Environmental Management at the Bloomsbury Colleges
Environmental Management is the process of controlling any potential negative impact on the external environment from the colleges activities. It also means increasing those initiatives which may have a positive effect.
The Bloomsbury Colleges, have committed to improving their environmental performance, and plan to implement a formal Environmental Management System (EMS) to ensure that this desired performance improvement happens.
This system will look at the way the college operates and assess the college’s environmental performance based on current practices. Environmental legislation and external targets are becoming increasingly stringent and it is essential that the college actively seeks to provide a more sustainable service.
The EMS will seek to improve this performance, developing initiatives to reduce energy use and waste, increase reuse and recycling, minimise the impact of travel and encourage sustainable procurement.
An EMS follows a Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. The diagram shows the cycle that the EMS will follow. The first step for the college is developing an environmental policy, which many of the colleges have already established.
The colleges have chosen to follow the BS8555 implementation for their EMS. View the progress of the implementation here.
This website will act as a shared resource where information and best practice can be shared. This will be built upon as the EMS project progresses.
Click to view Environmental Management - procedures
Introduction to your new Environmental Manager – Stephanie Chesters
Stephanie joined the Bloomsbury Colleges on Monday 22nd November in the role of Environmental Manager. This is a shared role across the Bloomsbury Colleges. This role has been set up to encourage more sustainable behaviours across the colleges and to assist in meeting the strict targets set by the HEFCE, for example, reducing carbon emissions by 34% by 2020. HEFCE also encourage institutions to set their own targets for 2020. Failure to meet these targets will have implications for future funding. Although 2020 seems like a long way away now, carbon emissions in the college are currently increasing, so achieving the target is likely to be a huge challenge, requiring staff and students to all work together.
One of the ways the colleges will be working towards sustainability is through establishing meetings of groups of interested parties. This will be a group of staff who are passionate about improving and protecting the environment. The group will initiate and work on projects to make real differences within the college. Stephanie will be joining these groups and welcomes any other staff who are interested in the environment or want to know more about the group for their college to contact her on greenthing@bloomsbury.ac.uk.
Prior to joining the Bloomsbury Colleges, Stephanie worked for a local authority, setting up sustainability initiatives and achieving ISO14001 certification across its activities. ISO14001 is an international standard which recognises best practice for the environment, and is something which Stephanie will be actively working to achieve at the Bloomsbury Colleges.
There are many different roles involved in implementing the Environmental Management System at the Colleges. These are outlined in the Organogram structure for the EMS:
