Green Impact spotlight: Green OPPAtunities

We’re enjoying sharing some of the recent projects completed by teams across the University as part of Green Impact 2023. 

Meet Green OPPAtunities, a team within the Office of Philanthropic Partnerships and Alumni (OPPA) who are passionate about the environment. Green OPPAtunities have achieved their second Platinum award in this year’s Green Impact Awards.

We asked the team to share more about their project. Read below to find out more.

Tell us a bit about your Green Impact project. 

Having achieved our first Platinum Green Impact award in 2022, we were really keen to do something new in this Green Impact year and so we decided to try doing a Green Impact Project alongside the workbook. Our impact within the University is relatively small as our team mostly works with just the 50 staff members in OPPA. However, as an office we are in regular contact with alumni all across the world and so we knew that to have maximum impact we needed to find a project that would involve the whole alumni community. 

We worked closely with the Alumni Relations team within OPPA and decided to develop an Alumni Sustainability Network, which aims to bring together alumni, staff and students and to create a forum to share new ideas and solutions to create a more sustainable world. Our Green Impact project set up the foundations of the Network and got the first group of alumni signed up and engaging in its work. We decided to launch the network with the Carbon Reduction Challenge, using the Giki Zero Platform to encourage alumni to track their carbon footprint and take steps to reduce their emissions. By using an online platform it meant that alumni could join in from anywhere in the world. We also introduced the Alumni Sustainability Newsletter, which shares news and research from the University as well as featuring sustainability work being carried out by alumni. 

Tell us about your success. What were the outcomes of your project?

We now have over 370 alumni, students and current and retired staff from 40 different countries signed up to the Sustainability Network who together through Giki have pledged over 50,000 Kg of carbon savings. 750,000 litres of water and 1400 pieces of single-use plastic have also been saved in the first few months of the challenge.

We have also set up a Sustainability Working Group for OPPA who meet every two weeks to discuss the next steps for the network and to ensure that sustainability continues to be key part of the alumni programme at York. This includes representatives from the Fundraising and Volunteering Team, who are leading on the project, the Communications Team and also the Green Impact Team.

Green OPPAtunities has achieved so much this year. What does your team hope to do in the future?

We have lots of exciting plans for the next stage of the Alumni Sustainability Network. As well as continuing to build on the work we have done so far, we are hoping to set up an online platform for the Sustainability Network where alumni will be able to connect directly with other alumni, staff and students to share news and join in discussions around sustainability. We'll also be launching a new programme in the Autumn to invite alumni  and local community groups on to campus to take part in various real-life, hands-on sustainability-related projects.

A huge thanks to Green OPPAtunities for sharing more about their Green Impact project. Stay tuned for more team stories to come!