
Megan Youngs: Students shouldn’t get overwhelmed by the enormity of the current environmental issues; they need to get vocal and active
The level of bad news about our planet’s health can sometimes feel overwhelming and unstoppable. But everyone can make a difference, in small ways every day. In larger ways with significant sacrifices to our current lifestyles. And by encouraging others to change their behaviour.
I have just spent a really rewarding year trying to encourage a population of more than 20,000 people to reduce the waste they throw away, increase the amount they reuse and to broaden what they recycle.
During my placement year as an Environmental Intern at Sussex Estates and Facilities at the University of Sussex, I was given great autonomy to try new ideas to help students and staff to live more sustainably by way of incremental changes.
I was lucky because in some ways I was pushing at an open door. The campus community wanted to find ways to play their part to help the planet — inspired by the rise in environmental activism and reporting of the Climate Crisis in the media. But they still needed motivation, assistance and education to achieve this and we still have a long way to go.
What I’ve learnt is you need to make sustainability as easy and accessible as possible for everyone. Make sure bins are in the right place, add in water fountains to encourage reusable water bottle use. People want convenience and if that’s not there then they will slip back into their normal habits.
And you have to be consistent with your message and integrate it into the every day. We had a regular green section in our weekly bulletin and sent out monthly newsletters focused on green initiatives within the University.
Within these communications you need to make people engaged about their own behaviour, for example by having a cycle to work league table.
When people know their behaviour is being monitored and they have fun incentives to behave virtuously, they are much more likely to do the right thing — especially if they have been educated well on these issues.
Most importantly, it is vital to get an understanding of who the key green stakeholders are and have regular communications with them. Keeping stakeholders involved helps to deliver company-wide change.
When I look back now on the year, I’m really pleasantly surprised with what we achieved. It took a lot of hard work and buy-in from people across the campus, but I think we can look back with pride with what has been achieved so far.
During my internship I focused on a few key areas:
Restore
I was part of writing the University’s new biodiversity policy which we focused on rewilding and restoring parts of the campus. This allowed me to learn how restoration and rewilding will benefit local wildlife as well as the mental well-being of students and staff.
Reduce
To encourage consumption reduction, I created dashboards showing live half hourly building utility data displayed on TV screens in campus buildings with icons showing good, medium or bad electricity, water and heating consumption and comparisons to last year.
Additionally, I sent out a quarterly newsletter with a league table of recycling tonnage and a sustainability round-up. This healthy competition made students remember they are all accountable for the waste management in their halls.
Most students never see waste figures so it was really good for them to get an idea of the scale of the issue.
Re-use
To encourage re-use, I organised for the British Heart Foundation’s Pack For Good campaign to run on campus allowing students to donate their unwanted items at the end of term. We also supported the Student Union in their Free Shop scheme, gathering donated items for students starting university in September.
I managed the transformation of an unused corner of campus into a WarpIt reusable storage space to make it easier for staff and students to donate unwanted furniture. This saved the University around £1,900 a month by reusing a whole IT room of furniture.
Recycle
I introduced as many recycling streams as I could including duvets and pillows, cigarettes, pens, crisp packets and Tetra Paks.
I also expanded our paper cup recycling scheme, which has doubled the use of reusable cups for hot drink purchases in just a year, to all food outlets on campus.
Communication
I created easy to use documents to send to staff such as a Green Impact welcome pack, a TerraCycle recycling starter pack and A-Zs on waste for both staff and students. These documents allow anyone on campus to have access to sustainability resources and to push the message through their department as well as helping us to understand who our green staff stakeholders are.

Just because my staff role has ended, that doesn’t mean my ambitions to improve recycling, reusing and reducing on campus will end when I return in the autumn to complete my third year as a geography student. I am the founder of the Leave No Trace society which aims to make it easy for students to be involved in waste management and educated on consumption in a student-friendly way.
For the coming academic year, we hope to bring together all of the green student groups on campus and create University-wide eco events. We will invite sustainability professionals to come and talk to students about how we can all reduce our impact on the planet.
We will also be collecting items such as contact lens packaging, biscuit wrappers, textiles and milk bottle tops at the weekly farmers’ market on campus to be recycled at a local community recycling centre.
Leave No Trace’s aim is to bring an interest and focus on sustainability into the daily lives of students through campaigns and seminars. We want to start a conversation between peers by using multiple groups and societies to reach a larger audience.
This is the last chance to reduce the human impact on the planet. Future generations will not be able to undo what happens now so we are protecting our future selves from current actions on the planet.
Older generations have failed to show the brave and decisive leadership required on this most vital of issues so it falls to my generation to push the agenda and to show the way with our actions both big and small.
Megan Youngs is a third year Geography student who spent last year as the environmental intern for Sussex Estates and Facilities. She has been shortlisted for Student Sustainability Champion of the Year at the Green Gown Awards which will be held on Tuesday November 26.


