News Green Week 2023 At Collyer’s 07.07.2023

Numerous events have been taking place at Collyer’s to support Green Week 2023.

Dr Ian Carr, Collyer’s Assistant Director of Faculty for Science, Head of Geology, and Environmental Science explained: “A number of initiatives and activities at Collyer’s and other local colleges including Reigate and Varndean, have actively supported Green Week. It is wonderful to see that many of the projects are long term and sustainable.”

Dominic Robeson from Biffa met up with Collyer’s Ian Carr, Stuart Emery, and Kirstie Mitchell to donate bee attracting seeds to be sown in Collyer’s wildflower meadow. Dominic, who also helped set up the meadow last summer, even donated a bee hotel!

Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd, Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham Trent University, gave a presentation called Fashion Fictions: Imagining Sustainable Worlds, which was live streamed via Zoom to several colleges. Dr Twigger Holroyd talked about imaginative ways to think about fashion to try and cut down its environmental impact, and the projects she has been involved in to get people to change their relationship with fashion to make it more sustainable. Dr Twigger Holroyd promoted the notion of ‘sufficiency rather than efficiency’.

Sussex green Living brought their Inspiration Enviro Station to Collyer’s to engage students in discussions about climate change and sustainability, and to encourage them to use re-fillable bottles rather than one use plastics. In addition, the Community Fridge were giving away food that otherwise would have been thrown away, this proved very popular!

Collyer’s Business teacher Claire Savage ran a workshop where she outlined the environmental impact of cosmetics beauty products and suggested alternatives that have a low environmental impact. She gave students the opportunity to try out some of the alternatives, to help them make a choice about whether there was another equally good product available, with less of an environmental impact.

The Collyer’s Young Enterprise Team held a stall selling their car air-fresheners made from recycled nail varnish bottles. The product, which they have marketed as ‘Carlogne’ is available in a range of fragrances!

Ian Carr, who is also Collyer’s Sustainability Co-ordinator, added: “We ran a wear green for Green Week, where we encouraged staff and students to wear green and raise awareness of environmental and sustainability issues. In addition, Karen Stanton (RCU Manager – Collyer’s Student Union) and the RCU team of students organised a ‘clothes swap’, where students were asked to bring in hardly worn items and swap them for another good quality item. This generated a lot of interest and is now planned to be a regular event.

“Collyer’s library team encouraged students to donate £2.00 for one of the RSPB’s wonderful pin badges. The badges were available in the library all week and I also took donations from students while promoting other Green Week events. More than £200 was raised to help protect vulnerable environments for birds and other animals living on the reservations. A big thanks to the library staff for supporting this, and for their own generous donations as well!”

Environmentalist Nicola Peel also gave an inspirational talk about her time working with indigenous people in the Amazon Rainforest, talking health and environmental problems caused by oil spills. She spoke about how we can learn from nature to live more sustainably, and the circular and ‘donut’ economy.

Andrea John, Collyer’s Vice Principal (Pastoral) said: “Enormous thanks to Ian and everyone involved for making Green Week 2023 such a spectacular success.”