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!