Go Green Project: Our Impact
Between 2018 and 2022, Edinburgh College Students' Association have been awarded over £350,000 as part of the Scottish Government's Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) to deliver the Go Green Project.
Our first project ran from 2018-2020 and focused on sustainable travel. We achieved our carbon saving targets more than twice over, and reached over 1200 students through our activities.
Our second project which started in March 2020, expanded on this success. We continued to support students in travelling sustainably through bike maintenance sessions, free equipment, promotional campaigns, and an online liftsharing platform, but we didn't stop there! Through a survey we conducted with our students in 2019, we found that waste reduction was also a big sustainability priority that they felt we should be tackling. As a result, our second project also established a Community Fridge on each of our four campuses to redistribute waste food, and set up permanent Swap Shops to allow the reuse of clothes and book and create a circular economy within the college community.
Since opening the Swap Shops in October 2021, over 1 metric tonne of items have been donated to be reused, 48.5% of our original target within a third of the timeframe. Having launched our Community Fridges in November 2021, we have saved 4.4 metric tonnes of food from going to waste by redistributing it from local supermarkets and food producers.
During both projects we worked with lecturers and Learning Development Tutors to deliver climate literacy workshops in classes, in order to highlight the links that sustainability has to different subject areas. Over the course of the two projects, 824 students received climate literacy training tailored to their course.
Two full time staff members were employed to deliver this project, and the funding also allowed the employment of 15 part-time student staff members over 4 years, and further support to a network of volunteers.
Over 1,150 projects across all 32 local authorities were awarded CCF grants for activities involving energy efficiency, sustainable travel, local food and resource efficiency and total CCF funding since 2008 has exceeded £111 million.