Ethical and Environmental Committee (11th November 2015)

Apologies had been received from Dan and Maxime who were at Blackout training. Nancy Lan and Nikol Raykova were also in attendance.

The Committee went through the actions from the last meeting:

Admins on the Blackout Facebook page – this has been done. Sam also gave a general Blackout update. Volunteer sign up was opened up fairly late but all the spaces filled up very quickly, showing how popular Blackout is each year. Sam is also looking at how to harness the volunteer enthusiasm for Blackout in other projects. Amy said that the feedback she has received from volunteers is that lots of people get involved because of the free things they collect. Amy said it would be good to have a survey sent out to participants about why they wanted to get involved.

Amy to meet with Student Switch Off – Amy went to their training session but there was no one there. She has now been invited to another meeting in the next few weeks. As a general update on the HEAT project, Amy spoke about how Southampton Hubs are interested in doing some workshops on keeping warm, in partnership with the Environment Centre, with E&E helping to provide some of the materials from the HEAT project. Southampton Hubs are also keen to be involved with the HEAT project, by helping providing volunteers, with the project still coming under the E&E Committee.

Date and Location of Swap Shop – the date has been set as Monday 30^th November in Meeting Rooms 1 and 2.

Research on banning bottled water – Sam spoke to Leeds and Sheffield Unions who have both successfully banned bottled water through a referendum. Amy said that she had spoken to Lucy Potashnick, the Environment and Sustainability Manager at the University about the idea and had agreed that banning bottled water would only be a good idea if there were more water fountains connected to the mains water supply. The Committee discussed the possibility of having a referendum on the issue and it was suggested that the issue could go to a Union Council ideas session.

Bus pass idea – Sam is currently in discussions with the University about transport, in particular how to promote cycling as an alternative to buses, as a more sustainable means of transport and will bring up the idea in those conversations. Amy said they had met with a student and a business about promoting cycling in Southampton by sharing cycling routes, encouraging people to cycle by letting them know how quick it is to get to places and also training people to cycle on the road. Amy said that it would be good to update the safety and travel sections on the SUSU website have a blog to promote cycling and routes. Sam and Amy also spoke about the Winter Transport Fair on Friday, promoting bike safety, as well as SUSU’s Cycling in the City event over Freshers’ and the Bike Doctor who comes every other week, making the point that it’s about making students aware of what is already out there for promoting cycling.

The minutes from the last meeting were approved by the Committee.

The following positions were elected:

Biodiversity and Conservation Coordinator – Nancy Lan

Recycling Coordinator – Nikol Raykova

Elle reported that she had met with Julia and discussed her role a bit more and spoke about Swap Shop. The Committee discussed the issue of space and collecting beforehand for the event. Elle asked whether items could be collected on the Friday before Swap Shop on the following Monday and said that participation might be low if items were not collected beforehand. Amy said that the problem is space in Union and where to store the items over the weekend. Sam said that there would be a meeting about Swap Shop soon and would ensure that Elle was involved in that.

Amy updated that she had met with Carolyn Couch, Waste and Recycling Manager at the University about reducing the impact of students’ waste from halls. They’ve improved signage for all the bins in halls, but still have yet to change personal bins in rooms. There were also plans for the Halls Committees to get sustainability training.

MSC certified food

Amy explained that this idea had been referred to the E&E Committee from the ideas session at Union Council. The discussion at Union Council centred on whether having a specific policy on MSC certified food would lead to numerous policies for other things like Fairtrade. Amy therefore thought it would be useful for the Union to have a policy on the procurement of food.

Sam said that the issue would probably not affect the average student but something they would generally be in agreement with and said that there is already lots of good stuff that SUSU does e.g. Fairtrade wine and locally sourced food.

Nikol said that it would be good to advertise when SUSU uses things are certified. Amy said the Ethics and Environment policy says to use certified food wherever possible, but it is very vague. Sam said that a list of priorities in terms of the certifications could be drawn up that the Committee agree should be used, which would be more useful and practical. Nikol suggested that SUSU could trial it and see how it affects the costs.

Allotments

Amy reported there had been several students, mostly from the Green Action society who are interested in SUSU maintaining allotments and have been trying to get allotments on University grounds for several years. The main concern that has been raised against the idea is that students aren’t here all year and won’t look after it all year, but as there is interest from both PhD students and staff, it is not much of an issue.

Sam said that it would be a long battle with the University, but there are things that could be done in the meantime. It would be important to get links to the local community e.g. a local allotment group who could help keep it maintained and give advice. Sam also said that it would be best to start small before launching a big allotment project, enabling SUSU to prove that there is the interest and that it can be successful (e.g. Growhampton from the University of Roehampton who started growing vegetables in shipping pallets). Amy said that there are pallets from the University that they might be able to use.

Food waste

Amy spoke about Maddie from Southampton Hubs who wants to do a waste audit on food waste in the Union and Maddie from Green Action who would like to look into what food is wasted from the SUSU shop.

Sam said that the two issues are separate – SUSU wasting food as opposed to students wasting food. In terms of students wasting food, there’s a lot that could be done to address the cause of the problem e.g. simple tips on how to use food that they would normally throw away. Amy said that issues are linked because students are the ones often wasting food in SUSU outlets, and that addressing the cause should also reduce waste in the SUSU outlets.

Nikol said that Hugh’s War on Waste which is on television at the moment and has useful tips about sell by dates, which could give good ideas. Sam said that it would be a good time to do something about waste, to tie in with the programme. Amy said it would be good to get students to blog about the students’ cooking stories. Elle also agreed that it is the perfect time to do a campaign on waste because students should already be aware of the national campaigns going on and could get Curb: The Real Junk Food Project involved in the project. Amy suggested that they could hold a charity banquet of food waste. Nikol said you could do it in conjunction with Waste Wars and Elle said that all the numerous events (Swap Shop, Shift your Stuff, Waste Wars) about waste could come under one umbrella. Amy said that she felt that food waste is different to other waste and would prefer to address it as a separate issue but asked the Committee to put their ideas on the Facebook group about the different waste projects and how they can be tied together.

Amy said that it would be good to have somewhere on campus for people to dispose of electrical waste because you can’t throw those items away in household rubbish, and students wouldn’t easily get to the tip. Sam said to talk to the relevant people at the Council.

Year planning

Sam has a calendar for Sustainability and stressed that there are some key times where everyone is competing for time and space and that it’s often better to focus on improving the existing campaigns rather than starting something brand new.

Communications plan

Sam explained his idea of merging the separate aspects of Sustainability Zone (equality and diversity, ethical and environmental and employability) in a single Facebook page with each aspect having a set day. This would hopefully make communications more manageable for everyone as well as enabling posts to get a wider reach. The Committee discussed whether the page should be called Sustainability, keeping it in line with the SUSU structure, or something different which might mean something more to students. It was also explained that if these changes did go ahead, then a Communications Coordinator would no longer be needed, because the content for the page would come from the Committee as a whole.

Amy also said that Creative Industries have a great employability week and Sustainability could have one. The University careers events don’t often have the best range and it would be good to showcase a wide variety of sustainability careers. Sam said that if anyone has any suggestions for events and speakers then they should let him know and they will work something out.

As there was no other business, the meeting was closed at 15:33.

The Committee agreed that Wednesday at 14:00 was a good time and that the Committee would meet next in the New Year.