How Green Impact will work at your organisation

Both staff and students can make up a team and follow the step by step guide below to get involved!

Green Impact provides a framework, bespoke to your company or institution, to empower staff and students to work together and make positive social, environmental and economic differences on a local level.

After completing an online toolkit of actions tailored to your institution, Green Impact rewards the work of your staff and students with a year-end award ceremony to recognise the action taken over the academic year.

Green Impact allows you to drive forward the cutting edge of sustainability through empowering staff and students. In the UK, students’ unions and their parent institutions are working together to take action on education for sustainable development, reverse the decline of pollinating insects, develop their own socially responsible business models, and much more.

This yield benefits far beyond environmental responsibility. Green Impact brings new people together; it develops more streamlined ways of working and makes huge cuts to energy bills. It also develops essential employability skills and knowledge among students, instilling values which last beyond their time in education. More than that, it creates stronger links on campus between students and staff, and builds relationships with the local community.

Whether your organisation is new to sustainability or doing lots of work already, Green Impact is the perfect way to bring all your sustainability initiatives together, maximising their collective impact.

Together, bottom-up greening action can make a huge difference.

1. Register your team

> Teams sign up to take part in Green Impact; they may be any size and typically are composed of members from a department or floor.

> Assign a primary and secondary team leader but get as many colleagues involved as you can.

2. Sign up to your online Toolkit

> Participants take part in Green Impact by completing actions and recording them in an online toolkit.

> All team members can have access to the toolkit if they wish.

> Actions are grouped into themed criteria such as waste and recycling, energy, water, engagement, procurement, health and wellbeing, biodiversity, and travel.

> Participants progress through these simple, clear and easy criteria, completing multiple actions within the workbook to work towards a bronze, silver or gold accreditation, and any special.

Detailed instructions on how to use the toolkit and how to achieve accreditation are included in the Toolkit User Guide.

3. Get support

> You won’t be alone! With some Institutions, a project assistant will be assigned to help you through the process.

> Your Institutions sustainability team will be able to help you.

4. Submit

> Submit your toolkit by the closing date.

> Your online toolkit will be audited by student auditors towards the end of the year.

5. Audit

> Green Impact participants are properly audited to ensure that they’ve completed their actions to a satisfactory standard before we can award them with a Gold, Silver or Bronze accreditation.

> We provide ISSP approved training to equip new auditors with the skills they need to carry out this important work.

> Becoming a Green Impact auditor provides a great insight into the world of sustainability, and helps you to drive change today while equiping you with valuable skills and attributes for tomorrow.

6. Celebrate

> Teams will be awarded internationally-recognised accreditations.

> Go to the celebration at your end of year Green Impact Award ceremony!

Get involved

Benefits of Green Impact

Sustainability teams

Create a bottom-up community of change makers

Implement sustainability policies and plans throughout the whole organisation

Set up communication channels to people in all departments

Achieve cost reductions and CO2 savings through behaviour change

Students

(education industry)

How Green Impact will work at your organisation

1. Register your team

2. Sign up to your online Toolkit

3. Get support

4. Submit

5. Audit

6. Celebrate

Benefits of Green Impact

Sustainability teams

Create a bottom-up community of change makers

Implement sustainability policies and plans throughout the whole organisation

Set up communication channels to people in all departments

Achieve cost reductions and CO2 savings through behaviour change

Students

Enhance their personal competencies and gain valuable employability skills

Learn how to implement sustainability within an organisation

Feel empowered to do something they are passionate about

Engage with their university or college in a new way

Staff

Experience the fun of working in a team and be part of a wider network

Develop the skillset to create effective change at work

Feel empowered to do something they are passionate about

Have more clarity of what actions to take and have those efforts recognised

Benefits of our support

Access to the online toolkit

Knowledge transfer from 10 years of Green Impact experience at over 350 organisations

Professional advice and training through our team

Exchanges and peer-learning with other participating organisations

Your investment

Capacity to dedicate 1 or 2 people (staff, students or interns) to implement the program, investing 4–8 hours per week.

Creativity and energy to get the best out of the program.

A willingness across the organisation to commit to the program & work towards making it a success

Discount for ACTS members