Between April 2020 and March 2022, Edinburgh College Students' Association have been awarded over £185,000 as part of the Scottish Government's Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) to deliver the Go Green Project.
This has enabled us to open 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 books and create a circular economy within the college community. Despite delays caused by covid restrictions, since opening the Swap Shops in October 2021, you have donated over 1 metric tonne of items to be reused, 48.5% of our original target within a third of the timeframe. Having launched our Community Fridges in November 2021, you have helped us save 4.4 metric tonnes of food from going to waste - 137.5% of our original target that was set pre-pandemic!
The funding was also used to hire two full-time Sustainability Officers to run the project, who have also delivered 50 climate change workshops to 720 students across the college, increasing the proportion of students describing their knowledge of climate change as 'excellent' or 'good' from 26.5% to 78.5%.
We continued to support students in travelling sustainably through bike maitenance sessions, free equipment, promotional campaigns and a college online liftsharing platform which resulted in a 217.2 tonnes of CO2 equivalent lifetime saving based on students making the switch to lower-carbon travel methods.
But those are just a few of our achievements! Head over to the Our Impact page on the website to find the full project report where we go into more detail about what we did and how we did it, or see the highlights in the video below....