Events

The Sustainability Team organise a wide range of events on and off campus for both students, staff and the general public. The information below outlines our upcoming events. If you would like to get involved please do not hesitate to contact the event organiser. 

Wed 7 June (Penryn) 

12pm - 2.30pm

We have a new volunteering activity in store for students and staff! Next Wednesday (7 June), 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm (Meet in Walled Garden), we will be picking litter and controlling brambles by the stream on the Eastern border of campus! This activity will aid in maintaining a healthy running water and marshy grassland ecosystem.

Volunteers can come along for a duration that is feasible for them; while there is a lot of physical work, they are free to participate in whatever capacity they choose. Gloves will be provided for work near brambles. Sturdy boots and weatherproof clothing are recommended as there will be some muddy bits in the area where we will be working!

Here is the Eventbrite link for the sessions: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/campus-conservation-volunteering-session-tickets-474601755627

Coming up in May and June

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sean Borodale c Mark Vessey

Ecological Sound Trail

Sean Borodale, is one of the best poets writing today when it comes to poems about nature and the environment. He was selected as a Granta New Poet in 2012, and his debut collection Bee Journal was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and the Costa Book Award in 2013. 

We’re delighted he is coming to Exeter to work with students on a new Sound Trail over May and June. The essesions are open to any student interested in poetry whatever your ability so if interested do get in touch.  He will accompany you around Reed Hall and help you write a poetic response to the natural surroundings.  The resulting poems will be recorded and published on a new webpage, which will be accessed via a QR code on interpretation signs situated at each nature spot.  Launch: October 2023.

The sessions will be on:

Wednesday 24 May

2pm - 4pm (Meet outside the front of Reed Hall just before 2pm)

Please wear suitable clothing/footwear for a short walk and bring your own drink and anything you may wish to write on. We can provide recording equipment, but equally you may wish to use your phone. 

Tues 30 May 

2pm - 4pm 

The location depends on the weather and if there is online interest, but if inside it will be in the Xfi Building, Seminar Room A. 

Wed 7 June

2pm- 4pm

The location again depends on the weather and if there is online interest, but if inside it will be in Syndicate Room B, Building One.

The first session is a walk around campus and is in person only - the second and third workshop we can accommodate you if you wish to take part online   Please email v.a.patch2@exeter.ac.uk if you are interested in signing up. We are limiting the in person workshops to 12 people, so if you book up and then can't make it we would be grateful if you would let us know. 

Wed 17 May 2023

The Sustainability Team will be in the Forum from 12.30 - 2.30 as part of our regular drop ins - so do come and have a chat.

Thurs 4 May 2023

Hedgehogs in the UK are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, development, roads and litter, with populations declining by up to 50% since 2000. The Hedgehog Friendly Campus initiative is run by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS). It aims to improve conditions on university campuses across the UK, creating habitats where Hedgehogs can thrive.

Students from Exeter have been getting involved, working to achieve HFC bronze accreditation for Streatham Campus. So far, the team has set up a working group with key members of staff, met with the grounds team to improve Hedgehog safety, and organised a stall during Go Green Week to raise awareness and fundraise for the BHPS.  Next steps include building a new hedgehog house on campus, litter picks, a social media campaign, and celebrating Hedgehog Awareness Week (30th April - 6th March).

For more information visit the BHPS website: https://www.hedgehogfriendlycampus.co.uk/, or come along to the forum on Thursday 4 May between 11am - 3pm to meet the team and get involved.

Wed 22 March 2023

The Sustainability Team will be in the Forum from 12.30 - 2.30 as part of our regular drop ins - so do come and have a chat

Wed 22 March 2023 (PENRYN)

12pm - 2.30pm (Meet at the Walled Garden)

To commemorate the International Day of Forests that occurs next week, will be removing invasive plants such as Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) to let our native woodland species thrive! Volunteers can come along for a duration that is feasible for them; while there is a lot of physical work involved, they are free to participate in whatever capacity they choose. Gloves will be provided for work with equipment or thorny brambles. Sturdy boots and weatherproof clothing are recommended!

Wed 22 February (PENRYN)

FX Plus Grounds and Gardens team will be conducting a Tree Planting Activity during next week’s Conservation Volunteering Session. The session will be on Wednesday, 22^nd February, 12:00 to 14:30 (Meet at the Walled Garden). We will be planting Crab Apple in the residences area of campus where we are losing Ash trees due to ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), with the aim of controlling the spread of the disease in our woodland and parkland trees. Volunteers can come along for a duration that is feasible for them; while there is a lot of physical work involved, they are free to participate in whatever capacity they choose. Sturdy boots and weatherproof clothing are recommended!

Here is the Eventbrite link for the sessions: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/campus-conservation-volunteering-session-tickets-474601755627

Wed 22 February 2023

Meet the Sustainability Team

The Sustainability Team will be in the Forum from 12.30pm - 2.30pm as part of our regular drop ins - so do come and have a chat.  This Wednesday it will be Nigel Morris our Strategic Waste & Resources Manager - who will be happy to answer any questions on waste or recycling. 

Friday 27 January 2023

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Join us on Friday 27 January for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, on Streatham, Falmouth and Penryn Campus.

Bird species and numbers will be recorded and sent to the RSPB for inclusion in their annual survey. Please wear weatherproof clothing and feel free to bring your own snacks and drinks. Binoculars would also be handy, but you can take part without. If you are a keen birdwatcher/ornithologist and would be happy to lead on identifying birds to help complete the record sheet (supplied) at one of the locations, please let us know.

Streatham Campus

Meet at 9.30 a.m. outside Camper Café, Queens for an hour of birdwatching from 10 a.m. – 11.a.m. Depending on the size of the gathering we will be conducting bird counts at two or three different locations on Streatham Campus. If the weather forecast is awful and we are forced to cancel we will let you know by 8 p.m. on Thursday evening.

Please email Chris:  C.Guggiari-Peel@exeter.ac.uk to sign up for Streatham Campus or if you want further information.

Penryn Campus

Meet at 9.30 a.m. for a 10 a.m. start at Heart Reception. Similar to the Streatham Campus, bird counts will be simultaneously be conducted at three different locations. Participants will be free to choose a location that they wish to survey.

For more details about what is happening at Penryn, please email Abhishek: biodiversity@fxplus.co.uk

Falmouth Campus

Meet at 9.30 a.m. for a 10 a.m. start at Rosehill Reception

For more details about what is happening at Falmouth please email Jake: Jake.Causley@falmouth.ac.uk

11 Jan 2023

Meet the Sustainability Team

We are holding a regular series of drop-in sessions in the Forum between 12.30 and 2.30  once a fortnight on a Wednesday in term time. The first one of the year is on 11 January and Giovanni our Sustainable Travel and Transport Manager will be there to answer any questions you might have about everything from buses to cycling to walking. You will find us on a stall in the Forum opposite the library. Do come and say hello.  

18 Jan 2023

Meet the Sustainabilty Team

Fraser Browning our Technical Evaluator will be in the Forum from 12.30 - 2.30 pm on Wednesday 18 January to answer any questions you may have about: 

• Green Futures Student Solutions
• Scope 3 (Indirect Decarbonisation)
• Linking behavioural change to sustainability
• The University’s approach to achieving Net Zero

Do drop by for a chat. 

11 Jan 2023

Meet the Sustainability Team

We are holding a regular series of drop-in sessions in the Forum between 12.30 and 2.30  once a fortnight on a Wednesday in term time. The first one of the year is on 11 January and Giovanni our Sustainable Travel and Transport Manager will be there to answer any questions you might have about everything from buses to cycling to walking. You will find us on a stall in the Forum opposite the library. Do come and say hello.  

14 December

Volunteering Opportunity at Penryn

The FXPlus Grounds and Gardens team have been organising regular Conservation Volunteering Sessions with the aim of improving the grasslands on Penryn Campus for wildlife. Volunteers have been raking and removing grass, sowing wildflower seeds, and planting wildflower saplings in grasslands bordering the Tremough Lime Avenue and veteran Oak trees. Next session: Wednesday 14 December (12:00 to 14:30). Meet: Walled Garden, Penryn campus. Boots and weatherproof clothing recommended!  Contact: biodiversity@falmouthac.mail.onmicrosoft.com 

1 December

Join the Guild in Devonshire House and the M&D room on Thurs 1 December to meet like-minded climate activists, create sustainably made items, and learn what can be done to avert a climate crisis. For staff and students

Meme Making Workshop: 11:30-12:30
Sustainable Card Making Workshop: 12:00-15:00
Stewart Barr Talk: 14:00-1500
Student Led talk: 15:00-16:00
Screening of The True Cost: 16:00-17:00

Click here for your free ticket

21 November 

We now have the winners of our E&CE team Haiku competition. Forward Prize winning poet Will Harris said about the entries:

Haiku are doubly severed from their context. Not only have they travelled from one language into another, they’ve been taken out of the long, linked, communal poems they once formed a part of (admittedly, a long time ago). In the English language, they’ve made a new, distinct history. Haiku provide a way to subvert the expectations of English metred verse, to cut into it, drawing on the energy of the page’s blank space. All the shortlisted poems here do this. And the winning poems have a found a successful means to move away from linearity, from the speaking ‘I’ of narrative fiction, to evoke the desiccated jumbled time of ecological catastrophe. Each sound is dense as rock; nature is intimate, palpable as a burger and fries or a milkshake; syntax expresses thought and feeling commingled, layers ‘only my eyes saw’. A good haiku isn’t easy to digest. It stays in your system.

Congratulations to - 

First Place: Sylvie Cox  - 2nd year studying for a BA in Communications and Modern Languages. 

Silent campus sits

A badger crosses the way

Only my eyes saw

 

Second Place: Michelle Fabienne Bieger- a PhD Student, in the department of Physics & Astronomy. 

Heatwave

roll over, unstick

sheets. A stubborn drop falls, brow

to bed. Missed alarm

 

Third Place: Jack David William Edwards - a third year studying single-honours English.

Tornado

A rock rides the wind,

Uncertain how it will land.

Eyes blue, turns skyward,

 

Shortlisted poets below:

Nell Hartney - a third year PhD student in the maths department, working in numerical weather prediction.

 What will happen to

All our words, when the weather

They describe is gone?

 

Beth Maidment

thick and wrong, just like 

milkshake through a paper straw-

this air suffocates.

 

Roberto Baccarini -  a second year PhD student in European Politics.

A happy meal 

The Forest’s bane 

With burger and fries 

 

Nat Marshall - a first year undergraduate studying BSc Geography.

Wrist scrapes and moss stains

Urban life seems doable

From atop a tree

 

Mercury Medhurst -a 1^st Year, English Literature, Creative Writing, and Latin Literature. 

YouTube Expert

​Ice-caps aren't melting

Communist propaganda

Like and Subscribe please 

 

Emily Sara Rizzo - a first year English and Film & TV Studies.  

Framing Disaster

Dye the pastures black;

An oil painting of doom,

Man-made masterpiece

 

Robin Wright  - studying for a Masters in Research in Biology.

I have never known,

Fire in water, floods in Rome,

I will never know.

 

 16 and 17 November

Interested in giving cycling to work a try? On 16 and 17 November, there are a number of ‘Cycle to Work’ initiatives to encourage staff to come to work by bike. Cycling can improve your health, save money, and save time. Easy cycling routes to campuses and information about bike facilities can be found here: Cycling to Work

*Let us know you have cycled to work on November 16 or 17 by e-mailing your route to climateemergency@exeter.ac.uk and you will be entered into a prize draw for discounts on bikes and biking equipment.

• Dr Bike are on Streatham campus on November 17th, so anyone can make an appointment for a free bike check-up.
• On November 16th, free Co-Bike taster sessions will be available from the Forum.
• Cycling discounts and support can be found at Bike - Sustainability  

To book Dr Bike or Co-Bike tasters, join Unicycle to receive booking details.

 

Wednesday 9 November

Join our Grounds Team as they collect seeds from veteran trees on Streatham Campus, which will grow our next generation of trees, ensuring our campus continues to be beautiful and supports biodiversity in the face of climate change. Please bring waterproofs (if it rains) and suitable shoes. Gardening gloves will be provided as you will be picking through seeds and leaves. You will learn about our wide variety of tree species, the current threats facing our tree population, and the importance of seed collection in protecting the future of healthy and biodiverse woodlands.

Meet outside Reed Hall at 10 a.m. 

Email: C.Guggiari-Peel@exeter.ac.uk for more details.

 

Tuesday 11 October 

Help Us Survey Freshwater Invertebrates in East Park Stream

Photo C‌redit: Erik Karits

Join our Sustainability team and experienced entomologist Dr Clive Betts on Tuesday 11 October to help us survey freshwater invertebrates in the East Park stream. This picturesque part of campus is an important biodiversity corridor, connecting nature north of campus to our Lower Hoopern Valley. However, the stream needs revitalising after becoming overgrown with vegetation and very silty. Remedial works are happening this year but we also want to evidence the positive impact on habitat quality and biodiversity that this will bring. The best way to do this is survey the freshwater invertebrates, like the red darter dragonfly that are biodindictors, meaning that as they are so sensitive to pollutants, their presence/absence reveals the habitat quality.

• We are meeting at 10am by the path opposite the Innovation Centre
• We will be kneedeep in vegetation and the stream so please bring, wellies and tough outdoor clothing, (no shorts due to stinging nettles)
• Snacks as it will take 3 hours minimum if you want to be involved until the end (its up to you)
• Notepad and pencil
• Hand lens if you have one

You do not need to be able to identify insects and invertebrates, we will provide ID guides and Clive will be available to help. All surveying kit will be provided. Please email Chris at c.guggiari-peel@exeter.ac.uk to register your interest.

23 September

Streatham - Freshers

Come and see us in the Career Zone in the Forum.  Find out about sustainability and what the University is doing to reach our target of Net Zero by 2030!

22 September

St Lukes - Freshers

Come and see us at St Lukes and learn all about sustainability at the University. We are here until 4pm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22 September - 27 October 2022 (Closing date)

E&CE Student Haiku Competition 2022

Feeling creative?  Like poetry? Why not have a go at entering our E&CE Student Haiku Competition (2022) on the theme of the Environment, in celebration of National Poetry Day (6 October)?  Haikus originated centuries ago in Japan and traditionally are composed of three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third, although contemporary poets don’t necessarily stick to the exact number of syllables, but focus on depicting an image as succinctly as possible.  We shall leave it up to you how you compose yours! Here is a famous example.

The Old Pond by Matsuo Bashō

An old silent pond

A frog jumps into the pond—

Splash! Silence again

Judge: we are delighted Forward prize winning poet Will Harris has agreed to be our judge. Will’s debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) was a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book of poems, Brother Poem, will be published by Granta in 2023. 

Judge: Will Harris

Prizes: we are offering book tokens as prizes - First Prize: £75 Second Prize: £50 and Third Prize: £30

The winner will also be offered a paid opportunity to write an article on the Arts and Culture website reflecting on their creative process.

All short-listed haikus will be published on the Arts and Culture and Sustainability websites.

Deadline: 27 October 2022 (extended from 21 October)

Submission: please email your haikus to: Vic Patch at climateemergency@exeter.ac.uk  with Haiku Comp in the subject line. Please include your full name, what year you are in and what you are studying.We look forward to reading your haikus!

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Thursday 22 September 2022

World Car Free Day

‌How are you going to get to University on Car Free Day 22 September?  On this day all around the world towns and cities allow people to experience streets free of motor traffic. It's a great chance to re-imagine our streets around people instead of vehicles. If you want to get involved consider taking public transport or walking to campus. 

Friday 8 July 2022 

9.00 am - 1.30pm 

Innovation Centre (streamed live accross all campuses)

This Friday (8 July) The Environment and Climate Emergency Team will have a stall at the Innovation Centre as part of a CLES (The College of Life and Environmental Sciences) sustainability day.  Find out about Green Rewards or how to become a Green Champion. Victoria Patch our new Comms and Engagament Lead will be on hand to chat and find our more about your interest in sustainability, and fill you in on the various activies and projects you can get involved in. Frazer Browning, our Technical Evaluator, will be giving a presentation around CLES emmissions and Jo Tudor will talk about sustainabilty and procurement.  

Drop in and say hello. We would love to see you there.  

Syndicate Room B /Building:One