BSMS has won the gold award in the Green Impact Awards at the University of Sussex. At an awards ceremony held on Thursday 20 June in the Bramber House Conference Centre, BSMS came first out of all the schools who took part at Sussex.
The Green Impact scheme, run by the National Union of Students (NUS), challenges teams to implement actions to improve sustainability and help the environment. Completed actions gain points towards different awards. Over the course of the last year, the University of Sussex has been taking part in the scheme, offered by the charity SOS-UK, which supports and enables organisations, universities, colleges, community institutions and students’ unions all over the country to create more sustainable working environments.
BSMS colleagues pictured with the award, left to right: Inyaki Pueyo-Marques, Oli Steele, Juliet Kneller and Harleigh Angel
Supported by the bespoke Green Impact toolkit, the BSMS team have been implementing a number of changes in areas such as energy use, waste reduction, biodiversity and ethical procurement.
At the Sussex awards, 15 departments gained awards, including five gold awards, six silver awards and four bronze awards.
Out of 645 actions that were taken across Sussex, BSMS were responsible for 337, making the medical school the highest scoring school, team or department at Sussex. Other gold award winners included Educational Enhancement, Social Sciences, Sussex House and the School of Life Sciences.
The award comes during the medical school’s 20th anniversary, BSMS20. Fittingly, one of the key themes of BSMS20 is sustainability and wellbeing, with the anniversary year officially kicking off with Prof Mood Bhutta’s inaugural lecture ‘Surgery: Time for an inclusive and sustainable future?’ in October last year.
Martha Knott, Sustainability Engagement Manager at the University of Sussex, says: “We had been looking forward to revealing all the prizes at the awards ceremony, so it was brilliant to celebrate the amazing efforts made by so many people at the University and reward our Green Impact teams. We're pleased to see so many actively engaged members of the community, dedicated to making positive changes and supporting our efforts to make Sussex one of the most sustainable universities in the world.”
Find out more about the Green Impact scheme here >