Disingenious

Sorry, thought I was done with the last post, but still me (Nick) here - I've been cleaning up all my papers and files to hand on to Jenny, but came across this recent change to the Energy & Water Management policy that was slipped in without me realizing at the time:

A section of the final policy statement reads, under a general 'Energy and Water Management' section:
"Reinvest a proportion of annual savings into future saving initiatives."

However, the first draft that was presented, discussed and commented on at the first meeting of the E&WM group read:
"Reinvest 50% of any annual savings into future saving initiatives."

Now, this seems to me like some serious backtracking on a policy even before it formally comes into operation! Fifty percent is a concrete number, and we know that if the university saves £X it will end up with £Y to definitely be invested into a further program of action. With this change, the university can waffle and fudge and well, only spend 'a proportion' of savings into future initiatives and justify spending only a ridiculously low amount of money with this policy.

What I'm incredibly angry about is how this change, which is by no account insubstantial, was put in without being brought to the Energy & Water Management group as a whole. Part of me is extremely annoyed at myself for not spotting the change, but a bigger part of me is annoyed at university management for not highlighting that the change was made in between the two meetings.

Pro-Vice Chancellor John Harries, introducing the final document, said that only minor, wordsmithing changes had been made, and that is true for the rest of the policy - consolidating headings and word changes that don't affect substance - except for this one. I asked him if he would go through the changes that were made and he reassured me that they weren't substantive ones (so we didn't need to go through them), and I took him at his word. Trusting him was quite clearly a mistake on my part, and I've learned my lesson.

Quietly making this shift amidst a raft of other wording changes is disingenious and dishonest at best, and seriously calls into question the university's alleged commitment to student engagement with environmental progress if they weren't willing to at least discuss the change.

Final Words to the VC

Sorry, Nick here again - I promise my last ever post here, and I'll definitely shut up from now. In drawing a close on my year, I wrote a final letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Noel Lloyd, focusing (as ever) on the Go Green campaign and I've reproduced it here:

Dear Vice-Chancellor,

Re: Will the University Go Green?

As I formally complete my degree here in Aberystwyth, I thought that I should take a few moments here to offer some concluding thoughts on the university’s environmental performance as it relates to my year on the Guild of Students’ Executive.

An Environmental Manager

You will be personally aware of the messy situation regarding the Wastewise waste awareness campaign’s distribution following Ben Gray’s communication with you in the spring. I am sure you agree that there are better uses for Pro-VC John Harries’ time than the minutiae of putting up stickers and door hangers. This has been perhaps the most glaring example of where communication and management on environmental issues continues to fall through gaps. As further work on waste management and travel, for instance, continues to develop in the months and years to come, simply put, an increased staff capacity through a full-time environmental manager is needed to ensure the optimal use of resources.

At its most basic level, this is about matching your verbal commitment to environmental progress with new and additional staff time dedicated to making change happen. The Wastewise episode exemplifies the risks of doing otherwise. Bring the various strands of energy and ideas together and we could have a great future ahead of us. When a few student colleagues and myself met you in February, you promised us that the current part-time energy consultant would be closely reviewed when his contract ends around now, and it would be regressive if there was no further commitment made in this regard. If you still do not feel that a full-time environmental manager can be employed, I would at least ask that you set out your reasons for this in writing.

A Refreshed Environmental Policy

Technically speaking, the University has an environmental policy as part of its broader Health, Safety & Environment Policy. This policy statement, however, has not been updated recently and its environmental assertions are extremely general and vague. When you put the existing HSE policy next to the newly-introduced Energy Management policy, the former is almost embarrassing to read in terms of the strength and clarity of its commitment. In my view, this needs to be substantially redrafted to reflect the obligations, responsibilities and targets that are, for instance, expressed in the Environmental Strategy document. A substantive, rather than merely procedural, student contribution to this process is also essential.

There has undoubtedly been progress over the past year, and I will be the first to acknowledge that. For all the methodological quibbles that you may put to People & Planet’s Green League 2007, however, there is no disputing that in broad terms other institutions have stolen a march on becoming a truly environmentally sustainable university. You can be sure that these issues are here to stay, and I very much hope that the pace of progress is only quickened.

Thank you for your time, and I trust and ask that you will direct your response to my successor, Jenny Mace, at the Aberystwyth Guild of Students.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Chan
2006/07 Aberystwyth Guild of Students Environment & Ethics Officer

Signing Off

So as the academic year formally comes to a close with graduation week, it's time too to finally sign off on my year as Environment & Ethics Officer for the Aber Guild of Students, and pass on this blog to my successor, Jenny Mace (jnm5[at]aber.ac.uk). So future references to 'I' should be read in a different context, reflecting different priorities and interests. But a few concluding thoughts and observations here on what my year has been...

What progress has been made? This is a difficult one to judge, because while I know I've certainly been busy (as the long and tedious process of cleaning out my e-mail inbox demonstrates) on a personal level, actual forward movement for the university as a whole is a bit more mixed.

I've developed good relationships with management staff in the areas of both energy and waste, meaning that the lines of communication have been open and frequent and that I've been able to monitor the progress in these over the past year. The first meetings of dedicated groups for energy management and waste management have taken place over the past year, to consider directly and more effectively how these issues impact the university and what action can be undertaken. Some university staff have, naturally, been more cooperative and interested than others. There have been the requisite moments of frustration where things simply fall through the gaps, but also the quiet satisfaction of slow, but momentum-building progress. I guess it will always seem like the big breakthrough is going to come next year (when I'm no longer here, obviously) and part of me wishes that I will still be around to see it through! It goes without saying that I've lost track of the number of times that coursework comes second to firing off emails to students and staff on green issues.

I've made the Go Green campaign a priority, which has seen an 800-strong petition, a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor, quality local press coverage and getting the UCU staff union involved. A full-time dedicated member of staff to environmental management is still needed, as is a complete overhaul of UWA's environmental policy statement. But the issue is firmly on the VC's table, and students will continue to demand the changes that will set in wet cement (it'll take a while to dry, of course) an institutional commitment to sustainability.

I have happily seen People & Planet members take the Fairtrade university campaign many steps forward and have my greatest optimism in this regard for success in and Fairtrade status in the very near future. My one regret has been an inability to take up a proper campaign on the university's continued staff pension investment in BAE Systems (and other arms companies), all the more galling given the recent BBC/Guardian investigations into corrupt business practices and bribing foreign officials. I very much hope that staff members will finally get off their bums and want do something about their own contributions to a trade focusing on violence and destruction.

I was elected to serve as a Aber delegate to both NUS Wales and NUS UK annual conferences, and at both of them contributed to highlighting sustainability and environmental concerns that had largely been absent from the agenda. A personal interest in the NUS has grown out of these experiences and something that I hope to be able to continue at my next stop. The NUS is a massive organisation in its resources and reach, and must be absolutely involved in greening and 'ethicalizing' our universities, demonstrating our solidarity with students of all stripes, home and abroad, and engaging students in the political challenge of making the world a better place.

The year ended with UWA's 97th placing in the Green League, and while this year has seen the beginning of environmental-related activity at various levels, it is just a beginning and in relative terms highlights how many other institutions are much further down this road. Current momentum will see UWA move up next year - the question is, how much? It'll have to run simply to keep up.

It has been a pleasure offering my thoughts on this blog, and providing some kind of link between the Guild and 'regular' students, a connection that definitely needs deepening. Simply putting this information out there is an important step, a place on the internet to be caught up in Google searches and the passing student. My own interest in blogging has been stimulated by the process of running this blog, although I now realize that there are also plenty of things that I should have included throughout the year that simply slipped right through my mind. But at least it's a start.

This is very much a niche blog - not a full-on commentary about environmental and ethical issues, but neither a full-on litany of observations about the work of the Aber Guild of Students in general. A rough average of ten hits a day, I think, is fairly respectable. From that perspective, I'm well pleased with the 3,500 hits to the site over the past ten months and while I don't know what my successor has planned for this blog, I hope that there'll be many more to come. But do check out my new project - Nick Thinking Aloud - to exactly take on the role of a more general, but also personal, commentary on the events and experiences that shape my world.

Thank you for reading.

Last Meetings

For a blog that I initially thought of as a way to provide updates on the meetings and discussions that I've had with university staff, there has strangely been little of that. So as I wrap things up on my part, just a quick update on the two set-piece meetings that I've had with the university bureaucracy.

Health, Safety & Environment (early June) - The draft UWA Environmental Strategy was brought to the meeting, after it had been pushed back from the previous meeting due to snow! I raised one point regarding the university considering ISO 14001 environmental management certification, and why it was noted that the issue would be considered by Finance group instead of through the Strategy group or the committee, and I was told because of the financial implications such a move would involve. This seemed a bit strange given that all the various items from the strategy do have financial considerations of their own. No further points were raised in this regard, although other members of the committee appeared to demonstrate more interest when discussing other agenda items - namely fire alarm statistics and parking issues.

Energy & Water Management (end June) - The group met to look at progress on this front and to finalize the new energy & water management policy. While further changes to the policy had been made since the last meeting, I was told that these were not substantial ones. There was a discussion of how to bring the policy document and other reporting to the wider university community, including the Wastewise waste awareness campaign. Tenders for the projects that the part-time energy management consultant has been working on have been invited, and part of the work towards a proper building energy management system (BEMS) has already highlighted a £1K monthly saving in heating for the building at Blaendolau playing fields, which is surely only the tip of the iceberg for future savings to be made. Additional energy-saving ideas for future consideration were also invited - including plug meters and vending machine time-switches, for example.

That's me done on that score. The only thing that I missed out on was a meeting for the Waste & Recycling Management group, which first met in April and won't meet until later on in the summer, well after I've signed off.