News

94.53% of respondents said they’re concerned with environmental issues, whilst 87.43% said they believed they had a direct impact on their lives. These stats were slightly up on last year’s data, which came in at 91.09% and 85.86% respectively.

Almost two thirds of respondents (61.4%) stated that Covid-19 had changed their perceptions of sustainability, with many elaborating to say that the pandemic had shown how changes to their habits could contribute to achieving sustainability globally.

One respondent said:

“Seeing that some areas of the environment can experience benefits, even in a short period of human activity reduction, gives me hope that if enough people come together with a common aim, we might be able to see observable positive differences within our lifetimes.”

Your priorities

The survey results showed that the three sustainability areas most favoured by students are plastic reduction, waste reduction and responsible sourcing. Meanwhile, almost half expressed an interest in sustainable energy consumption.

Your awareness 

While many of you reported being familiar with the Plastic Free 2023 campaign, Climate Week and Leave Leeds Tidy, 28.03% of respondents reported not being familiar with any of our sustainability initiatives. We want to change that.

With almost 45% of respondents feeling that they aren’t well informed about LUU’s sustainability efforts, we’ve taken note of how you want to be kept in the loop – namely the newsletter (you can sign up here) and Instagram.

Here at LUU we’re committed to continually working to improve things for our students and the world around us. While it’s been a year like no other, our work to ensure LUU’s environmental sustainability hasn’t stopped.

To keep you up to date on what we’re doing, we’ve outlined our current actions and initiatives to tackle the issues that matter to you.

Plastic Use

• In partnership with the University, we’ve pledged to be Plastic Free by 2023. We are continually working to remove single-use plastics from our operations across the board to meet this target. Some of the ways we’re working towards this goal include:
• Using no single-use plastic at Scream, our ice cream parlour.
• Asking our clothing suppliers to never wrap items of clothing individually.
• Minimising the plastic used to package incoming stock for our retail outlets.

Waste

• Waste bins in the LUU building are segregated to facilitate recycling and help visitors get rid of their rubbish properly.
• We have intensive systems in place to reduce wastage of perishable goods.
• When food is no longer sellable but still edible we donate as much as we can to local charities like Rainbow Junktion.

Sourcing and procurement

• Scream was developed with sustainability in mind: our ice cream is sourced from Yorvale, a York-based farm that uses solar power and an adiabatic water recycling system in its production, as well as having plastic and cardboard recycling at the centre of its operations. Its nearby location also cuts down on the distance products are shipped before reaching us here in Leeds.
• We’re also providing more Fairtrade options at our outlets. Co-op was the first UK supermarket to sell Fairtrade products at all of their stores (including the one in our building), and they’re dedicated to improving the sustainability of their products. But it’s not only Co-op – you’ll also find Fairtrade lines at Gear and our cafés.
• Many products available at LUU are from NUS Suppliers, who have gone through a rigorous assessment and verification process to ensure their sustainability and ethics.
• Beyond this, ethics and sustainability considerations are an integral part of all our procurement processes.
• We source locally wherever we can to reduce the environmental impact of our supply chain.

Energy

• Building management systems are utilised to help ensure the Union building only uses as much energy as it needs.
• Intelligent lighting systems are in place to ensure lights are turned off when rooms aren’t being used, and wherever this isn’t possible reminders are in place to encourage staff and students to turn them off.
• We are also carrying out a  phased replacement of the building’s light bulbs with LED alternatives to use less energy for our lighting.

Travel

• There are several active policies to improve the sustainability of travel, including lobbying the city of Leeds to make roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
• Focusing on staff travel, we also have policies in place to encourage and support cycling, and to incentivise the use of public transport over cars for work travel purposes.

All of this is supplemented by the Exec’s continuous work to make LUU greener. From setting up our first ever Climate Week, packed full of awareness-raising and thought-provoking events, to the establishment of a student Sustainability Advisory Board and work towards a new Sustainability Strategy for LUU, our student leaders are always looking for more ways to improve our environmental efforts.

Our survey has already helped us gather some great ideas for how students think we could be more sustainable, including providing more information covering what we’re doing and how you can get involved, as well as removing non plant-based food options, doing more to cut down plastic from our retailers, and providing incentives for sustainable actions.

Think we could be doing more? You can register your interest for the Board or submit an idea for how to make things better to our Political Engagement Team. It might just become a reality.