College Recognised for Sustainable Practices

20 July 2022

Trinity College has been recognised by the University for its efforts to make college a more sustainable place to live and work with a Green Impact Gold award.

In this year’s Green Impact 2022 programme, the College was recognised for its work promoting sustainable practices and promoting environmental awareness with a Gold award – one of just three colleges to feature in this year’s list of gold (or beyond) award-holders.

The Oxford University Environmental Sustainability team’s Green Impact awards is an environmental engagement scheme in which staff and students come together in teams to make their workplaces more sustainable.

The college’s submission to the scheme highlighted the many ways in which sustainability and environmental awareness are being embedded in college life, reflecting the values of students, staff and college leadership. The college kitchen prioritises sourcing local and seasonal food whenever possible, offering a range of vegetarian and vegan menu items, using Fairtrade ingredients and reducing food preparation waste. The college’s grounds and buildings – particularly the design for its Levine Building – are being adapted to promote biodiversity and reduce the college’s environmental footprint by the use of energy-saving devices and controls, and monitoring energy use carefully.

Lynne Adam, Trinity’s Domestic Bursar, says of the award: ‘As a college, our students, staff and management team all feel strongly about the need to have a positive footprint on our environment and do what we can to operate sustainably. This award recognises how so many teams across college have worked to put our values into practice, from our food supply chains and waste management to the energy efficiency in our buildings and how we manage the grounds in college and our other properties. We are now very heavily focused on tracking our impact on our operations and their impact on the environment through the use of data; we are hopeful this will help us align with the University’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2035.’