The theme for March on our Sustainability Campaign Calendar was “Community Collaboration”. We encouraged our followers on Twitter to get in touch if they had a sustainable project or were running a sustainable business and in the future, we would like to profile sustainable projects around the city.
It was also the last week of Fairtrade Fortnight. The fortnight, which spans over February and March, is an opportunity to educate individuals about what fairtrade is all about and to promote products that adhere to the standard. We were fortunate enough to receive plenty of fairtrade products to giveaway, including Percol coffee, Divine chocolate and a whole hamper of fairtrade goodies from the Lincolnshire Co-op. We ran a competition asking staff and students why they believed fairtrade was important. You can read some of the quotes we received below, the first of which is from the winner of the competition:
“I have always supported Fairtrade, as a contribution to sustainable, fair remuneration for producers in developing countries, to reduce exploitation and assist in producing a secure future for their communities.”
“We shouldn’t expect to have everything we want – and more – whenever we want it without the fair treatment of the people who produce those things. The wider implications of Fairtrade – environment, sustainability and decent working conditions – have a direct impact on the empowerment of producers and on younger generations buying the products on the other end (in the shops here with their parents). The message is clear and it’s so easy to simply buy Fairtrade as a choice that there’s no reason not to. ”
“Fairtrade is an essential mechanism to ensure that those who are producing the products receive a fair deal, this helps to prevent exploitation and results in the money we spend on everyday goods being reinvested in the countries and regions where it is needed most.”
We held events across the fortnight, which included a BYOM (Bring Your Own Mug) event in collaboration with the Library, where we provided free fairtrade drinks to anyone who brought a mug in, information stands across the University and we also recruited our SU leaders to partake in a latte art competition using fairtrade coffee at the Swan. You can view the full schedule below:
Members of our team were also interviewed by Student Life for a short film on fairtrade. Photos of all the activities can be viewed in the slideshow below:
This month, we held an event in which we relaunched the Kitchen Garden. We weeded, seeded vegetables and started to plant the herb garden. New staff came along to the event and were introduced to the concept. Photos are below:
This month was also host to both Environmental Week and Make a Difference week by the Lincoln SU and their campaigns teams! Lots of events were ongoing around campus and we hope to see more next year.
In April we’ll be looking at Biodiversity.