Our Carbon Action Plan (CAP)

Planning our response to the Climate Emergency starts by exploring our impacts. These impacts are used to inform our action plan.

Loughborough University embraces its responsibility to create a more sustainable planet for the future and we seek to embed sustainability in everything we do cultivating socially responsible students, staff, alumni, and partners. The University Strategy “Creating Better Futures. Together” puts Sustainability and addressing Climate Change and Net Zero at the heart of the University’s agenda to 2030.

As a central professional service to the Loughborough campus we see ourselves as having an important role in supporting this agenda and encouraging others, through changing behaviour and the development of new habits.

Our impacts

For most, energy use and the associated emissions generate the most carbon emissions, making savings here can have a significant impact on our carbon emissions as a whole. This section explores what we are doing to reduce the carbon we emit through energy use, from looking at staff behaviour and building use through to equipment owned and used.

We commit to making our staff and students more aware of the energy they are using on campus

We commit to raise awareness of  the environmental impact of printing both in terms of energy usage and the consumption of paper and ink.

We commit to reducing the energy use in the building we occupy

We commit to identifying what can and can’t be switched off, ensuring it is switched off and proving the reductions can make a huge difference and give people confidence to switch off. We commit to switching off as much as we can at the end of every day and over the weekend/holidays.

We commit to sharing ideas on how we can improve our building

We commit to keep highlighting to E&FM (and lobbying where needed) improvements that we believe will improve the impact our building has on the carbon footprint of campus. Improvements we have successfully campaigned for include:

  • updated energy efficient air conditioning units for our print machinery
  • a new loading bay shutter that can stay closed more retaining heat
  • new LED lights throughout

 

The way we choose to travel has a significant impact on our scope 3 emissions. Travel, both business and commuting, makes up around 14,000 tonnes of the University’s carbon emissions. In this section we explore our travel related emissions  and identify where we can make savings, as well as provide guidance to inspire others to make more efficient travel choices.

We will raise awareness of sustainable travel choices

We commit to reducing the amount of times our vans drive across campus by consolidating our deliveries and reducing down to a morning and an afternoon schedule only.

We will reduce our business related travel emissions

We commit to reducing the amount of off-site travel that we do, favouring online attendance at events where practical. We commit to producing printed output in-house rather than outsourcing reducing deliveries to campus

We will reduce our procurement business travel related emissions

We commit to reducing our stock catalogue to increase the opportunity to bulk buy, reducing the deliveries to campus

We will raise awareness of the impact of parcel deliveries

We commit to raising awareness of sustainable shopping methods to encourage the reduction of parcel deliveries to campus

What we use and how we use it can have a significant impact on our emissions. Everything has a carbon footprint, from the materials it is made from, where it is made, how it is transported, how it is used and how it is disposed of. By considering what we already have, what we actually need and how we dispose of things we no longer need we could make a significant impact on not only our own campus emissions, but global emissions too.

This section details our commitments to making better purchasing choices, how we manage our waste on a daily basis to achieve better outcomes and how we guide others to do the same.

We will make more considered purchasing decisions

We commit to reducing the variety of products we use in our services, primarily buying sustainable medias and materials. We commit to challenging customers requests to ensure they only purchase from us what they really need. We commit to introducing new services using sustainable media and materials.

We will improve how we manage our waste

We commit to re-using and recycling media and materials wherever possible, particularly on the introduction of new services. We commit to managing our waste, ensuring it is sorted and cleansed appropriately. We commit to recycling toner cartridges through a qualified supplier and destroying all hazardous waste through University approved processes.

We will work to the Event sustainability management system (ESMS) 

We commit to ensuring that signage and publicity materials that are produced in support of events are produced on sustainable media and materials wherever possible and supporting teams that organise events to keep printed collateral to a minimum.

We commit to encouraging colleagues from across campus to reduce the use of event giveaways, or where essential to the activity, encoyuraging them in the appropriate procurement of event giveaways.

We will utilise our in house Procurement Team to support better decisions and make our purchasing more sustainable

We commit to using mandatory suppliers and will support procurement colleagues in advertising these contracts

We will drive and support campus activities that encourage our students to choose to re-use

We support the campus Give & Go and Choose to Re-use campaigns for the collection of items to be re-used. 

We introduced the Jog On partnership to the Loughborough campus.

JogOn is a social enterprise whose mission it is to get 1 million pairs of sports shoes out of landfill. A JogOn collection bin is now located in the Herbert Manzoni Building foyer, where you can simply drop your old shoes in, and we’ll arrange for the collection to be boxed up and sent in one delivery to JogOn for sorting and distribution. 

By knowing the facts and leading by example we can develop a culture of good sustainable practice. The University offers a wealth of information and is increasing the training opportunities that everyone can take advantage of.

We have developed the following actions to further develop our teams knowledge and to share our messages to others.

We will showcase actions that demonstrate a link to  the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)

We commit to ensuring that our website and services increasingly indicate our fit to the United Nation’s SDGs, to support the University's target to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

We will all do something

We commit to enabling all team members the opportunity to learn about sustainability, the University's journey to Net Zero and what we can individually do to support the strategic aims.

We will raise awareness of sustainability

We commit to contributing to the University achieving net zero through raising awareness of sustainable procurement for print and better decision making when planning print output.

We commit to raising awareness of opportunities for re-use of materials already on campus.

We will make a unique contribution to improving sustainability and achieving net zero

We commit to supporting all print and post procurement decisions to ensure sustainability compliance as much as possible.

We commit to providing the University with data and stats that indicate print usage, highlighting areas of low, high and reducing usage.