This Uni's Plan to Save the Planet (sort of)

Without the help of a word-editing program to make things look neat and pretty, the following is a simplified version of this university's draft environmental strategy that will be presented for approval to the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) committee in June. Enjoy.

Local Environment and Ecology - an assesment of the biodiversity status of the Penglais campus and make recommendations (completion date tbc).

Procurement - to identify objectives and targets in reference to achieving 'sustainable procurement' (this refers to an assessment framework to determine procurement supports sustainable development objectives) (completion date 31 May 2007 for study); to attain a BREEAM rating of excellent for all future new build (completion date ongoing)

Transport and Travel - to establish a UWA Travel Plan (completion date April 2008); to develop options for a voluntary carbon offset scheme for UWA business travel (completion date Oct 2007)

Resource Consumption - to develop a program of water-saving measures (completion date Sept 2007); to reduce CO2 emissions by 10%/student in academic buildings and 5% in residential buildings (cd Sept 2009); to determine the economic viability of significant renewable energy projects at UWA and table proposals (cd April 2008); to examine aspects of sustainability in bioscience research and produce a best-practice toolkit (cd tbc)

Releases to Air and Water - to ensure that these comply with legal and policy requirements (ongoing)

Waste and Recycling - to establish a Recycling and Waste Management group to develop initiatives and programmes of work (cd May 2007)

Green Curriculum - to develop UWA's Learning and Teaching Strategy to include a strategy for embedding Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship across the curriculum (cd 2007 Planning Round)

Further to this I have also established that ISO 14001, an accreditation standard for environmental management systems, is also being considered by the university - this is an externally-audited standard for environmental management, which certifies that the university's current structures meet a given standard for effective environmental management.