matching journeys actu-ally resulted in people car-sharing, together you would be saving 7 tonnes of CO2 and £2,301 annually.

Now here’s a thought - if ALL the registered journeys could be shared, you could be saving 58 tonnes of CO2 and £18,548 annually!

We know that the lovely staff and students at Bath Spa care about the environment, so please remember to log onto www.bathspa.ac.uk/car2spa regularly to see if there’s some-one you could share your journey with.

Not sure how to register or how the system works? - that’s no excuse! Email Olivia on o.preston@bathspa.ac.uk and she’ll be happy to help.

Liftsharing - a lift for the planet & a saving for you too!

Jam Busting June

Nothing to do with jam-making W.I. ladies, Jam Busting June is an event run by the four West of England councils to encourage the use of sustainable transport options. And as with all the best competitions, points win prizes!

Registrations will be open on the Jam Busting website from May 2009, and you can visit www.jambustingjune.com now to see what happened last year.

Once you’ve registered online, you earn points for any journeys to work made using sus-tainable modes of transport. You’ll then be entered into prize draws for attractions/days out, entertainment, gift vouchers, gadgets, and healthy living prizes. The more sustainable trips you make, the more points you earn, and the more chance you have of winning a prize!

Watch this space for more details….

B&NES, BRISTOL

CITY, SOUTH

GLOUCESTERSHIRE

AND NORTH

SOMERSET

COUNCILS WANT

TO REWARD YOU

FOR TRAVELLING

SUSTAINABLY

Spring 2009 Issue 4

B A T H S P A U N I V E R S I T Y

Environmental News

Why not give car-sharing a go? The winners of our Easter Egg prize draw will be posted on the environmental web-pages at the beginning of April!

Our One Stop for Waste, first launched in Autumn 2008, is the place to go for all BSU waste related issues. Our one stop approach arose from a wish to make it easy for staff and stu-dents to recycle and to dispose of waste in the most environmentally friendly way, and to help reduce the impact of BSU’s activities on our environment.

Currently we recycle or provide sustainable disposal options for a wide variety of materials, including:- paper, glass, cans, cardboard, plastic bottles, white goods, IT equipment, WEEE, furniture, printer cartridges, fluorescent bulbs and much more. We’ll soon be introducing a battery recycling service too…

Still unsure of where to put your waste? Check the A-Z Recycling Guide on the environ-mental web-pages (paper copies can be supplied on request via the helpline).

The one stop approach has simplified the way BSU handles waste and recycling, for exam-ple over twenty waste contractors (some offering the same service to different departments at different prices!) have been reduced to only six.

You can get answers to all your recycling or waste queries via the designated one stop helpline (ext: 6235) or email. You could find out how to reduce or reuse different waste types, get information on recycling facilities and even be our eyes & ears to let us know where recycling isn’t working as well as it might.

More than half of our waste is currently being diverted from landfill, saving 35 tonnes of CO2 per year. This is a great start but we can do even better. Get involved & do your bit!!

For more information please email recycling@bathspa.ac.uk, call 6235 or visit www.bathspa.ac.uk/environment

Problems with waste? Try the One Stop 4 Waste

Page 2

Issue 4

Remember - If your waste doesn’t go into a green paper bin or a blue recycling bin, it goes to landfill.

It seems our students do…an environmental quickie that is!!

Over the past year Ed Stevens, Just V Co-ordinator, has developed a wide range of envi-ronmental volunteering opportunities for BSU students. These are often over-subscribed, showing what a caring bunch you are!

‘Quickies’ are one-day practical projects offering students the satisfaction of seeing they’ve made a real difference at the end of the day.

Recent Quickies have included: conservation activities at Radford Mill Farm, work on a wild-life garden in Lansdown with BTCV, dry-stone walling with the National Trust, planting a vegetable patch with children at BSU’s Oak Tree Day Nursery, and developing an orchard at Moorlands Infant School.

In addition, several students from School of Science and Environment (SSE) took part in an HE/FE partnership day, which was organised jointly by Ed, the SSE, Sally Griffin and Jac-queline McKenna. The aim was to enhance the aspirations of FE students (thus widening par-ticipation), foster social inclusion, and help develop interpersonal and specialist skills.

Visiting students from Bath City College spent the day improving our landscape by separat-ing and re-planting snowdrops around the lake, and planting a yew hedge to shield the electricity sub-station. The SSE students who joined them found the practical skills valuable and interesting, and everyone felt inspired by seeing the difference their work had made.

There’s also some fantastic ground-breaking research on community involvement with the environment being done in the School of Education … This deserves it’s very own article, and more details will be included in our next issue.

You may have noticed changes afoot in @Moreton. Not satisfied with sourcing sustainable and local food supplies, offering Fairtrade products, trialling cardboard take-away contain-ers over environmentally-unfriendly polystyrene ones and supporting food waste compost-ing, your Catering Staff are now trialling a new scheme aimed at further reducing waste.

For just £1.95 you can purchase a mug & get yourself a free hot drink from @Moreton. The mug is then yours to keep & bring back to use whenever you buy a drink in future. You’ll be cutting down on the amount of disposable cups you throw away, & doing your bit to reduce waste.

This is a great initiative as it helps to Reduce, Re-use then finally Recycle, leading to true sustainability.

Fancy a Quickie?!?

Don’t be a Mug!

B&NES Waste Day Change

Do you live in the Bath and North East Somerset area? If so, here is some advance warning about changes to the day your waste will be collected.

From the week beginning 8th June, the Council will be changing your waste collection day so that your rubbish, recycling, cardboard and garden waste will all be collected on the same day.

BANES will post a letter to every household telling advising of the new collection day - you should receive the information by the beginning of June.

This is in response to customer requests to help make council services easier to use. At pre-sent people may have their waste collected on up to three different days so this should make things much simpler and easier for everyone and help to increase local recycling rates.

If you wish to find out more you can visit www.bathnes.gov.uk/wastedaychange.

Page 3

Issue 4

ATTENTION

STUDENTS:

MOVING OUT

OF HALLS?

B&NES CAN

PROVIDE A

GREEN BOX TO

HELP YOU

CARRY ON

RECYCLING!

Bath City College students getting their hands dirty!

Sustainable purchasing in action

A Final Word -

Are you still wondering what we in the Environment Team get up to? Perhaps you have a burning

question you’d like to ask about what BSU is (or isn’t) doing and why? Maybe you’re feeling

inspired or sceptical, have queries or want to know more?

If any of the above apply, why not invite us along to your next team/departmental meeting where

we’d be delighted to give you a whistle-stop tour of all things environmental!

Drop Olivia, Ola or Stuart an email if you’d like to arrange a meeting (and we’ll jump at any

excuse to get out of our offices…).

Spring Clean your Energy Regime

‘The future depends on what we do in the present’ - Mahatma Gandhi

As the days get longer and the sun shines brightly, we’re all smiling more. What would make us in the Environmental Team smile even more is seeing fewer lights left on when they’re not needed. Whilst its still a little dark and gloomy when most of us arrive at work, some of us are forgetting to switch lights off when the sun streams through the windows at mid-morning. This seems to be particularly prevalent in meeting rooms!!!

Look up now, go on, we dare you…! Are your lights still on? Do they need to be?

Our community at BSU cares about climate change. We know this because last year we jointly managed to reduce our carbon emissions by 11%. Now we need your continued help to keep reducing energy consumption - our target for this year is to reduce CO2 emissions by at least a further 11% .

The best way you can help is by remembering to ask yourself the conscious question…. Does this light need to be on? Try it the next time you walk into a meeting room, or a kitchen or bathroom.

Don’t be a bystander, thinking that everyone else knows about it, so someone else will do something… Just because the lights are on doesn't mean YOU can’t turn them off.

We know it takes a while to form new habits, and switching on the lights when you walk in the office is pretty much an automatic habit for most of us. That’s why your friendly neighbourhood Environmental Champion will help point out when you need to ask yourself that conscious question….

(One caveat is to please use a good pinch of common sense with this. If you work in the base-

ment where its always dark and the lights are needed, then leave them on…. no-one will thank us

if they regularly get plunged into darkness! Please also check toilet cubicles are empty before

switching off bathroom lights….!).

MAKING GOOD

USE OF DAYLIGHT

IN A TYPICAL SMALL

OFFICE CAN

REDUCE LIGHTING

COSTS & SAVE

ENOUGH CO2 EACH

YEAR TO FILL A

DOUBLE-DECKER

BUS!

Issue 4