A summary of our annual campaign week run by the student Sustainability Committee

The Sustainability Committee ran their annual student-led campaign week in March, which consisted of 9 events span across the week on a variety of themes, such as:

• Sustainable fashion
• Racial equality in the climate movement
• Sustainable consumption and sustainability projects on campus
• Sustainable food
• Climate activism
• Fossil Fuel Free Careers Campaign

They are really proud to say that they engaged an estimated 924 students and 43 staff in the campaign week!

Key highlights of the campaign week

Clothes Mending Session at Bower

This fantastic event was run by two of the Fashion Technicians at Bower who are very skilled at mending. Some sustainability committee members were there to help out and engage other students in conversations around sustainable fashion. They also got a list of interested Bower students who would like to get involved with sustainable fashion at Bower, such as setting up a clothes swap.

Sustainable Fashion Talk (and free vegan pizza!), with Sustainable Fashion Week

This was a really fun and educational talk and discussion about the impacts of the fast fashion industry and sustainable fashion with Amelia Twine from Sustainable Fashion Week. Maria, the Women’s Officer, introduced the event and the talk spoke about women’s rights in the context of fast fashion in honour of Women’s History Month. We provided everyone who attended free vegan pizza!

   

Interfaith Café on Sustainability

This was a safe space for students to talk freely and respectfully initiate conversations about their own faith or other faiths that they would like to learn more about. This was a unique opportunity to bring our five faith societies together to talk about how sustainability is embedded within different faiths, spiritualties and religions.

 

Growing Racial Equality Within the UK Environmental Movement – Seminar with The Black Seeds Environmental Social Justice Network:

This seminar was a really inspiring talk and discussion about the importance of decolonising and diversifying the environmental sector, as well as giving students and staff a great overview of how The Black Seeds Environmental Justice Network are doing this in Bristol and beyond.

Swap Shop, Clothes Mending and Free Vegan Food

We were really excited to expand the clothes swap to include a book swap, as well as having a clothes mending session run alongside this by Verity Jones who engaged many students in conversations around the importance of clothes mending and sustainable fashion. We collaborated with Veg Society to give out free vegan food and used some information cards from The Carbon Footprint Game to engage students with conversations around the carbon footprint of meat vs vegetarian or vegan food. These were a great visual aid! We had this event out in the sunshine which meant we engaged far more students than we ever hoped, due to higher footfall outside which was amazing. The clothes swap was run by the Sustainability Committee, and History Society helped to run the book swap.

      

Trip to the Climate Strike

This was a really educational and joyful day, it was great to be part of this Global Climate Strike at the local strike that was happening in Bristol to protest against the Bristol airport expansion. We went with some members of UWE Photography Society as well as students and staff from the UWE XR group.

  

Foraging Walk

This was a really informative and nourishing walk around and near campus run by Will from the UWE Grounds Team. Will is super knowledgeable about foraging and edible plants and we all learned so much. It was really lovely to collaborate with Photography Society and they took some amazing photos for us, it was a very wholesome and fun way to officially finish the campaign week.

We would like to say a big thank you to the following societies and groups that we collaborated with:

• Neurodiversity Society
• Photography Society
• Art Society
• UWE XR
• History Society
• Islamic Society
• The Women’s Officer
• Veg Society
• Sustainable Fashion Week
• The Black Seeds Network

 

Do you or your student group want to collaborate with us?

If you’d like to collaborate with the Sustainability Committee in the future, please email thegreenteam@uwe.ac.uk.