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IMPACT
An Interview Environment and Katie Moncur: What does your role as Environment and Social Justice Officer entail? Lee Taylor: “My role is two-pronged, the first side of it is operational so I deal a lot with policies, with strategies to make the uni and the Union more sustainable. I work to empower the student voice. The other side of my role is the student-facing side, so I chair the ESJ Network and coordinate all of the sustainable initiatives for students. It’s a weird role but it’s fun.”
KM: The Union aims to become carbon neutral by 2028, how will this be achieved? LT: “In terms of our carbon neutrality, operationally we don’t have control over where our energy comes from in this building, but we have control over how much we use. We can look to ensure our supply chains are fully sustainable, that we’re not bringing massive trucks onto campus all the time. That the food we’re providing is as sustainable as possible; our recycling as positive as possible. We can look to carbon offset all our travel as staff members. You make small but effective changes everywhere and then, once you’re as good as you possibly can be, [carbon offset] the rest.”
KM: How are you going to implement these changes and encourage student groups to become more sustainable? LT: “The operational side is fairly easy. We have the new staff sustainability committee. We’ll be writing a sustainable strategic action plan as well for the Union. We’re going to bring in a carbon auditor to do a full audit of everything and see exactly where we are, so we’ll have a proper baseline to go off. In terms of student groups, there are going to be some difficult decisions, but I don’t think there should really be any push back on that. Everyone wants to be sustainable. I think it’s important when we do it, that we do it in such a way that it’s not just us as a Union saying, ‘no you can’t do this’. What we have to do is look at alternatives, help student groups make more sustainable choices and provide them with positive feedback when they do so.”
KM: This year Sustainability Week is being hosted by the ESJ Network for the first time. What are the plans for that? How are you going to engage people and empower them to make change? LT: “Plans for it are not 100% decided yet. We’re working to see whether we can collaborate with Nottingham Trent and make it bigger than just UoN but actually Nottingham Sustainability Week. The ESJ Network will lead key-noting events. The only one we’ve announced so far is the awards ceremony. We’re working on a few others including some incredible guest speakers that I won’t say on record. We’ll be looking to unveil some se cret projects I’m working on. Some of the things we’ve been talking about are a march for Women’s Rights on campus during the week. I can confirm that we’ve been given approval by the BBC to screen David Attenborough documentaries on the Portland screen so that will be amazing. We’re looking to engage all of our partners too. So UoN Sport have a few ideas,Playerlayer are really keen to get involved.