Information on Loughborough

Halls carbon footprint benefits from Loughborough students competitive spirit

Posted on 01/07/08
P. Klein

carbon

A competition between Loughborough Universitys halls of residence has enabled them to drastically reduce their carbon footprint and raise money for charity at the same time.

The Energy League pits halls of residence against each other in a bid to see which hall can reduce their energy consumption and their carbon footprint by the most. This year the hall students reduced their carbon footprint by 110 tonnes of CO2, which equates to a financial saving of 15,000.

The League was introduced in 2006 and is run jointly by Imago Services (the Universitys hall management operation), Estates Services and the Students Union.

At the start of each year, every hall is given an energy target based on their result from last year and current Government benchmarking, explains Chris Steele, Imago Services environmental and sustainability coordinator.

There are awards each term, with the hall that has improved the most up to that point receiving 200 from Imago Services towards their RAG charity donation. The overall winner is then announced at the joint Students Union and University Building Environmental Sustainability Together (BEST) awards at the end of the year.

This year the halls also embarked on another scheme called Bottles for Bounty every month the halls bottle crates were weighed and for each kilo recycled they received five pence from Imago Services towards their RAG charity donation. This year the halls recycled a total of two tonnes of glass.

Next year the Energy League will run alongside the Bottle for Bounty scheme, which will increase the competitive spirit among the halls whilst increasing students awareness of sustainability on campus.