This site was launched on 1st February 2017 – More blog posts coming soon!
Do you have an idea for a blog post about how NTU is working towards achieving this goal? We would love to hear from you – email GreenAcademy@ntu.ac.uk.
WHAT IS NTU CATERING DOING TO REDUCE PLASTIC
Plastic was first widely used in the 1950s and since then more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced with at least 79% of this ending up in a landfill. Here at NTU Catering Services, we have directed one of our main focuses on the reduction of this plastic waste. As a department, we have already made substantial improvement…
HOW TO REDUCE YOUR AVOIDABLE WASTE
Our top tips;
- Plan your week to avoid unnecessary purchases.
- Invest in reusables; get a water bottle, coffee cup, and bag for life to use every day!
- Say no to packaging – challenge your favourite shops, supermarkets and even your place of work or study to ditch unnecessary packaging.
- Always think ‘Do you really need it?…
HOW YOUR CLOTHING COULD POTENTIALLY IMPACT THE ENVIRONMENT
For quite a long time when I would think of sustainability, climate change, and the environment, reduction of plastic consumption would come to mind. As far as I can remember plastic has always been a known cause of environmental problems because it’s nonbiodegradable and it produces toxic fumes when burnt….
FAIR TRADE AND FAST FASHION
Fashion is one of the biggest industries in the world, with an annual turnover of more than 3 trillion dollars. Yet the workers at the bottom of the supply chain see very little of the profits. In many countries, farmers growing cotton and garment production line workers are poorly paid and subjected to…
STAND AGAINST FAST FASHION: FASHION REVOLUTION WEEK
In 2016, 1,130,000 tonnes of clothing was purchased in the UK. That’s a lot of hours we’ve spent scrolling through ASOS, browsing the clothing racks in Zara and avoiding tripping over a fugitive toddler during a Saturday morning visit to Primark. Seemingly, we also needed to make room for all our new purchases, considering a staggering 300,000 tonnes was thrown away in 2016. Our love for ‘Fast Fashion’ and throwaway culture has granted the clothing and textile industry the rather unflattering title of Second Most Polluting Industry, beaten by the oil industry only by a nose. Chemicals used to grow fibers, dye fabrics, and wash garments end up …
MY SUSTAINABILITY JOURNEY
As a gardener I am super lucky to be able to be outside in the flow doing something I enjoy.
One of our Horticultural lectures was a ‘sustainability in practice challenge’ which motivated me to take the sustainability in practice certificate. I reflected on my lifestyle to see where I could make changes and improvements…
NOTTINGHAM BUSINESS SCHOOL ‘SEA CHANGE EVENT’
On Feb 20th 237 enthusiastic first-year Nottingham Business School students, accompanied by second and final year student mentors participated in a grand plastics upcycling challenge, contributing directly to UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), Goal 14 (Life Below Water) and Goal 15 (Life on Land). The aptly named, ‘Sea Change’ event…
HOW TO BREAK UP WITH PLASTIC
Since the release of David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2, it seems that conversations around plastics and how harmful they are to the environment have increased exponentially, and for good reason. Plastic is so environmentally destructive and takes so long to break down (into even smaller micro-plastics which are just as harmful) that every single piece of plastic that has ever been made is still in existence in the Earth today. From every…
GREEN MONKEY – BAMBOO STRAWS AND GOING GREEN FOR FRESHERS!
Straws are super topical in the media today and most have decided to boycott them – even your local ‘spoons. But paper straws are still single use and come with their own issues; some people don’t recycle them and they go soft quickly.
Low-carbon diet: The food fad that’s good for the environment
If you aren’t already worried about climate change, you probably should be. Melting ice-caps, rising sea-levels and extreme weather – indicators that all is not right with the world, and us humans definitely have a hand in it!
Sustainability, low-waste living and plant-based…
PLASTIC PLANET LAUNCHES AT NTU
In April, Nottingham Trent University’s Sustainable Development Team launched the Plastic Planet campaign with engagement stalls at City, Clifton and Brackenhurst campuses. The aim of the campaign is to
BIOPHILIA – OUR INNATE CONNECTEDNESS TO NATURE
E.O Wilson’s Biophilia hypothesis (1995) posits that, as a result of our extensive co-evolutionary histories with our planet’s myriad inhabitants, we possess an innate desire to interact with other species and ‘life-like processes’. Hypotheses surrounding the numerous benefits of communing with our natural evolutionary heritage…
LESSONS FROM #PLASTICFREEJULY
It seems impossible to escape our disposable plastic lives, whether it’s the mountain of plastic covering our food & cleaning items to the micro plastic fibres in our clothes entering the water system every time we wash our clothes…
A MONTH WITHOUT SHAMPOO
On 1st January 2016, in a moment of madness, I decided to take my new year’s resolutions to the extreme and made a commitment to give up 1 thing every month for a whole year. Any money I saved by not doing/using these things I donated to a different charity (that was related to whatever I was giving up that month). I documented my experiences in the form of monthly blog posts, one of which I will share with you below…
PUSH FORWARD
For many students starting their journey through NTU, how to get about once they arrive in Nottingham probably isn’t that high on their list of things to worry about. Certainly for me, back in the mists of time when I started at Uni I was far more interested in discovering my local Metal bands than researching bus timetables or bike routes. Until that is, about three weeks into my first term…
OVER 10 YEARS OF FAIRTRADE AT NTU
NTU is proud to be a Fairtrade University. Over the years, we have worked to inform our staff and students about the benefits of buying fairly traded products, enabling them to make an informed choice about the ethical value of what they buy. Some of the events we have run include a Fairtrade banana giveaway, a bake-off competition, afternoon tea parties, a t-shirt design competition…
PROJECT RE:FAB AND SUSTAINABILITY DIARIES
Have you ever considered how your clothes are made? How a small plant or even crude oil can be transformed into a piece of clothing that you are wearing at this very moment? Although there are different construction methods, one of the most known and common ways is called Cut, Make & Trim. A design will be sketched, a pattern will be made in paper form and transformed onto the fabric, the pieces will be cut out and assembled et voilà, done is your piece of clothing.
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR FOOD WASTE AT NTU?
Nottingham Trent University, like most institutions and businesses, creates food waste. NTU work together in partnership with Wastecycle Ltd to reduce food waste and make sure any that is collected is then treated in the best way possible…
FASHION REVOLUTION WEEK 2017!!
Fashion Revolution is a global movement that runs all year long, but this week every year they focus on raising awareness and asking people to engage with their campaign for a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. It all starts today – April 24th 2017 – which is the 4th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, when a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1138 people and injuring many more…
AIESEC: THE WORLD’S LARGEST YOUTH-RUN ORGANISATION
AIESEC is the world’s largest youth-run organisation. Founded in 1948, AIESEC is now present in over 126 countries and territories and is still growing. Over 70,000 students and recent graduates, each year, in over 100 countries manage an organisation that facilitates tens of thousands of international exchanges so that young people can experience and understand cultures other than their own…
LESS IS MORE, LOWERING FASHION CONSUMPTION
My interest in sustainability started over the summer when I was doing a spring clean of my wardrobe. After days of clearing out, I not only realised how many clothes I had, but more importantly how many that I’d never worn. The average person uses about 20% of their wardrobe, the rest hang there, unloved…
THE GREENHOUSE GAS MANAGEMENT PROJECT – EVERYONE’S A WINNER
On the evening of 7th February, I was lucky enough to be invited to the student presentation evening of the Greenhouse Gas Management Project, a great initiative and a perfect example of enabling innovation at NTU…
3 SIMPLE WAYS TO BE A MORE SUSTAINABLE STUDENT
The focus of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is of course sustainability, but what does this really mean and how can we help to work towards these in our day to day lives? In this blog post I wanted to offer some of the easier ways that students can help to make a build a more sustainable future…
FOODSHARE: GROWING TO GIVE
Our ‘Foodshare: Growing to Give’ allotment project was set up to provide a great volunteering opportunity for both staff and students at NTU! It gives everyone the chance to grow nutritious food while working with one of our local organic food specialists…
IT ALL STARTS WITH YOU
The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to ‘end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all’. A daunting task really. Seeing all these different goals and the 169 specific targets associated with each of the 17 goals it is hard not to feel overwhelmed with the responsibility an active contribution would bring. And what can one person do anyway…
LOVE LOCAL PRODUCE: A GROWING LOCAL ENTERPRISE
The NTU market is all about bringing people together. Greeting and meeting local traders, supporting and showcasing local charities, recognising sustainable efforts of the university, whilst joining up for one day a month for everyone at NTU to enjoy…
HOW THE SIP CERTIFICATE OPENED BY EYES TO WHAT ‘SUSTAINABILITY’ ACTUALLY MEANS
So, over the past few weeks I’ve been taking part in the Sustainability in Practice certificate (SiP) and it’s been an eye opening experience to say the least! As a Physical Geography graduate, I obnoxiously thought I knew tonnes about sustainability, after sitting in numerous lectures about Climate Change and ‘Environmental Issues and Impacts’, even doing my dissertation on Environmental Management. Little did I know that was just scratching the surface…
FASHION REVOLUTION WEEK 2017
Fashion Revolution is a global movement that runs all year long, but this week every year they focus on raising awareness and asking people to engage with their campaign for a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. It all starts today – April 24th 2017 – which is the 4th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, when a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1138 people and injuring many more…
NTU & the sustainable development goals 