UL Environmental Society - Portfolio 2016 / 2017

PORTFOLIO 2016-17



SOCIETYAIMS& OBJECTIVESOur Society motto is “Making Real Change On Campus”.This society was set up as a forum for students to have their voiceheard in regards to Environmental issues, which are turned into realactions and solutions on campus.Our main objectives are the following:• To promote sustainability• To raise awareness of environmental issues• To organize environmentally themed events and excursions• To help improve the quality of life for all staff and students on campus• To help maintain the Universities Green FlagOur aim is not just to be one of the best University of Limerick societies,but to be a national exemplar Environmental Society. We aim to breakthe typical negative perception associated with EnvironmentalSocieties (e.g. boring, not fun, unrelatable, intense debates, protestsetc.) and intend on being much more fun, welcoming, relevant andengaging toward our fellow students and the campus community.



ENERGY WASTE WATERBIODIVERSITY TRAVELUL C&S LOGO

Start of SemesterRecruitment Drives At the beginning of every semester the UL Environmental Society prepare and set up an extremely high quality stall at each of the Clubs and Societies’ start of semester Recruitment Drives. Over 35 different clubs and society stalls are normally present for each event so it is important to stand out to help attract members. The society constructed a 2m x 600mm timber display board to illustrate images of all of the great events that the UL Environmental Society entails to entice prospect members to call over and sign up.

Society Set Up & platform where all members areWeekly Meetings actively encouraged on a weekly basis to share their opinionsThe Environmental Society and suggestions, whether it’scommittee consists of during a group meeting or groupeight members: President/ build etc.Treasurer, Vice-President,Secretary, PRO, H&S Officer,Trips Officer, Events Officerand Green Campus CommitteeLiaison.While there are outlinedcommittee member positions,this is certainly not an overruling setup; we alwaysencourage all societymembers to lead projects theyare passionate about, and therelevant committee memberwill assist them. We organiseweekly meet ups on Mondayevenings which form the

Waste Construction UL Plastic Bottle Collector Developed as part of UL C&S SoUL Week Arts Festival 2016, our Environmental Society designed and constructed a Plastic Bottle Collector unique to UL. This fun group project was developed to raise awareness about the huge quantity of waste bottles being thrown away on campus weekly (highlighted by many of our international members!). The collector was unveiled in the SUCourtyard, where people in passing can throw in their used plastic bottle. The piece was also ondisplay at the UL Library entrance, and is now permanently located in the Red Raisins Restaurant, the biggest eating hall on campus.

SoUL Week launch at the SU Courtyard Plastic Bottle Collector As part of the SoUL Week Arts Festival, the UL Plastic Bottle Collector aims to create awareness around the theme of waste, highlighting the amount of plastic water bottles that are used and thrown away weekly on campus. We are hoping to highlight the message that we need to reuse our plastic bottles. All of the bottles collected over the week will be recycled and used in another project in the near future. This project was designed and created by the UL Environmental Society with the help of the UL C&S SoUL Arts fund and the help of the UL Green Campus Committee. If you would like to take part in similar fun projects please come along to our weekly Monday meeting at 6pm in Room AM-067, Main Building! Poster display board incorporated into design to describe project and information on how to join our society.Permanently on display at Red Raisins Restaurant

On display outside UL Library

Red Raisins Restaurant

Waste & WaterUL Water Conservation Campaign Using recycled bottles from the UL Various design layouts wereBottle Collector, the Environmental considered, and the option which was anSociety began building their next appropriate size to be displayed in mostawareness campaign installation. venues on campus was decided upon. The bottles were stuck to one another Based on figures from Irish Water, using hot glue and affixed to a sturdythe average Irish person consumes timber frame for structural support.approximately 150 litres of waterper day. This campaign piece aims The piece was unveiled on Marchto create awareness around water 22nd, to celebrate Water World Waterconservation by illustrating this Day 2017. The piece is on display at thestrikingly large volume through the entrance to the UL Library, one of thestacking of 75 2L water bottles. busiest locations on campus.

Emptying the UL Bottle Collector Processing the bottles Processing the bottles helped inspire some poster campaignsProcessing the bottles helped inspire some Development drawing poster campaigns



You Use This Much Water Each Day!SAVE WATER SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT SAVE LIFE Based On Statistics From Irish Water: This project was designed and created by the ULwww.water.ie/news/tapping-into-the-water-us/ Environmental Society with the help of the UL Green Campus Committee. If you would like to take part in similar fun projects please come along to our weekly Monday meeting at 6pm in Room AM-067, Main Building!Display board incorporated into design to describe project and information on how to join our society.On display at UL Library Entrance

Waste & Recycling ECOutureSustainable Fashion Show On Friday March 31st members of the society organised the Ecouture Fashion Show, promoting second hand clothing as an attractive and viable option to the general UL public. All of the clothing modeled was provided by local charity stores, Enable Ireland, The Edge Clothing Limerick and Lucky Lane Limerick. The event was a fantastic success with a great turn out, lots of publicity and many of items displayed being sold with profits returning to the charity stores!

ECOuture Fashion Show

Waste & Recycling UL Recycling Bin Campaign Following discussions at a monthly Green Campus meetings, the UL Environmental Society in collaboration with the UL Buildings Estates Department are currently developing designs to help develop the waste management process on campus, particularly in terms of recycling. Currently there is only one plain grey bin type used across campus on all corridors. The societyis working on doubling the amount of bins on campus to include a second bin, which will be sprayed green toclearly represent a recycling bin. This design will be rolled out on all bins across campus shortly.



Waste UL Cigarrette Ballot Bin In February 2017 we purchasedand installed a Cigarette Ballot Binoutside the library entrance which is a popular smoking area with a well known issue of cigarette butt littering. The aim of this project is to offer a fun and interactive way for people to dispose of their cigarette butts and therefore incentivise them to keep our campus clean! We also attachedsticker signs to the bin advertising out society and encouraging students to submit question ideas.



WasteRiverbank CleanupThe UL riverbank clean up was an deeper. Paul O’Connell, member ofevent organised by the society in the UL Buildings & Estates team,collaboration with the UL Kayak Club collected all rubbish bags along theand the UL Environmental committee route using one of the B&E groundsas part of the annual Team Limerick vehicles. All of the days waste wasClean Up events. Groups on foot set collected at the boat house whichout at 10am from the UL Boathouse in turn filled an entire skip. After apicking up and collecting waste all very productive few hours, the teamalong the river edge and the adjacent gathered back at the UL Boathousedrains. Members of the UL Kayak Club where there was plenty of tea andwere in the water helping collecting tasty sandwiches.anything at the waters edge and







SNmaatrtieornTraavleSl tudent Multi Media Awards As part of the National Smarter Group recording scenes for ‘Yours Skatefully’Travel Multimedia Awards 2017,members of the UL EnvironmentalSociety came together to createvarious submissions. Three groupsdecided to create videos and one groupdecided to write a song promotingvarious aspects of Smarter Travel. Entitled ‘Yours Skatefully’, onegroup highlighted skateboarding asbeing a great form of active SmarterTravel that receive very little publicityin comparison to walking and cycling:Scan the QR Code to see the Video!

The second group developed Scan the QR Code to see the Video!a beautiful animation entitled‘Smarter Travel with Billy’, aboutBilly who decides to convert tosustainable travel.

Another group created a cartoonillustrating the stress associateddriving a car using the slogan,‘Ditch The Car And Smell The Roses’: Scan the QR Code to see the Video!

A group of aspiring “Eco- Scan the QR CodeMusicians” decided to write to see the Video!a song promoting cyclingentitled “Get On Your Bike”which they submittedunder the audio category:

At the national awards 2nd Placeceremony two of thesocieties submissions Nationalwere won awards; ‘YoursSkatefully’ received first Awardplace in the video category,and ‘Smarter Travel withBilly’ received second place,also in the video category. 1st Place National Award

Energy & Travel Daily CO2UL Carbon Campaign Emitted by UL Student Drivers One of our society members who is pursuing a masters Reduce Yours;in carbon reduction suggested a society campaign toconvey how much carbon an average person may emit Travel Smartdaily. Carbon is something we all emit in some formor another. However, carbon can be something that is Brought to you by UL Environmental Societyvery difficult to imagine or represent due to it’s gaseous [email protected]. The UL Environmental Society As commuting by car is one of the biggest contributorsto carbon emissions by most people, we chose to illustratestatistics around this, which in turn might encourage somepeople to use more sustainable travel options. We decided to produce two balloon like pieces, onewhich would be a physical object at a human scale whichwe could display in various locations around campus,and one would be a poster graphic which would illustratea massive figure in a recognisable location. We chose touse a balloon-like sphere shape to comunicate the idea ofC02 being a rising gas. We chose a colour scheme of redfor both pieces to be recognisable to one another and tobe striking. For the physical object, we calculated the averagevolume of CO2 emitted by a single car commuting to ULdaily, which equated to a sphere of a 7ft diameter. After alot of research we sourced an inflatable ball online suitableto our idea. For the graphic, we calculated the average volume ofCO2 emitted by all cars commuting to campus daily, whichequates to a sphere of diameter approx 38m, which wedecided to compare to the size of the UL Entrance FlagPoles, one of the best known UL land marks.

Smarter TravelLight Up Your Life Safety Campaign The UL Environmental Society in collaboration with the UL Smarter Travel team manned a number of our main entrances as part of the Smarter Travel Campus Light Up Your Life Campaign. Hundreds of free LED lights were given to passing cyclists over the course of many evenings during the winter months.

Smarter Travel Final Poster Poster Campaign Across Campus UL Environmental Socities’Top 3 Tips For SafeCycling Campaign An issue raised by a few society members at one of our weekly meetings is that there are some unsafe cycling behaviours prevalent on campus. It was agreed that this was down to lack of information more than anything. After surveying a variety of areas on campus, a ‘top 3’ tips list was compiled and a fun poster was developed by our society members to help communicate tips for safer cycling.

Smarter TravelUL Cycle ToursOrganised in collaborationwith UL Smarter Travel and theInternational Society, we run aseries of fun campus group cycleseach semester. These trips canvary from a cycle tour of LimerickCity (given by experienced tourguide), to a picnic by the river inlocal village, Castelconnel, or tothe waterfalls of Clare Glenns.

Smarter TravelNational MarchathonStep Challenge 2017 The National Marchathon Step Challengeoccurs annually on numerous campuses acrossthe country for the month of March and is run bythe National Transport Authority. This challengeaims to encourage all staff students to get out andget walking for health, for the commute and for fun. Two weeks before the challenge occurred oursociety events officers were given a presentationby the National Transport Authority regarding tipson promoting and running large events like this. Incollaboration with the UL Smarter Travel team, wehelped to promote and encourage participation bysetting up various sign-up stalls across campus inthe lead up to the challenge, promotion by our ownsociety members’ participation in the event, andhelping run various fun activities throughout themonth, such as members of our society runninga daily lunchtime walk series. Over 120 of peoplefrom UL participated and many were successfulprize winners nationally.

Smarter Travel RSA NationalNational Road Safety Authroity AwardLeading Lights Award 2016As a result of all of the initiatives undertaken by the society in collaborationwith the UL Smarter Travel team, the University of Limerick was awarded a RoadSafety Authority (RSA) ‘Leading Lights in Road Safety’ Award. This was presentedto members of the society at an event held at Farmleigh House, Dublin.

Society TripUCC EnvironmentalSocietyUL Environmental Society Members,Donnchadh O Sullivan, Jose Dan, ManasiShetye, and Sean Collins visited UCCcampus and met Francis White(President) and Tadgh Moore(P.R.O.), members of the UCCEnvironmental Society. The grouplearned a lot from this trip in termsof society structure, event suggestionsand event planning. The groupwere also given a tour of some ofthe green facilities on campus atUCC such as the UCC Garden, wherestudents can learn to plant andgrow their own food.

Society TripCloughjordanEco VillageUL Environmental Societyvisited Cloughjordan on the9th of October where theywere given a guided tour oftheir internationally acclaimedEco Village. This villageintegrates a supportive socialenvironment with a low impactway of life. To achieve this,the village integrates variousaspects of ecological design,permaculture, ecologicalbuilding, green production,alternative energy, communitybuilding practices, amongmany other things.



MediaSocial MediaPresenceOur society runs a comprehensive socialmedia compaign over various platforms.We use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,WhatsApp and we also regularly post onthe UL Green Campus blog. InstagramFacebook Green Campus Blog

Fortnightly ArticlesAn Focal Campus NewspaperAspartofourongoingpromotionalcampaign to reach and informall of our campus community,a number of our environmentalsociety members have beensubmitting fortnightly articlesfor inclusion in the campusnewspaper, An Focal. Articlescan vary in topic, ranging fromsociety event updates, to tipsfor becoming an eco friendlystudent.

FundraisingPub QuizThe UL Environmental Society had a great turnout for their first ever fundraiser quiz night,kindly hosted by a busy Scholars bar on Thursdayevening of week 3, Semester 2. Prizes ranged fromcinema tickets, to solar power phone chargersand goodie bags kindly donated by the UL SmarterTravel team. Over 25 people participated raisedover €150 for the society. Following the awardingof prizes to the winning teams, the eveningfinished with an open mic karaoke event whichwas a fun end to a hugely successful evening.

FundraisingBake SaleOn November 30th the ULEnvironmental Societyheld a bake sale to raisefunds for some plannedsemester two events.Various yummy treatswere prepared by ourvery talented societymembers! Strategicallylocated outside theLibrary during Week 13Study Week, this sale washugely successful withalmost all items beingsold.

National Forum ofEnvironmental Socities On March 31st the UL everyone present in relation toEnvironmental Society organised new ideas about what could beand hosted the first ever forum done on their own respectivefor Environmental societies in campuses next year, but alsoIreland in the UL Library Board what we all as a collective ofRoom. Attendees came from socities should be aiming toacross the country, presenting focus on at a national level. Weeach others work and sharing aim to run this hugely beneficialideas and knowledge. This was a national event annually.hugely beneficial event to inspire The University of Limerick Environmental Society Invite You ToThe National Environmental Societies Forum 2017!EvFerneteInLculnucdhe!s Join us and a number of other Environmental related societies from across the country for a fun day of idea sharing and hands on workshops! We are hoping that all societies that attend might give a brief 10/15min Powerpoint presentation sharing their own experiences which will help everyone take home ideas on how we can all help make real change together for the better of our Environment. To register for this free event please email: [email protected] ITncrlauinndDdinUimtguLypabnr,eyClsWimeonnoItlr,Talete!,iognsefrom 12:30pm, Friday March 31st The Library Board Room, The University of Limerick