Green Impact
Recognising and awarding staff members' green habits at work.
What's Green Impact?
Green Impact is an environmental accreditation programme which is run as part of the University's Carbon Management Plan. It's a national programme which rewards green habits in the workplace, and is run by the National Union of Students (NUS) on our behalf.
How does it work?
If you're a staff member or postgraduate you can take part by joining your departmental team. If you're a student, you can volunteer to be an auditor.
Contact us
Sustainability at York
sustainability@york.ac.uk
@UoYsustain
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If you're a staff member or postgraduate
We'll provide you with a workbook of sustainability boosting actions and the resources to implement them. Depending on the number of actions your team achieves, you could win a Green Impact award.
- Register online and join an existing team, or create a new one.
- Log into the online workbook and navigate to the appropriate tab for your team.
- In each tab you'll find actions to complete. Follow the guidance in the workbook and click 'done' when complete.
Want to look at the action list before registering? Login using the following details. Email: york@greenimpact.org.uk Password: example.
If you're an undergraduate student
You'll can gain valuable work experience with York Award and IEMA accredited training (which can help improve employability) by volunteering as a Green Impact Auditor.
- Register to become a Green Impact Project Assistant (GIPA) or audit a team's work after their workbook submission in April.
- Email greenimpact@york.ac.uk to find out about more.
The awards
Awards are presented in June, accompanied by a celebratory lunch where, hopefully, your team will achieve one of the award categories: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Excellence and Platinum.
There are also special awards for efforts above and beyond the workbook. You can also choose to do a project based award, which focuses on one action and its spread through the University and the community.
Bronze and Silver
Complete enough actions in your workbook to achieve a Bronze or Silver standard and you'll be awarded their Green Impact Award.
If you don't complete enough actions to reach Bronze, you can get a 'Working Towards Bronze' Award.
Going for Gold
In order to achieve a Gold Award, you must have achieved all of the Bronze and Silver actions. You must then pick actions from the gold action list in your tab in the online workbook and achieve 400 points in total.
Excellence and platinum
After achieving Gold for two consecutive years, you can begin an excellence project, allowing you to plan and carry out your own sustainability project at the University. After working on one (or more) excellence project(s) for three years, you're eligible for the Platinum Award.
Examples of excellence projects at York include:
- Introducing mandatory talks and guidance on bin usage at Biology practicals.
- Building bug hotels and beehives
- Creating a brand new workbook of actions for colleges
Teams and awards
Use the dropdowns below to find out more about teams that won Green Impacts awards for 2019/20 and a little bit about this years special award winners.
Team |
Award Level |
|
| Alcuin EnvironmentAL | Colleges Bronze | |
| Bancroft Lab (CNAP) | Labs Gold | |
| Biology DMT Hub | Silver | |
| BTL Technicians | Labs Gold | |
| Centre for Immunology and Infection | Labs Silver | |
| Chemistry Teaching Labs | Labs Gold | |
| Chemistry.At.York | Working Towards Excellence | |
| Computer Science Green Impact team | Gold | |
| Constantine College | Gold & College Bronze | |
| Denby Lab (CNAP) | Labs Gold | |
| Genever Lab | Labs Gold | |
| GI Health Sciences | Working Towards Excellence | |
| Green Careers | Gold | |
| Green Chemistry | Labs Gold & Gold | |
| Green OPPAtunities | Bronze | |
| Information Services | Bronze | |
| International Pathway College | Gold | |
| Langwith College | College Bronze | |
| McQueen-Mason Lab (CNAP) | Labs Bronze | |
| Providence Planet Pioneers! | Bronze | |
| REcyclers | Bronze | |
| Sociology | Silver | |
| tHink gReen | Gold | |
| UYSEG Green Team | Silver | |
| WACL Waste Warriors | Gold | |
| Wentworth College | Bronze | |
| YCL Catering and hospitality | Catering Gold | |
| York Science Park | Bronze |
 (1).jpg)
Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Saul Tendler, pictured left, awarding David Kuntin with the Environmental Improvement award, accepted by James Moir on Davids' behalf.
David is a PhD student who has implemented a lab plastic recycling scheme within his lab in Biology. David has been practical and approachable during the implementation of this scheme and has worked with Lab members in a pragmatic way to ensure that recycling is not a time consuming or onerous task. This recycling scheme is now being introduced department wide by Biology which would greatly reduce plastic waste in the Department.
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Acting Vice Chancellor, Saul Tendler, pictured left, awarding Jenny Purcell with her award.
Jenny played a huge part in making sure Biology is a sustainable department within the University. This year Jenny has championed the Green Impact project to the department resulting in a huge increase in participation going from three to seven teams, with a mixture of Lab and Office entries.
To make successful teams for Biology, Jenny has arranged meetings over the year specifically for the Green Impact project. Jenny has made a huge difference to the department’s sustainability impact. She is Secretary for the Biology Environmental Performance Group, a role she always goes the extra mile for, making sure the group is discussing new ideas, positive changes and driving the way forward with new sustainability initiatives. Jenny is a true advocate for sustainability.
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Acting Vice Chancellor, Saul Tendler, pictured left, awarding Green Chemistry, with their award.
Most Improved Team: Green Chemistry.
Emily, a Langwith College Tutor, has been the driving force behind her college's Green Impact team. She has liaised tirelessly with student committees and other impact members, pulling everyone together and making sure they stick to deadlines in order to get everything done.
Emily has been very involved in the Connecting East Project and has made sure everyone knows what is going on where on campus. Her college could not have achieved what they have without her.
Contact us
Sustainability at York
sustainability@york.ac.uk
@UoYsustain
Find us on Facebook