Welcome to your March newsletter
Posted on 17 March 2025
.jpg)
Sustainability Week... it's a wrap!
This year’s Sustainability Week was a showcase of the enthusiasm and commitment for sustainability across the university. A huge thank you to everyone who hosted, attended, and engaged with the week.
Sustainability Week 2025 took place from 3-7 March. Over 25 free events were organised for staff, students and alumni, with some open to the public. Highlights included the second-ever Anne Lister Sustainability Fair, a multi-sensory nature walk, campus biodiversity tour, Bug Hotel building, a public lecture on "The Psychology of (not) Eating Meat", Fruit Tree planting on Campus East, and a Sewing Repair Workshop.
Key highlights included:
- 9 lunchtime events to break up the day
- 284 bookable places offered for 10 events, plus 15 events requiring no booking
- 6 engaging nature and biodiversity themed events
Participants explored a variety of themes across all areas of sustainability, all while addressing the five key UN Sustainability Goals, aligning with our Sustainability Plan.
The week also offered a platform to engage the entire community in the University's ambitious sustainability goals, featuring a lunch time event on the Sustainability Plan and two drop-in sessions on our Energy Saving Campaign.
The Dept of Environment and Geography hosted a Seagrass seed bomb making workshop. Attendees made 1851 seed bombs which will be planted at Spurn National Nature Reserve, on the East Yorkshire coast, in early spring to encourage the meadows to thrive once again. Seagrass is an important habitat for many marine species and helps in the fight against climate change by absorbing lots of carbon dioxide from the water. Find out more here.
Your feedback
Whether or not you participated in any Sustainability Week events, your input is valuable to us. Your responses will help us shape and improve future Sustainability Week initiatives. Please let us know your thoughts on the week itself.
Being more sustainable isn’t just for Sustainability Week! Read through our newly revamped web pages to explore other actions that you can take towards living, working, and studying more sustainably.
Green Impact Audits: Student volunteers needed
SOS-UK and the University of York are offering an exciting opportunity, open to all students, where you can receive IEMA-approved training on sustainability auditing, and then put your newfound skills into practice by conducting Green Impact audits of university departments, on campus on the 7th of May.
The training will support you to develop and practice transferable employability skills including communication, teamwork, decision-making, time management, and organisation. You’ll also develop a better understanding of sustainability in the workplace and what University of York is doing to be more sustainable.
No prior experience is needed, just a willingness to try something new! After the day you will get a digital badge to demonstrate your experience. You can apply to participate by filling out this short form.
Sustainable Development Grant: applications open for Semester 2
This grant offers funding to projects or initiatives that address one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals within York. It is open to staff and students, but student-led projects are given priority access.
If you’re passionate about building a more sustainable future, delivering a Grant project is a great way to turn that passion into action and have a real impact within the university community. So, if you’ve got an idea for a new sustainability project or a way to innovate existing activities, we would love to receive your proposal.
The cut off date for each funding round this Semester are: 20 March 2025, 16 May 2025, 21 July 2025. The FAQs and the link to apply can be found on our website.
Nature on campus campaign
We are currently running a “Nature on Campus” campaign across our UoY Sustainability social media channels. This initiative is part of our Biodiversity Living Labs, which celebrates the diverse wildlife across the University of York campus. We invite staff, students, and our wider community to connect with nature by spotting and sharing their observations of campus flora and fauna.
Get involved: Submit your nature sightings to Anna Morfitt via email (anna.morfitt
Take it further: Log your sightings on the University of York’s Campus Biodiversity project on iNaturalist to contribute to real-time biodiversity data and see what others have discovered.
Green Impact workshops
This year’s teams are nearly on the home stretch, with the Project and Toolkit submission deadline looming in April. There’s still time to complete more actions, and remember there is support available via greenimpact
All team members are invited to attend (virtual) workshops on Wednesday 26th of March. This is an opportunity to meet the new SOS-UK lead Eva and get ready for submitting.
Workshop 1: Getting ready to submit for Green Impact – Toolkit
Time: 2pm – 3pm Joining Link
Workshop 2: Getting ready to submit for Green Impact – Projects
Time: 3pm – 4pm Joining Link
If you are doing the regular toolkit and a project, please feel free to attend both sessions. The purpose of these workshops is to show you how to wrap up & submit for your award, and information on preparing for your audit. As a reminder, the deadline for submission is Friday 25th of April.
Currently there are:
- 38 teams registered on the toolkit
- 831 completed actions
- 3,960 points picked up, so an average of 107 points per team.
Keep going everyone!
Sustainability events
Find out more about this month's sustainability events.
Links and further information
Don’t forget to follow UoY sustainability on social media.
You can also check out UoY Sustainability on our wordpress blog, or click the links below to find out more!
- UoY Sustainability pages
- Our Sustainability Plan 2021-2030
- Staff can join the Green Impact slack channel: #green-impact.
- Green Impact toolkit (registration code: 40238)
- Green Impact google site
- SOS-UK webinar series