1 matt taylor. project officer. adapt commercial. uea lfhe green champions in hei’s and carbon...

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Matt Taylor. Project Officer. Adapt Commercial. UEALFHE Green Champions in HEI’s and carbon reduction strategy

Trev Shields. Sustainability & Environmental Advisor. University of BirminghamCase study

Dawn White. Environmental Officer City University LondonCase study

John Bailey. Environmental Manager. University of LondonLeading Green Champions at Greenwich and the University of London.

WorkshopPositive recipes for Green Champion success

http://www.adaptcommercial.co.uk/AdaptC/case-study-greenteams.xhtml

Green Champions: Do different types have different needs?Green Champions place in an HEI carbon reduction strategy

Background


Project aims and objectives: Determine individual levels of ‘Green Champion’ activity and influence on pro-environmental behaviour change, as an effective means of reducing carbon within their university.

•Define the role of ‘Green Champion’

•Determine levels of influence and involvement?

•Determine limits or organisational barriers to their activity?

•Monitoring, measuring and evaluating green champion activity


Literature review

‘despite a general rise in the use of Green Champion schemes to promote a ‘bottom-up’ approach to carbon reduction, there remains a very limited amount of research on the role of these designated ‘Champions’, and particularly outside the private sector.

Encouraging behaviour change in businesses is closely linked to cost savings, commercial reputation and gaining an edge over competitors, therefore the current literature on Green Champions may not be representative of Green Champions approaches in other sectors, such as in HEI’s’


Methodology

•Interview Campaign managers for HEI case studies (UoB, UEA and CUL)

•Questionnaires sent to participating Green Champions

•Focus groups undertaken

•Analysis


Four common themes emerged that we consider represent the main roles played by the Green Champions

•Role Model

•Educator

•Facilitator

•Coordinator

Findings: Green Champion roles


Role Model:

“I think it’s showing by example as well, as there is only so much you can influence people to do things by telling them to do it. But a lot of things are done because I do them, because if I don’t no one else will.”



Educator:

“We need to reach the people who still don’t see how they impact on the environment, how they can make a difference and why they should.”

“to go a step further than just reducing my own environmental footprint, I want to promote sustainability issues amongst staff and students through direction action and communication.”



Facilitator:

“I’m trying to make it easier for them.”

“I think in terms of bringing it together but not actually doing it yourself.”



Coordinator:

“Working as a coordinator and a point of contact, in our place its having someone people feel they can feed ideas to and pass them up the chain to see if something can be implemented.”

“I get the energy reports, I send them onto the other buildings and ask for an explanation of why it might have gone up or down, I then get feedback which I can then take back to the Sustainability Task Group.”



Findings: Value of monitoring as a facilitator:

Participants agreed there was a need for monitoring of their activities because:

•gave structure to their activities•provided evaluation of what works and what doesn’t•set measurable targets, •gives visibility to activities.

•access to data or evidence about impacts of activities increased credibility• increases confidence in promoting green practice •increases leverage in putting greener cases to senior staff.


Findings: Value of monitoring as a barrier: Participants considered there was a lack of benchmarking to create uniformity through HEI departments

Single measure/metric could distort achievements (a false sense of failure) e.g. a metric in an IT department, may not be so useful for the library.

Abstract nature of Green Champion activities in promoting environmental awareness and the difficulties involved in attributing specific carbon savings to their actions


Findings: Factors assisting perceived success

•Management Support

•Incentives

•Formal Acknowledgement

•Formalisation of the Role and Scheme

•Involvement in Decision-making


Findings: Factors absent or hindering perceived success

•Voluntarism

•Lack of Management Support

•Lack of Advice or Training

•Lack of Communication and conflicting messages within Green Champion Networks

•University Culture


Findings: Green Champion types.

Focus groups identified a number of key factors that were perceived as critical in either facilitating or hindering success and experienced in different combinations and to varying degrees by differing Green Champions.

Reading across all of the variables, we found that we could categorise our sample in four distinct groups

Importantly, we found that different types of Green Champion co-existed even within the same University.


Conclusions

The efficacy of a Green Champion campaign and its place in an HEI’s carbon reduction strategy was dependent upon five key factors;

•Formality of the role•Proximity to monitoring•Coordination•University culture•Green Champion type


Role model

Educator

Facilitator

Coordinator

Conclusions

Not everyone is Robin


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UB ‘Champions’

Formal Level

Task Group, Facilities Managers, College carbon plans, bespoke initiatives eg fridges or fume cupboards

Behaviour change as part of CMIP

Grass roots level - Green Impacts Awards

Variety of champions & roles

Top 10 mistakes in behaviour change - solutions

Focus on action not avoidance

Seek tiny successes one after another

No behaviour happens without a trigger

Success? Contribution to 19.7% reduction?

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Eco Points Scheme

How to earn pointsIdeas & suggestions

Volunteering

Green actions within department

Local communications

Meetings, committees, presentations

Green Impact

Recruiting new Champions

Leading on events or campaigns

Appraisals

Ideas that get rolled out across University

Personal ‘green’ achievements

Link it to University objectives

Leader board

Prizes & awards

1 matt taylor. project officer. adapt commercial. uea lfhe green champions in hei’s and carbon...

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