Last week, the Sustainability Awards were held, where we celebrate all the work that has gone on this year and all the people that have contributed to creating positive change at the University and further afield.

After a crazy few weeks pulling the awards together (at one point having several of the team in a production line making the Green Impact Awards!), everyone had a great evening. It was great to get together to share the stories and experiences over the past year, and to hear the huge range of projects that have been going on at Leeds. It was especially great for me to show and recognise the student involvement in Green Impact and with Sustainability more generally, and our student photographer Jodie did a fabulous job! 

It was great to have the Vice-Chancellor Sir Alan Langlands and the Pro-Vice Chancellor Vivien Jones there and a personal highlight was getting to speak to them about the work I’ve been involved in this year.

In the first half of the evening, the Vice-Chancellor presented the Sustainability Awards, and all the nominees thoroughly deserved to be recognised!

The winners were:

Being a Positive Partner in Society

Winner: Jen dyer

Highly Commended: Dee Kaur

Embedding Sustainability through Collaboration

Winner: Brenda Frater

Highly Commended: Residential services (Collaborating over food waste in Central village)

 

Making the Most of Resources

Winner:  Ellie Cope and Richard Lewis

Highly Commended: Helen Loftus

 

Building Knowledge and Capacity:

Winner: Dr. Matthew Davis

Highly Commended: Prof. Jon Lovett

 

And this year we had a new award specific to purchasing, as it is such a high impact area of the University, and there is so much good work going on across the University with this.

The Sustainable Purchasing Award:

Winner: Jo Burns

Highly Commended: FD purchasing team (Richard Trimble)

 

 

After these were presented, PVC Vivien Jones presented the prize for the Creative Climate competition we ran alongside COP21 in December, to Isabelle Ward, a Geography student. Following that, the meal was served, which was a vegan and gluten free default (and very tasty!) and the chocolate brownie went down well as well!

 

The evening concluded with the Green Impact Awards. This was personally a highlight of my year, as I saw the teams who I’d worked with all year be proud of the awards they’d achieved, and deservedly so!

This year, we introduced three ‘Special Green Impact Awards’ in order to recognise those students and staff who have been exceptionally involved and pro-active within Green Impact and with Sustainability more generally.

The winners were:

Best Green Impact Project Assistant: Faridah Rahman

Biggest Individual Contribution to Green Impact award: Andy Connelly

Best new team award: LIME Green Impact team.

 

All the winners from the evening deserve to be recognised, for either going above and beyond in their job, or for their contribution they make external to their everyday work.

I personally was very pleased with how the event went, especially after the months of organising, and it was great to have such fantastic people recognised for their contribution and to have them all in one room – it was a great atmosphere!

The full details of all the winners and nominees can be found in the programme here..