Students driving change

Almost half of 18-24 year olds now choose environmental issues as one of their 3 most pressing concerns for the nation (YouGov 2019) and young people list climate change and environment as the most serious issue affecting the world today (Global Shapers report 2017).

So it is no surprise that 89% of UoG students are telling us they expect to see action on sustainability as part of their university experience (NUS survey 2019) – and internationally this figure is even higher at 91%! (NUS international survey 2018). Find out what happens for sustainability in university life here.

What are students saying about sustainability?

67% would willingly be paid £1000 less a year if the company they worked for had a good environmental and ethical record (NUS/HEA surveys 2010-2015)

 

What are young professionals saying?

  • 86% of millennials would stay at a company longer if it reports on how it reduces its impact on the environment (BRITA Professionals 2019)
  • 91% of young leaders believe we can still create the climate we want, but 95% think that businesses are still not doing enough to tackle climate change (Interface 2017)

What are the big student organisations doing?

In the UK, the National Union of Students and the student-led organisation, People and Planet, are the big players driving change for sustainability and have been committed to this agenda over the long term.

NUS
The NUS sustainability charity SOS-UK has a large team working on a range of sustainability change programmes for universities, colleges and workplaces, nationally and internationally. This includes the United Nations award winning Green Impact programme and grassroots projects such as Student Eats for students to grow and sell food on campus. They also lead a number of national system change campaigns including ‘Teach the Future’– a joint campaign with the UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) to repurpose the English education system around the climate and ecological crisis; ‘Carbon Targets‘ a campaign to get universities and colleges to commit to and deliver ambitious targets to tackle the climate crisis; and ‘Mock COP‘ – a global youth-led campaign to fill the void of the postponed COP26 climate talks. Find out more here.

 

People and Planet

People and Planet run a range of student-led campaigns pushing universities to have greater impact for sustainability on high profile issues like pulling investments out of the fossil fuel industry and improving human rights in their supply chains. People and Planet also run the only comprehensive and independent league table of all UK universities, ranking them on their environmental and ethical performance.

Our University is proud to have been a pioneer for change on this agenda and we’ve been in the top run of every run of the league table since it began in 2007 – take a look at our current story here.

 

World Student Community for Sustainable Development

Across the globe, the World Student Community for Sustainable Development facilitates collaboration and information exchange, offers multi-disciplinary and international opportunities, and run global projects to foster student participation in sustainable development. Find out more here.