We are so pleased to announce that we have been awarded 'Excellent' for our Green Impact submission for the third year in a row.
Each academic year, your Students’ Union team complete a sustainability and social responsibility programme run by Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK) to ensure that the union is always pushing to be as sustainable as possible in our operations and services. This submission is then independently audited with an accreditation awarded at the end of the process, Bucks being awarded the very highest award!
We would like to thank all the students and staff for their continued effort and involvement in sustainability and social responsibility. Without your support for the campaigns that have been run this academic year, we could not have achieved this 'Excellent' result!
Amongst the many policies, commitments and initiatives that scored highly in the assessment, some of the highlights from this year’s award include:
- The “Free Hot School Meals For All” programme which was launched to try and ensure that no family would go hungry over half term. The support received by students, staff, and the local community made this such a powerful campaign that we ended up raising thousands of pounds to help local families and even ended up on the national news.
- We donated over 400 personal hygiene products like shampoo, soap, deodorant, and period products to One Can Trust, through Beauty Bank. It’s been a huge success this year and it’s an initiative we are continuing to expand to help donate more products to local organisations.
- Tash, your Vice President Education and Welfare, working in collaboration with University staff members, in particular Emma Binnie, helped to tackle digital poverty for our members by supporting the instigation of the Bucks Allowance grant and using the learning technology grant to support students in gaining the access they need to computers and laptops.
- We launched our “Bloody Good Bucks” campaign which is a campaign tackling period poverty to help ensure that no student would have to face this issue on campus. We’ve worked closely with HeyGirlsUK to provide period products to all our members and they are a Buy1Give1 organisation so for every product we buy, they will donate one to someone in need. These free period products are now being offered in bathrooms across all 3 of our campuses and the University have agreed to fund this initiative moving forward to ensure there will always be stock for students.
This is our third consecutive year of being awarded “Excellent”. We are excited for another year of sustainability campaigns as we strive for positive change.