The Green Rangers

June 15 marks the launch of National Clean Air Day and the sustainability team held an open air mindfulness session that was a nice break from the stress of work. Taking 30 minutes of your time to focus your attention inwards was a nice retreat from the demands of the outside world.

Make a pledge on how you can reduce your air pollution - whether it's walking or cycling instead of taking the bus, turning off your engine when idle, or even just raising awareness. Every little thing you do can make a big difference.


Joey and I really enjoyed the meditation and will definitely be looking out for similar events!

On the 25 May the sustainability team hosted the Green Impact awards. The whole marketing team came out to the event that saw the Green Rangers pick up a number of awards including the gold award for completing all criteria, a special award for best environmental improvement, and a special award for me (Kara) for environmental hero.

We'll display our awards with pride and hope to add to them next year and the year after that. We loved the unique prize of a hand-made cardboard ceramic made using coffee cup sleeves by The Cass graduate Ray Gonzalez Brown.

Green Impact is over for another year but that doesn't mean we're putting our Earth saving duties on hold until 2018. We've still got lots to do; plants to grow, paper to recycle and energy to save!

Over the summer we'll be going through and completing criteria we never got around to doing. This includes taking part in the guided walks, holding a sustainable talk or debate and more community involvement.

First thing's first. We need to learn how to ride a bicycle!

Last week I returned from holiday to discover I’d won a fruit diffusing water bottle, a very good start back! I was lucky enough to be chosen as a winner of the London Met Water Month Quiz. I’m still not entirely sure of the correct answer to the question 'How many toilets are there are in the Holloway building?' But it turns out my guess must have been close enough! To say I was excited was an understatement (as you can see in the pic above). I have many fruit / water combinations in mind.

It’s great to see the University making such a positive contribution by drawing attention to and changing attitudes towards green issues. Using a reusable water bottle may sound like a small thing, but it’s these little things that will untimely go on to change our planet. It matters because the average UK households use 480 plastic bottles on average every year, and only 270 of them are recycled, meaning 44% are not!*

Thinking about recycling, the launch of the London Met Travel Cups is another thing the Green Rangers are really excited about at the moment. You can buy in campus from Costa and Starbucks Outlets - Moorgate, Blue Met and Learning Centre for a very reasonable £3.50 each. We love them because they mean we can use less paper coffee cups and make a positive contribution to reducing paper waste. Using them also means we get 30p off on all hot drinks, who says going good doesn’t pay!

 *RecycleNow

Ambreen

A few months back we decided to ditch meat every Monday and go veggie!

Hasnai, who took part every Monday, said "Meat free Mondays has been cleansing for my mind and body, and I feel like it's really brought us together because we all discussed what we had for lunch. I loved it and will carry on doing it!"

Cutting meat back - even just a day - reduces your carbon footprint.

We all need more veg in our life.

For more information and recipes, check out meatfreemonday.com

The Green Rangers' Fairtrade bake-off week is over and what a week it was!

Monday

Demetria kicked off the week with a wonderful banana cake that really set the bar high. Demetria used Fairtrade bananas and sugar products in her bake.

Tuesday

We were treated with two bakes on Tuesday - Hasnai baked a carrot cake using Fairtrade brown sugar and icing sugar.

Karl gave the bake a go and made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate "icing" using Fairtrade chocolate and sugar.

Wednesday

Beth made a ginger cake using Fairtrade icing sugar and dark brown muscovado sugar.

Thursday

Friday

I chose Friday as my bake day (it's Kara by the way). I found it hard to find Fairtrade products in a little Tesco but managed to find golden caster sugar and Fairtrade coffee at home for my coffee and walnut cake.

And Joey amazed all with her Irish-themed apple cake in honour of St Paddy's next week. Joey used Fairtrade sugar and apples in her bake!


We all chose not to vote on the best cake, but to enjoy and congratulate everyone's baking efforts.

We chose this week for our bake-off to mark the end of Fairtrade Fortnight and Green Week.

There's even talk of extended the baking through to next week - so watch this space!

The latest issue of Glamour has given the Green Rangers a great way to save the planet without having to do a single thing... well one thing -- but it's tiny!

All you have to do is download the Chrome extension Earth Mode; it tracks your carbon footprint and the people at Johnie Walker pledge to plant a tree to neutralise the carbon footprint produced from your internetting.

Me and two members of Towering Infernos in the greenhouse. Photo by Zanda.

London Met's gardening club is back and ready for green fingered staff and students to help grow those greens! I've been counting down the months, waiting for the danger of frost to end to start planting. Pictured above is the very spacious greenhouse on the roof of London Met, the new home of my two budding butternut squash plants.

Here's to another year of lots of uni-grown produce!

For tips on growing your fruit, veg and herbs, check out the Royal Horticultural Society website!

We visited the Sustainability Team's water stall at The Junction on Tuesday where we took part in a quiz, got some freebies, and made a pledge to save water!

I pledged to finally buy a water butt for the garden. It'll collect rain water from the gutter and store it ready for when I need to water the garden in the summer months. Did you know, a massive 30,000 million litres of water can be saved if every house in the UK used a water butt!

Karl pledged to use the free four-minute shower timer. The Energy Saving Trust have calculated a saving of around £30 in energy and water bills, just by knocking off a minute of your shower time!
What do you pledge to do to save water?

Kara

• It’s amazing what you can freeze - if you haven’t used up fresh fruit or vegetables in a few days, then cut it up and freeze it (prior to this I experimented with freezing whole peppers and bananas, not as easy to defrost). I must thank my dad here who has demonstrated that you can successfully freeze and defrost almost anything – growing up this included bottles of milk, loaves of bread, cooked meat, rice and lots more!

• When eating out, take home any left-over food you can’t finish - and yes I have had some strange looks from waiters when I request they pack a small amount, but the alternative is that it gets thrown away. Also useful are friends with bigger appetites who can help you out :)

• Creative recipes – when you notice an item in your fridge has a danger of being wasted, look up recipes using this ingredient. It’s amazing how this can mix up your meal choices. Granted some of my creative cooking attempts have been better than others, hey you don’t know unless you try! Here are some recipe ideas courtesy of Love Food Hate Waste.

•  Grow your own - this is on my to-do list. I’m sure that apart from tasting better and being organic, when I’ve spent months cultivating something, I will make absolutely sure none of it is wasted!

• Save water – this is an easy one. A shower timer is brilliant, making sure taps don’t leak and you use watering cans instead of hose pipes if you’re lucky enough to have a garden. Take a look at this 1 minute video for inspiration.

You’ll also be reducing the waste and carbon emissions involved in the production of new clothes.

Every time the box is filled, the Sustainability Team will have it emptied and taken to storage, ready for collection from traid.

Browse the traid website for more ideas on how you can support clothes recycling.

Borrow from our selection, donate your own book and spread the joy of reading!

The University's Costa (Blue Met) now collects coffee grounds for anyone who needs a hit of nitrogen for their compost. I made use of this service and requested a bag to take home - all 14kg of it! It'll do wonders for the veg I'll be growing in March!

Composting reduces the amount of food waste that ends up at the landfill, giving your soil the nutrients and microorganisms it craves. You'll see a huge difference compost makes to your plants - and even better - it's completely free!

Organic (Green) materials such as fruit and vegetable scraps, crushed egg shells and coffee grounds increases the amount of nitrogen in your compost, and brown materials such as leaves, paper and hay increases the amount of carbon. You should aim for a balance of green and brown materials. More tips on what and how to compost can be found on the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) website.

Check with your local council to see if they offer subsidies for compost bins for home composting.

Above: Image of the compost bin in my garden

If you want to grab yourself a bag of coffee grounds, email catering@londonmet.ac.uk.

Kara

We were really proud of the recycled Christmas tree we made over the festive period. No one loved it more than Beth, who loved it so much she was inspired to write a poem - and here it is:


If you're wondering, Mother Christmas is Demetria, who really did wake up in the middle of the night with this brilliant idea!

Got any environmental poems you want to share? Leave one in the comments below!

I’m not much of a bird person - in fact I have a fear of pigeons. But I do love little birds and the odd magpie (because of the nursery rhyme). This year I’ll be taking part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch 2017. Last year, two little robins were frequent visitors to the garden, and I’m hoping to see more this year!

If you want to take part and receive a free pack (which includes a 2017 calendar) then register on the RSPB website. It also meets the gold criteria (G013) in Green Impact workbook.

Happy bird watching!

Kara

The university has multiple battery recycling points and it didn’t take long for us to find one and do our part in saving the environment.

We’re now committed to using rechargeable batteries both at work and at home, as well as spreading the work that batteries shouldn’t be disposed of in general waste.
You can usually find a battery recycle point at your local library or large supermarkets. Check your local council website to find the nearest battery recycling point near you.

Kara