Sustainability Zone (17th March 2016)

Sam welcomed everyone to the meeting. Mike Allwright and Julia Kendal (University of Southampton Sustainability Action Officer) were also in attendance.

Sam reported back to the Committee from his meeting with Sarah Pook that the University have now invested their endowment fund and took the Invest Positive policy into consideration when making the decision. The organisation the University have used to manage their investments mostly follow the recommendations of the Invest Positive policy but doesn’t rule out investing in fossil fuels and does prevent investments in nuclear power.

The minutes were approved.

Change Your World Week was very successful with good levels of engagement, particularly Swap Shop. Waste Wars was also really good, despite not being in the Cube.

There was no report.

Change Your World Week – Sam Bailey thanked everyone who was involved and was happy with how successful it was. The next steps are to write a blog about what happened with quotes from those who participated in the events.

Inspiring Women – 84 people attended the event and they had received good feedback from those who attended and were involved.

Live My City – have been asked to do a presentation about the project at a conference in Bristol in May.

Valuing Diversity policy – currently in the process of re-writing the policy as part of the policy review.

Shift Your Stuff – a member of support staff has been recruited to help out with the planning of the project. Amy asked about the MSc student who was looking to use the Shift Your Stuff project as part of their dissertation. Tori said that they are currently setting up regular meetings with the student and the Shift Your Stuff Assistant.

Sam also spoke about project mapping in order to give a permanent record, which will be useful for handing over projects to the next VP Welfare.

Sam Guthrie said that lots of AGMs are happening. There have been some democracy issues with the Conservative and Labour societies, which are being sorted out.

The group were on the concourse all week for Change Your World Week and they are now deciding what to do with the hearts that people have pledged, and are looking at sending them to the Vice-Chancellor.

Amy asked about the future of Invest Positive. Mike said that Green Action or some of the bigger sustainability societies would take responsibility of the project, possibly with a dedicated committee member. Sam suggested that it could go under the E&E Committee to ensure the longevity of the project.

E&E Policy

Amy said that she is planning on rewriting the E&E Policy, to ensure a sustainability strategy because there is little mention of sustainability in the Vision 2020 document.

Sam Bailey suggested setting out values in the policy and then mandating the VP Welfare to create a strategy each year.

Mike suggested writing it in the same style as the Vision 2020 document, keeping the values aspirational and get the Sustainability Committee or VP Welfare to create an action plan each year.

Sam said that it’s important for students to see the results of the policy and not necessarily the actual policy. Shruti said that it would still be useful for the policy to be written in a style that could be understood by those who aren’t familiar with sustainability issues.

Shruti suggested that the policy could implement a standing agenda point to update the Committee on the progress of the policy to ensure that it isn’t forgotten about.