PORTFOLIO 2018-19
Making Real Change on Campus
SOCIETY AIMS & OBJECTIVES This society was set up in January 2016 as a forum for students to have their voice heard in regards to Environmental issues, which are turned into real actions 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 university’s Green Flag Our 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 break the typical negative perception associated with Environmental Societies (e.g. boring, not fun, unrelatable, intense debates, protests etc.) and intend on being much more fun, welcoming, relevant and engaging toward our fellow students and the campus community.
A Message From Our President ¡Hola mis amores! No one can save the earth on their own! Being able to I cannot for the life of madre work together for a cause that María believe the year the we all care so much about Environmental Society just is so awe-inspiring. There is had! This portfolio showcases still so much to do to save all of the projects and the the planet! Am Ende, I hope events that we had, both big that this portfolio shares and small. Being the president our belief that we are able to has made me so happy meeting make real positive changes. so many wonderful, amazing, and humbling individuals. Lots of Love, Christopher Asmus
ENERGY WASTE WATER BIODIVERSITY TRAVEL UL C&S LOGO
Developing a Culture UL Green Guides Our 2018 / 2019 year kicked off with our very own fully developed and designed UL Green Guides. This project originated from one of our weekly society meetings back in April 2018 whereby members made the observation that there was no single source to find out about the various sustainable facilities on campus. A suggestion was made about creating a simple document that would overview the most important facilities on campus, and in turn would develop awareness and potentially might convince people to choose more sustainable lifestyle choices; ‘Helping you help the environment!’
Following much discussion among the society members, the most important topics/items that were chosen to be included in this pocket sized leaflet were the following: • Water Conservation, • Food Sharing, • Reusable Water Bottle and Coffee cup incentives, • Waste Segregation, • Smarter Travel and • details on how to join the UL Environmental Society. The leaflet was developed by one of our society members and a member of the UL Green Campus Committee. The final leaflet design was agreed after approx. 35 revisions! The leaflet was printed on 100% Recyclable paper, and through
coordination with the UL Students Union and UL International Education Division, the leaflet was included in all new student welcome packs in September 2018 (3,500 new students), and in turn January 2019 (800 new students). Going forward, it is a resource that can be easily updated, and will be included in all start of semester welcome packs. They are also found at the main receptions to all buildings on campus. This project was nominated as the best UL Campaign and represented UL at the BICS National Awards 2019.
Waste & Recycling Waste Segregation Campaign During the summer of 2018 some of the members of the environmental society helped with the roll out of up-cycled waste segregation bins across 11 buildings on campus. The aim of the project is to have a consistent type of bins across campus. The bins provided clearly distinguishable General Waste, Recycling and Composting bins. We are hoping to roll out the same type bins in the other 9 buildings across campus in Summer 2019!
Start of Semester (Sept. 2018) Recruitment Drives At the beginning of each important to stand out to help semester the UL Environmental attract potential members. The Society coordinates a high society uses a 2m x 600mm pop quality presence at the Clubs up banner to illustrate images of and Societies’ Recruitment all of the great events that the Drives. Over 35 different clubs UL Environmental Society entails and society stalls are normally to entice people over and sign up. present for each event so it is
Committee & Weekly Meetings The Environmental Society committee consists of eight members: President, Treasurer, Vice- President, Secretary, PRO x 2, H&S Officer and Green Campus Liaison. While there are outlined committee member positions as required by the C&S guidelines, this is certainly not an over ruling setup; all society members are encouraged to lead projects they are passionate about, and the relevant committee member will assist them. Weekly meetings are held on Monday evenings at 6pm. Our society motto and aim is ‘Making Real Change On Campus’. Our society offers a platform for any individual person to be able to
propose an idea, and as a group aim to do something hands we encourage and help them on, which caters for members to make it a reality. who are more interested in making things and achieving An effort is made weekly to more immediate results. facilitate those who wish Meetings can vary from to discuss important topics lectures, to group discussions, that interest them, but also to building workshops.
Biodiversity Birdhouse Workshops Continuing on from the success of last years Birdbox building workshop, we decided to kick off both of this years semesters with new builds. There can be a lot of time spent talking at the start of a semester trying to encourage new project ideas, and while some people like discussion, a lot of people prefer to do something hands on and get instant results. Our society can suffer from this compared to other societies, as we usually start off a semester looking for ideas and suggestions, which can seem disorganised to new students, meaning they might not return. Using simple tools and techniques, the birdbox builds is a great opportunity for new members to make friends, share ideas in a relaxed setting and also develop something meaningful.
The template that the Birdboxes are Images of based on can be found on the Birdwatch Birdhouses Ireland website. These nest boxes cater erected around for Blue Tits, Great Tits, Tree Sparrows the UL campus! and House Sparrows, with the main difference between each nest box simply being the size of the entrance hole to suit each bird type. While the same template was used for all Birdboxes, each one was personalised by their respective builder using a pyro pen to engrave images and notes on the sides of the boxes so that they would be distinguishable once put up. Twenty-four new Birdboxes were built over the year, which combined with last years build totals thirty six new homes. These Birdboxes were subsequently erected safely by the UL buildings and Estates Grounds Team in appropriate locations on trees across campus.
Green Campus Assessment UL’s first full re-accreditation assessment took place on November 8th 2018, led by An Taisce’s Environmental Education Unit Director, Michael John O’Mahony. Following an address by UL’s president the re-accreditation delegation were brought on a sustainability tour of the campus. The re-accreditation delegation were met along the way by both UL staff and students who spoke about the environmental initiatives they are involved in on campus. The visit culminated in speakers representing the Green Campus Committee, Environmental Society, Environmental Committee and Buildings and Estates all giving fantastic presentations on UL’s efforts surrounding Waste, Green ICT, Biodiversity, Travel and Transport, Energy and student engagement.
As a result of all our combined efforts across campus, the University was re-accredited with the Green Flag status!
Water & Waste Designing the New Collector The new improved bottle collector UL Bottle Collector In 2016 our Environmental Society designed and constructed a Plastic Bottle Collector unique to UL. This project originated from one of our first ever weekly society meetings whereby a new member (also new to the campus) made the observation that UL, and Ireland in general, has a very bad culture of buying bottled water in enormous quantities. This in turn meaning there is huge plastic waste being generated and thrown out.
Following some discussion, our society agreed that the best way to try reduce and eliminate this plastic waste was to encourage the installation of water re fill fountains/ stations in all buildings across campus, which at the time most buildings were lacking. However, the society did not have a budget for such a large project, or have much influence in general to inform such a large change to be made on campus. The decision was made to make a large visual piece which could be moved to various locations across campus. The aim was for the piece to collect plastic bottles and in turn illustrate the quantities of plastic waste
Plastic Bottle Collector on New Collector fits in the Lift! dispbleaiyngoudtusimdepethdedUaLilLyi,brarisying awareness and proving the issue exists. It was designed to be the size of a human, to be clearly visible and striking. The piece was designed to be made on a shoe string budget. The society constructed the piece over a few evenings using simple tools and construction techniques- screwing 2x1 timbers latts together and stapling on chicken wire. The piece has been rolled out across campus in various external and internal locations over the course of the past few years. A new improved model was designed and constructed in September 2018 in advance of the Green Campus re accreditation visit. The piece is now permanently on display in the main food hall on campus.
Green Campus Display - November 2019
This project has been a huge success in that it inspired our Students’ Union to invest in two new state of the art bottle refill stations in 2017 which count the amount of bottles you save. Water fountain located in the Students Union. The counter increases by the hundreds weekly!
These fountains have in turn been so successful that the new library installed 4 new refill stations in December 2018, and recently the University has now committed to installing approx. 38 refill stations to facilitate all buildings on campus. The success of the project has been documented online and has been presented by our society members at conferences, which in turn has inspired other campuses across the country to conduct similar campaigns, such as Maynooth University. The UL Environmental Society were
also invited by Team Limerick New Society Handrill! Cleanup group, an annual county and national clean up event at Easter, to erect replica waste collectors to help promote the TLC event this year. Here, the team met Irish rugby legend Paul O’Connell and also J.P. McManus. The TLC group sponsored the society with a new €100 handrill in return!
Pictured: J.P. McManus and Paul O’Connell
Our society motto and aim is ‘Making Real Change On Campus’. Our society offers a platform for any individual person to be able to propose an idea, and as a group we encourage and help them to make it a reality. While this project started out as a David versus Goliath mission, it developed into something amazing, making real change in a fun, peaceful and emphatic way, not just on our campus, but it has inspired the start of real change 1st Place on other campuses also. National Award In April 2019 we submitted this project in the BICS Awards under the Green Category and it won first place, which was a society first!
Water & Waste Refill Station Audit Based on the success of the UL Bottle Collector project and the planned roll out of new water bottle refill stations across campus, the society decided to use one of our weekly meeting to help define the locations of some of the new refill stations. The group split up and walked around campus, auditing and noting the locations plus conditions of existing stations across campus. This list noted which stations were in good condition, which needed to be replaced, and also potential locations near main entrances to buildings that would be good potential new locations.
Smarter Travel Light Up Your Life Campaign On October 25th, 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 to promote road safety. We submitted the campaign into the National Smarter Travel Media Awards in February and were shortlisted in top 3!
Culture Change that would require help to implement. Topics that were Meeting with the discussed included Meat UL President Free Mondays, a permanent UL Happy Market Space and In December 2018, society a Culture Change Project. members Christopher, Melonie, Lena, and Rachael organised to meet with UL President Professor Desmond Fitzgerald to discuss ideas and projects
Green Campus Network Meeting On February 7th 2019, members of the UL Environmental Society attended the Green Campus Network Meeting in Dublin. Different colleges and organizations made presentations on their environmental initiatives including our very own, Sean Collins, who spoke about his experience with the UL Environmental Society entitled ‘Fostering Student Engagement’.
Society Nights In Movie Night On Monday night, February 11th, our group watched the ‘Bee Movie’ with some free pizza for attendees. The movie centres around a plot based on Bee Conservation, and encourages us to accept the people who don’t care about sustainability and shows the value of forgiving mistakes.
Educational In the crèche, we talked to the kids about nature to help UL Silver Apples ignite their interest in all things Crèche Visit natural and environmental. We did this by singing a song about the seasons, asking them what they already knew about nature and playing games.
Charity WEEK 6 - Charity/R&G Week Clothes Donation “Get rid of your unwated clothes for Bank a good cause” We asked staff and students to We are asking donations of students come and donate any clothes clothes so that we can donate them. that they didn’t need/want any It’s an all week event and they can more into a large collection bag in Red Raisins cafe during leave their clothes in red raisins. Charity/Raise & Give Week (week 6 of semester 2). All the clothes were collected at the end of the week and donated to Claire’s Wish! This was done to create awareness about up- cycling clothing. Donation bag displayed in Red Raisins
Biodiversity Nature Walk We participated in a lunchtime nature walk on March 25th with local nature expert Sean Hartigan. There was a big turn out (approx 40 people), with a mix of staff, students and society members. We started at the PESS Building and we walked the route down stream towards Dromroe village, seeing various birds, bees, wildlife and fauna.
Guest Speaker Nancy’s second visit was about her time spent in Mexico. She went into Nancy Serrrano great detail with a presentation about her project which centred Guest speaker, Nancy Serrano, on helping the indigenous people a former member of the society from southern Mexico make edible years ago came to visit our school gardens. It was really society to present on two inspiring and informative. different occasions. For the first presentation, Nancy told us all about her time in the old UL society from the ‘90s before they disbanded, illustrating the initiatives and events they held. This inspiring presentation was very relatable to some projects our current society recently ran, and illustrated that while almost 20 years have gone by, the sustainability struggle is still as prevalent as ever.
Energy Conservation Pedal Power How much energy does watching a movie require? On March 29th, we encouraged society members, students, staff and spectators to cycle 6 different bikes to power a cycle cinema, allowing for people to hop on and off, while maintaining a speed to power a David Attenborough ‘Planet Earth’ documentary. People were incentivised to cycle as participants were put in a raffle to receive a 7euro lunch voucher for The Stables. There was also a pull up banner on display showing how much electricity was needed to generate items ranging in various scale, such as a phone charger all the way up to a plane.
This was sponsored by Pedal Energy, Limerick City and County Council and supported by The Stables Club for their space and sponsorship vouchers.
Renewable Fashion hand shops and buying anything that caught our eye! Thrift Shop Crawl The reason behind this project was to try and encourage more One of the biggest issues that we people to buy second hand discussed again this year was the and extend the life of clothes! effects of the fashion industries. On March 28th, one of our projects was a thrift shop crawl around Limerick City visiting second
Renewable Fashion Repair Cafe Tuesday, March 26th, we held repair café at Red Raisins from about 11:00AM to 4:00PM. The purpose of the Repair Cafe was to fix up students clothes that would otherwise just be thrown away and gotten rid of, so that the life cycle of the torn up clothes would be extended and not to create more waste. This cafe was in collaboration with the UL Crafts Society.
Waste, Water 1st Place & Biodiversity National Riverbank Cleanup Award Saturday, March 30th, the Environmental Society helped out with the yearly riverbank clean-up which is organised by the UL Environmental Committee in collaboration with the UL Kayak Club. At least 100 people showed up to help out! After the clean-up, both the Environmental Society and the Kayaking Society were awarded 600 euro as the event was runner up for the Waters and Communities Award under the National Tidy Towns.
Waste UL Happy Market Another hugely popular event was the UL Happy Market. This market was set up towards the end of both semesters to help students leaving campus to sell unwanted clothes, books and other items, extending their life instead of throwing them away. This event also helped to raise funds for the society.
Smarter Travel Marchathon 2019 The Marchathon Step Challenge occurs annually across the country for the month of March and is run by the National Transport Authority. This challenge aims to encourage all staff and students to get out and get walking for health, for the commute and for fun. In collaboration with the UL Smarter Travel team, we helped to promote and encourage participation by setting up various sign-up stalls across campus in the lead up to the challenge and helping out with lunch-time walks! Over 200 people from UL participated and many were successful prize winners nationally.
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