The UK Higher Education (HE) sector emits 3 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, and is responsible for over 1 million journeys daily. As a student campaign group we need to look at ways in which our university can radically reduce its environmental impact.

The Green League Table was released in 2007 and helps to put into perspective how Essex Uni's green performance is when compared to other UK universities.

Essex came 66th out of 102 institutions being awarded an environmental 2.2 - Must try harder!

Last academic year we began to run the Go Green campaign which aims to take a holistic look at the environmental impact of universities and make long lasting changes that have been shown at more successfully green universities to lead to better performance overall.   Click here to read the Go Green action guide

We launched the Go Green campaign in Spring term '07 after having a great workshop on the campaign at the end of the autumn term with lots of enthusiastic people and lots of ideas. The main issues were the lack of plastic recycling on campus, the lack of recycling in on campus accomodation and the university's decision to switch from a green energy contract back to a brown one.

The next thing to do was to have a making-stuff session! We made banners and t-shirts and the beautiful Tesco bag dress!

Then we started collecting signatures for the petition at Refreshers Fair and held a Go Green day along side the North Essex Vegan Society who highlighted the ecological impact of our diets. The campaign is on going so come along and get involved!

For more information on the campaign

Have a look at what Warwick People and Planet's GoGreen week