2020 Environmental Sustainability awards announced

Image of cottage garden path leading up to a church entry with a small deer standing next to the gated arch

The Environmental Sustainability team has announced the results of the various awards schemes it runs for 2020. These include the Green Impact and Student Switch Off engagement schemes, the Sustainability Photographer of the Year competition and the Student Union Awards. A PDF containing full information about the award winners can be downloaded using the links to the right, but below is a summary of the results: Environmental Sustainability Award Results from 2019-2020

Green Impact

Green Impact is an environmental engagement scheme in which staff and students come together in teams to make their workplaces more sustainable by taking simple actions.

Teams make their way through workbooks designed to suggest positive changes they can make and can approach Green Impact at a range of levels, from Beyond Gold to Getting Started.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made it much harder than usual to take part in Green Impact, but numerous teams rose to the challenge, in many cases continuing to work from home to make sustainable changes and promote environmental awareness among their colleagues.  Six teams attained Beyond Gold level, while 10 more got Gold awards, one attained silver, six reached Bronze standard and two more qualified at Getting Started level.

Congratulations to all of the following:

Beyond Gold Award

  • Kennedy Institute
  • Lady Margaret Hall 
  • Osney One
  • OUP Environment
  • Oxford Chemistry
  • Oxford University Innovation

Gold Award

  • Big Data Institute
  • Careers Service
  • Earth Sciences
  • Foster Lab Zoology/Biochemistry
  • Green Templeton College
  • Kellogg College
  • Oxford Biochemistry 
  • Primary Care Health Science
  • St Anne’s College
  • The Old Bodleian and Weston Libraries 

Silver Award

  • Trinity College 

Bronze Award

  • Department of Zoology
  • GLAM Divisional Unit
  • Oxford Martin School
  • Research Services - 5 Worcester Street Team
  • Social Sciences Divisional Office
  • Wood Lab (Department of Paediatrics)

Getting Started

  • Botnar Research Centre

  • Wolfson Building

Special Citation

  • Saïd Business School – special continuous improvement award 

We offer special congratulations to the newcomer teams, who joined the scheme during a very challenging year and yet remained committed.

This year laboratory-based teams also had the option to pilot the new Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) as part of their Green Impact efforts. LEAF is designed to drive improvements in laboratory efficiency. Teams complete a set of lab-specific criteria and can estimate the carbon and financial savings their actions have achieved.

Several departments started using LEAF this year, including labs from the Chemistry, Engineering, Geography and Pharmacology departments, the Nuffield Department of Medicine, and the Dunn School of Pathology.

LEAF Gold Award

  • Wood Lab (Department of Paediatrics)

LEAF Silver Award

  • Newstead Lab (Department of Biochemistry)

Sustainability Photographer of the Year

First place

Tansy Branscombe, DPhil Archaeological Science, Brasenose College - 'Where the Wild Things (Always) Were'

Image of cottage garden path leading up to a church entry with a small deer standing next to the gated arch

'Where the Wild Things (Always) Were'

Second Place

Jing Fang, Language Instructor, China Centre - 'Weeding Required'

Image of path outside Sheldonian Theatre, weeds are growing through the pavement.

'Weeding Required'

Third Place

  • Desiree Meyerding, Marketing Manager, Saïd Business School - ' Sunrise Folly Bridge'

Runners up

  • Alicia Hayden, Biological Sciences, Lady Margaret Hall - 'Wisdom amongst the trees'
  • Anne Pearsall, PROMYS Europe Administrator, Mathematical Institute - 'Oxford by bicycle'

Student Switch Off

Over the course of the year, Oxford colleges compete in a series of challenges to earn Switch Off awards. The competition rewards those with the highest percentage of participants pledging to save energy and water, and to recycle more. The leaderboard below shows the percentage of total students who signed up.

Leaderboard of colleges

  1. Christ Church (68%)
  2. Lincoln (60%)
  3. Oriel (36%)
  4. Keble (14%)
  5. Balliol (12%)
  6. St Anne's (12%)
  7. Wadham (12%)
  8. Jesus (10%)
  9. Worcester (6%)
  10. Lady Margaret Hall (3%)

Student Switch Off overall winner

  • Lincoln College

Winner of recycling/reuse competition

  • Oriel College

Student Union Awards 2020

These awards were bestowed based on students' votes, to recognise hard work for climate action, inspiring leadership, increasing awareness or changing how colleges or departments operate for the better.

The Sustainable Advocate

  • Gloria Rosetto, Merton

The Waste Saver

  • Florence Lapplin, St Hugh's

The Sustainable Energiser

  • Ellie Holton and Bart Ashton, Lady Margaret Hall

The Sustainable Diner

  • Viola King Forbes, Jesus

The Sustainable Departmental Leader

  • Sue Henderson, Chemistry

The Sustainable Partner

  • St John's Divestment Occupation, Solidarity Team and Environment representatives

The Sustainable Teacher

  • Tristram Walsh, Arunima Sircar, Alice Evatt, Asisa Singh, Thea Stevens and the entire 2019 board of the Oxford Climate Society

The Sustainable Traveller

  • Anna Gee, Somerville

If you have any queries about any of these awards, contact the Environmental Sustainability team on sustainability@admin.ox.ac.uk.