Go Green: CCF Climate Change Project

Edinburgh College Students' Association ran a two year project (from 2020 - 2022) to help students travel more sustainably, reduce their food and textile waste, and to raise awareness of climate change.

If you are a student looking for travel advice, waste reduction advice, or information on how to access our community fridges and swap shops, please visit our Go Green hub here.

EC Students' Association was awarded over £190,000 as part of the Scottish Government's Climate Challenge Fund (CCF). This was the second time we have received this funding - our first project ran from 2018 - 2020 and focused on sustainable transport. We achieved our carbon saving targets more than twice over, and reached over 1200 students through our activities. The 2020-2022 project expanded on this success; it continued to support students in travelling sustainably through cycle training, promotional campaigns, and an online liftsharing platform. However, through a survey we conducted with our students in 2019, we found that waste reduction is also a big sustainability priority that they feel we should be tackling. As such this project established a community fridge on each campus to redistribute waste food, and also set up regular clothes and book swaps. We also worked with lecturers to deliver climate literacy workshops in classes, in order to highlight the links that sustainability has to different subject areas.

Two full time staff members (Claire and Izi) are delivered this project, and there were also lots of opportunities for students to join in and gain experience, both as volunteers and paid part-time staff. We also established a student sustainability society.

Over 1,150 projects across all 32 local authorities have been awarded CCF grants for activities involving energy efficiency, sustainable travel, local food and resource efficiency. Total CCF funding since 2008 has exceeded £111 million.

You can read about the achievements of this project in the video below: