With almost 2,000 students and over 250 members of staff, the College’s activities can have a large impact on our local and global environment. We work to create a culture of environmental awareness within our community and implement strategies to reduce our most detrimental environmental impact. This includes the many net zero initiatives we have implemented from reducing our carbon emissions to improving our campus biodiversity and banning single use plastics in out canteen to state but a few. Other initiatives include:
recycling on campus to limit waste and ideally to encourage the practice of zero waste in all our operations as far as possible
introduction of a reuse and upcycling scheme to enable the reuse, repurposed and reimagined role of an item that no longer works or has no further use
tree-planting across the campus to offset our current carbon emissions and to encourage and promote wildlife to thrive on our campus
teach-the-teacher scheme to enable fully trained students to educate and inform our teachers on essential climate and environmental issues so that they are confident and knowledgeable in the classroom about the climate emergency
building an ecology garden as part of the masterplan to improve and expand our existing campus provision that ensure our buildings fulfil green energy credentials
campus biodiversity projects, meadow planting and collaborative partnership with our surrounding schools
regular clothes swap events organised by the student union
a comprehensive decarbonisation programme to reduce our carbon emissions including the installation of campus charging points for EVs and an energy-efficient heating system.
For more information about our Net Zero Initiatives, please contact Ms. Yaso Shan (yas@varndean.ac.uk); College Climate and Environment Lead.