International Development's Green Impact
The Department of International Development supports the university’s wider Green Impact initiative and is dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint and its impact on the environment.
Every year, departments are audited by the university’s sustainability team and each receives a level of accreditation for their performance. We gained a Silver award in 2015 and the Staff Engagement award for our Mount Everest Challenge (see below).
Among our New Year Resolutions for 2015, staff members have pledged to cut down on red meat consumption and to cut down or to re-use disposable packaging.
We have also undertaken a stair-climbing initiative to improve our fitness and to save on CO2 emissions.
Points to consider
Valuable resources can be saved by using teleconferencing, video-conference facilities or Skype instead of travelling to external meetings. (Contact IT if you need help setting up Skype on your computer, and let us know if you need a webcam.)
Are you aware of the fact that a dripping tap can waste up to 5,000 litres of water a year? Please report dripping taps to us in the admin office, or to Estates directly.
Food waste is an area where we could improve. Please remember to remove unwanted food from the fridge or label it as communal.
All PCs should be set to print double-sided from communal printers, saving huge amounts of paper.
Switching off your electronic devices (including lights) when not in use can have strong environmental benefits. Leaving devices on standby can still consume eye-catching amounts of electricity.
LSE has a cyclescheme that incentives staff to purchase a bike through salary sacrifice. We also encourage staff to take the stairs up Connaught House rather than the elevator. (See below!)
The Mount Everest Challenge 2015
As the department is based on the top three floors of Connaught House, we calculated that collectively we could climb the height of Mount Everest if we took the stairs instead of the elevator.
Our staff rose to the challenge with great enthusiasm, reaching 2,667 floors on foot (10 kilometres) in just over a month and saving over 100kg of CO2.
See our campaign poster here.
We look forward to seeing how much further we can ascend and what else we can achieve in our pursuit of environmentally friendly goals.