St Antony’s sustainability initiatives have been recognised with a Bronze Green Impact prize at the 2022 Vice Chancellor’s Environmental Sustainability Awards.

The awards were presented at a celebration event at the Sheldonian Theatre on 13th July. Vice-Chancellor, Dame Professor Louise Richardson opened the event by expressing the appreciation that she and her colleagues have for the talent and commitment of all those involved in the university’s work to promote environmental sustainability.

The awards are designed to recognise and celebrate contributions toward the University’s strategic environmental goals. Award winners are those who have significantly contributed to the University's aspirations to become more sustainable with the Green Impact scheme, LEAF, Oxford Carbon Challenge and have helped in delivering exceptional environmental sustainability work.

St Antony’s Green Impact Team have implemented various initiatives around the college with the goal of making it a more sustainable place to live and work. The three main environmental impacts that the team focussed on in the last year were energy saving, waste recycling, and reducing printing.

The college has reduced printing by introducing electronic payslips, and switching to a digital only college magazine.  The team have implemented food recycling in all kitchen areas, reduced the number of general waste collection bins and increased the number of recycling bins/ glass and food bins. The Housekeeping Team now uses a reusable/refill bottle system for all cleaning products and swapped all cleaning chemicals to a water-diluted system with eco-friendly chemicals, an intiative which has minimised single use plastic bottles by 80%. All conference and meeting spaces have refillable glass bottles with paper cups.

The team also focussed on increasing Biodiversity in the college grounds, using peat-free compost, placing bird feeding stations and bird houses, leaving hedgehog piles and starting to build a hedgehog highway around campus, as well as planting a wildflower area that will be a bee and butterfly haven as well as providing a beautiful area for staff and students to enjoy.

Watch this space for further updates from the College Green Impact team in the coming months.

In addition to these day-to-day actions, the College has committed to reducing its carbon footprint and is working with an external consultant to understand where the biggest impacts are and how to tackle these.

Follow the student-run Instagram @stantonys_sustainability

Read more about the 2022 Sustainability Awards

Dr Tanya Baldwin, Bursar introduces the College’s newly-formed Green Impact Team, November 2021