19/04/2024
The politics of time with Carolyn Smith
Green Impact is the University's environmental accreditation scheme. It supports and encourages departments and colleges across the University in reducing their environmental impacts.
Wolfson has a strong history at the awards: and this year’s Platinum follows three previous Gold awards and an Excellence Award last academic year for the creation of the Wolfson Living Lab.
The award is a much-deserved outcome of the hard work of Wolfson’s Green Impact Team, led by Head Gardener Oscar Holgate, alongside Laura Jeffrey in the Library, Emeritus Fellow Dr Steve Hoath, Food Services Manager, Charles Correa, as well as many others across the College, putting sustainability at the heart of what we do.
“Wolfson College staff have pooled their efforts well,” said Steve, “fulfilling our vow from 2020 to achieve this. Let’s get another even better delivery next time!”
Charlie Barty-King, former Green Officer and a driving force behind the College’s Interdisciplinary Sustainability & Conservation Hub, was equally thrilled:
"Oscar, Steve and team have worked incredibly hard this year to finally push Wolfson College to achieve a Platinum Award at the Cambridge Green Impact Challenge," he says, "it’s so exciting to have finally achieved the Platinum Award. It shows the efforts of the Wolfson Sustainability & Conservation Hub, as well as the student Green Officers who came before, are really starting to bear fruit as we act to accelerate Wolfson College’s movement towards increasing sustainability and regeneration. We are so lucky to have Oscar, as Wolfson's Head Gardener, leading the Green Impact Team! Well done all!”
Exciting plans for the future
One of the student auditors of the awards praised the Wolfson team as “enthusiastic and committed to achieving sustainable outcomes across college life,” while pointing out that the College has “exciting plans for the future, as well as having made many important changes already.”
The team are already looking to take Wolfson to even greater heights for sustainability:
“I am proud of the huge effort the team put in to get us the Platinum Award,” said Oscar. “I am looking forward to the next twelve months when we can grow on what we’ve done. We want to achieve even more changes that will benefit more staff and students and visitors. It’s a huge step to encouraging more and more people to make better lifestyle changes.”
The impacts have been reflected across the College too, as Laura attests:
“As a new member of the Green Impact Team, it has been a fantastic motivation to improve our working practices in the Library. It has been a team effort, which means that all departments and students need to work together to achieve the award at this level. It reflects consensus across the college that we are eager to embed sustainability in all that we do both now and, most importantly, going forward.”
You can find out more about sustainability at Wolfson on our Environment and Sustainability page, and learn more about the Sustainability & Conservation Hub on their homepage.
