Environment

The Environment Subcommittee exists to help students live more sustainably and get involved in environmental projects around campus. We also aim to represent all students' views on sustainability issues within the University, and seek to ensure that environmental projects and initatives that students identify as important are carried out by the University. Within the Students’ Association, we have eliminated all single-use plastics and updated the Union Sustainability Policy for all events. This upcoming year we will be working to update and rewrite the Union Sustainability Policy and to include environmentalism within the new Union Strategy. We encourage students to recycle, reduce waste, buy locally, choose seasonal and fair trade products, reduce weekly meat consumption and think about the influences these choices have globally.

We are also committed to raising awareness on environmental justice issues and recognizing that social justice is an integral part of sustainability. We’ve run multiple social media campaigns to encourage learning about the intersections of sustainability with social justice causes such as BLM, pride, disability justice and de-colonization. Last year, we also hosted an Environmental Justice Conference, showcasing the different societies within St Andrews who's work links to the social justice dimensions of climate change. We have also worked to ensure social responsibility was a core pillar in the University Strategy (2018-2022), so that environmental and ethical impacts of all major decisions are considered.

We are also working to increase awareness and discussion of the mental health impacts of living through the climate crisis. The newly created position of Wellbeing Officer on our subcommittee is the first step in this process. Additonally, the new position of Education Officer will allow us to expand our work on incorporating environmentalism within student education. 

Green Week 

The highlight of the committee is the annual Green Week, which this year will be take place during Week 3 of Semester 2 . Green Week is a celebration of all the sustainability-related work we do at St Andrews, from our student societies and projects, to academic work. In the past it has included events such as guest speakers, film nights, eco-anxiety discussion groups and more. If you or your society is interested in participating in this year’s Green Week, or would like to share any ideas of events which you want to see happening in Green Week, then please let us know!

Get involved!

Come to one of our events, join the environmental bookclub or volunteer with us on one of our projects! Additionally, all of our subcommittee meetings are open to all students at the University so please come along if you would like to share a query or concern, or simply just to listen, or to get involved!

The best way to get involved is to contact us at [email protected] and to subscribe to our weekly mailing list. We are super excited to meet other students passionate about addressing the climate crisis