Environment Health and Safety Executive Committee meeting - Report

Hi I posted the agenda of the EAG meeting here, please – this my report on the meeting. When I receive the minutes I will also publish them online.

I would have liked to have used a dictaphone for this report and publish here (in addition to my summary) a recording of the meeting segmented into the sections on the agenda so you could listen to the points directly. Tom Guise however intervened and said that it would be “unprofessional” to use notation aids in the meetings, hopefully by the next one I will have changed his mind.

I aslo think all officers should to report like this on their blogs and will be tabling a motion to mandate them to do so.

3.Matters Arising:
a. Environmental Policy Review

This will be finalised on the 3rd of November. Any Review of environmental policy at the uni should be a key chance for the guild to campaign in. This review seems to be at the end of its process. If anyone is interested in trying to influence the proceedings at this stage I can try and get you a copy of what’s going on.


b.Waste and Recycling Contracts update

Veolia were recently given a temporary contract for mixed recycling and confidential waste. The possibility of extending this contract for the next three years will be discussed next September.

Veolia is a company that is willing to trample all over international law and human rights and is the target of an ongoing boycott campaign, something to campaign on this year?

c.Environmental Management Systems
(i) BiTC indices (attached EAG 09.09.2)

This is a initiative supported by UK uni funding councils, It measures the extent to which institutions integrate environmental responsibility into their strategic and operational activities.

The uni now have the report back, the results are a interesting read and I would love to share them with you. It was communicated that the report is strictly confidential.

I brought up if it could be made public and uni are going to make a “summary” of the results to put online (a nice chance for spin in my opinion – worthy of the guild of students) I’m going to continue to lobby to get it published in full.

(ii) Ecocampus scheme.

(Here some info on scheme http://www.ecocampus.co.uk/ have a gander). The cost to participate is £10,700 pounds which was deemed to expensive.

I’m not entirely convinced the BiTC indices which the uni currently choose to do is the most effective environmental management scheme. I’m going to do some research to check if the uni are trying to cop out of making real commitments. I’d appreciate any help in this research (please contact me if you know anything or are interested) - so that when the decision is taken next year to choose which carbon management scheme to choose the guild will be ready.

d.Sustainable Travel Plan Update

The ball has been dropped here (on drivers feet). The guild was in a dialogue with the uni over the new car parking scheme however during the handover this role has not been conferred. I don’t now what’s going, nobody does... the exec are trying to find someone new to do this role.

e.Carbon Management
(i) HEFCE consultation
(ii) HECM Update

(iii) 10:10 campaign targets

I’ll include here to save myself time (sry), tom guises report to the 10:10 campaign group since it’s a good summary of the discussion, hope you don’t mind tom.

“Myself and Trevor Shields have been actioned to write a note on 10:10 for the University Executive Board to consider and make a decision on signing up or not. The EAG spent a lot of time talking about the variety of schemes they are signed up to, and actually raised a valid point that focusing on this for a year would seem superfluous. The rep from Estates did not seem convinced that it was achievable and Judith Petts actually mentioned being more ambitious, cutting CO2 emissions by 20% by 2015.”

f.People & Planet Green League Table

The uni are upset by the changes in methodology and don’t think they represent a fair assessment of their green efforts and are considering not complying with Freedom of information requests submitted this year from P&P – (this is interesting will keep you updated).

g.Guild Activities

Tom guise reported a few things I will let him cover that in his own time I presented this …..

Can we have a Food action group?

“To influence and improve the health and environmental impacts of the university community, to establish, enable and maintain lifelong eating habits that benefit both themselves and the environment”

Objectives

Leadership

- To ensure that the entire university community are consulted on these issues via the food action group
- To ensure that the entire university community are kept informed of key changes in relation to food issues

Food quality of provenance

- To liaise with on campus retailers about lowering the environmental impacts of their food goods.
- To support the provision of food that has low environmental impact
- To work with campus retailers to endeavour to achieve the food for life targets of 75% unprocessed, 50% local, 30% organic and to address issues of seasonality, animal welfare and sustainable fishing
- To ensure that there is easy access on campus throughout the day to free drinking water that is separate from the toilet area.
Education
- To provide opportunities for students to eat and cook with vegetables that they grown themselves.
- To ensure that there is no collaboration with businesses that require endorsements of brands and products that have high environmental impacts or high in fat, sugar or salt.

The uni seem quite keen to create groups to work to improve the uni’s health and environmental impacts groups, which I find very encouraging. I plan on taking this further will keep you updated on this blog.

Additionally in response to the publication of the agenda I received three questions to ask to the EAG from a student.

Here are the questions and there responses

Q. do the uni know their current level of carbon emissions

A. No they don’t – they have this which is very rough estimate http://www.climatechange.bham.ac.uk/update.shtml
(Seriously look into where the figures come from and you can see how rough an estimate it is)
They did say that they thought money was best spent on making “real reductions” rather than into a full carbon audit.

Q. will the results from the sustainable travel survey be made available?

A. No they were not going to be, not because they have anything to hide but because they hadn’t thought of publishing them. I now have a copy I would post it here however blogger can’t have documents uploaded on for download ( I should get wordpress). If anyone wants a copy to read just write your e-mail in the comments section.

Q. with regards to the PP Green League... what the uni is planning on doing to improve its ethical and enivornmental standing in the region... because Aston, Warwick and Cov all scored higher

A. I got pointed in the direction of this mammoth document http://www.climatechange.bham.ac.uk/wecan/carbon.shtml