News
CEF Award 2013
UCC Green Campus Environmental Award
University College Cork’s Green Campus programme was awarded the 2013 CEF Environmental Award (category Public Sector) by Cork Environmental Forum at an awards ceremony at Firkin Crane Cork on 5th December 2013.
This award is one of a number received by UCC for its leadership in environmental sustainability. ‘We are very proud to receive this award tonight in recognition of the student led, research informed and practice focussed green initiatives at UCC’ according to Professor John O’Halloran, Chair of the UCC Green Forum. ‘While receiving international recognition as the world’s first green flag campus’ local recognition is often the hardest and perhaps the sweetest to get and are very proud of what our students, staff and stakeholders have achieved in sustainability’ according to Professor O’Halloran.
University College Cork had been awarded the internationally recognised Green Flag by An Taisce and the FEE in 2010 as first third level institution world wide. In its first full scale re-assessment in April this year, UCC’s status as Green Flag University has been confirmed and renewed.
The Green Flag status is the centre piece in UCC’s overall Green Campus strategy to have the University run in the most sustainable way possible. Green Sustainability is part of the University’s strategic plan. In the Green Campus Committee and Green Campus Forum, students and staff (both faculty and admin) come together to discuss and initiate the most various initiatives and projects. This covers information, awareness raising, teaching and concrete measures in the operation of campus in the fields of Energy, Waste / Recycling, Water, Travel / Commuting and Biodiversity. Hence, the Green agenda extends to teaching and learning, research and operations.
Mark Poland, Director of Buildings and Estates, at UCC said ‘we continue to actively promote a range of sustainable practices and we are one of the recent highlights relates to travel for our students’ staff and commuting through the UCC Commuter Plan’. The share of cycling among staff has doubled within 5 years to 12%. And UCC was the first Irish university to introduce a free Campus bike sharing scheme.
With its College community of c. 20,000 staff and students, UCC is an important part of Cork, the city and county’s society and population. The next generation of high profile work force and decision makers in Ireland gets informed and educated in environmental citizenship and is being shown every day life examples of green operations in their University, leading by example. In this sense, the Green spirit in UCC continuously makes its way from gown to town, for the benefit of environmental awareness in UCC, CorkCity and County.
Prof. John O’Halloran
School of Biological, Environmental
and Earth Sciences
j.ohalloran@ucc.ie 021 490 4653
Mark Poland
UCCBuildings and Estates
mpoland@ucc.ie 021 490 2400