Green Dragon

Just before the summer began, the Guild of Students initiated a project called 'Green Dragon'.

Green Dragon is an environmental management program for organisations in Wales, which offers external assistance, monitoring and support to gradually extending the range and remit of environmental controls in place. Organisations begin at Level 1 and try to move up the scale to Level 5 (for instance the National Assembly for Wales, Cambrian Printers).

At a basic level this involves compliance with existing legislative requirements but then moves towards actively putting the reduce, reuse and recycle into action.

It's good to see that the Guild has taken these steps proactively, searching for areas of potential improvement that may not have been paid much attention in the past. Apart from the bars and shops, most students don't get to see 'behind the scenes' at the Guild, and it is the routine day to day operations that probably have the greatest environmental impact rather than the one-off events. This is where Green Dragon has the potential to make the biggest impact. Once a system has been established, and staff get used to it, it helps to ensure that changes are there for the long run. I think that once a basic environmental awareness is communicated among staff, there could be further changes that staff themselves bring forward. After all, who knows how the Guild operate than the staff members themselves?

Green Dragon responsibility will be led mainly by Geraint, the Union's General Manager but it will be followed up by an Environmental Working Group that has been set up within the Guild. I end up sitting on it too.

I'll be posting updates throughout the year as further evaluations are made and improvements evaluated. The website for the Green Dragon operators is http://www.greendragonems.com/