SusThingsOut's story
SusThingsOut is digital magazine co-created by students and staff at The University of Worcester. It shares stories of how students and staff are taking action across curriculum, community and campus to combat climate change and its impacts by 2030 and embed the Sustainable Development Goals. Its tag line is Change Today to Protect Tomorrow.
SusThingsOut recycling project supports organisations that are challenged in terms of resources and funding, to explore environmental management. This allows them to look into how they can improve their environmental performance and sustainability as an organisation.
In practice, as part of a pilot scheme SusThingsOut have visited Oldbury Park Primary RSA Academy, to help pupils produce drawings of typical recyclable and non-recyclable items for posters, informing people of the rules around recycling. Hollymount School also took part in the project, designing their own posters for display at home. The schoolchildren at both schools were then asked to use the posters to help them to record the number of full bags of recycling collected, and keep an eye on contamination. The two schools, and year groups, competed to see who could recycle the most.
The pilot scheme was run with partners, social housing organisation, Platform Housing, along with support from facilities management consultancy firm, Sitemark, and Worcester City Council. As part of the pilot, each pupil's family also received a re-useable recycling bag, printed with clear recycling instructions. The Council has been measuring whether the scheme affected local levels of recycling, following the distribution of the recycling bags. The initiative was partly funded using some of the £15,000 won by Worcester University in a national recycling competition run by SOS UK, on behalf of the National Union of Students, and funded by Coca-Cola. It is hoped that the knowledge gained from this pilot will be taken forward into further recycling schemes.
Useful learnings from SusThingsOut
Reach out to other organisations, ask for advice and share your knowledge.
SusThingsOut metrics
Community engagement.
