LSBU and sustainability – beyond a 2020 vision
Moving us one step closer to net zero emissions by 2050
18 January 2021
In one of the most challenging years, both for LSBU as an institution and for the global community, we remained committed to delivering sustainable work and to make good on our promises. Under this umbrella of sustainability, both humanity and organisations have a role to play in protecting our future and ensuring the capacity of the biosphere. Across our organisation and individual teams, our incremental changes can add up to create big differences, ensuring future generations are able to meet their own development needs.
Despite COVID-19, LSBU has thrived across a number of projects in 2020. Here is a selection of our achievements, allowing us to look back while we look ahead.
Achievements
- From April 2019 to April 2020, we proudly celebrated using 100% renewable energy (PDF File 1,026 KB) – no exceptions.
- We’ve reduced carbon emissions over 50% in 8 years – which is now at 85%.
- We saved over £28,000 on water usage - that's over 2 and a half million litres (in just one site!) – saving 150 litres of water per student in just one of our buildings alone.
- We hosted the Sustainability and Climate Energy Series. Drawing over 2000 attendees, we had 150 experts and guest speakers, as well as audience members from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, North America and South America. These three events covered topics as far reaching as fashion, economics, food and water and illustrated the importance of sustainability for an institution like LSBU.
- And we planted 2150 trees - one for each attendee!
- We started a brilliant podcast – no, not that one, but a sustainability one.
- We chose a brilliant winner in our 2020 Sustainability Competition – Allyna’s entry is now helping us recycle all across the campus.
- We raised awareness with a working group for domestic violence sufferers.
- 500 student nurses contributed to the NHS’s fight against COVID.
- We launched our new strategy, focussing on 9 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
- We continued to flatten our gender pay gap as an industry leader.
- We joined the COP26 Universities Network.
- We were shortlisted for the Building Performance Awards for our Facilities Management.
- We ranked 23rd globally (out of 768) for Reducing Inequalities.
