SSL wins two Green Impact awards

Green Impact Awards

The SSL Green Team receiving their Green Impact Awards from Christine Mitchell, 2013-14 Environmental Hero award winner (centre).  Image credit: David Fleming.

We are very proud to have been presented with two Green Impact awards at a ceremony held on 17th June in the Weston Library.  We received a Bronze award and the award for Best Newcomer 2014-15.

Green Impact is a national environmental accreditation scheme run by the NUS and managed at Oxford University by the Estates Services’ Environmental Sustainability team.  Oxford University ran it for the first time in 2013-14 with departments signing up as individual teams and working through a set of tasks in an online workbook.

The SSL was one of the first libraries to sign up to the scheme in Oxford and we have been busy making tangible changes around the the library to reduce waste and carbon emissions, such as:

  • relabelling and promoting our recycling bins
  • switching off lights in rooms not in use – thank you to our readers who have been taking note of our new signs!
  • switching off some of our photocopiers in vacation
  • setting up duplex printing by default on staff printers
  • activating ‘sleep’ mode on staff PCs

…and regularly putting up posters in the library suggesting ways that our readers can help green the SSL.

The awards are made of reused Welsh slate and we will be displaying them in the library.  In the meantime, they have been walkabout and found the books on climate change:IMG_2638 GI awards web smallPart of the Green Impact prize is the opportunity to plant a tree in Wytham Woods so we are very much looking forward to that and to getting started on the Silver award for 2015-16.

Do let us know if you have any ideas for further greening of the SSL!

Comments are closed.