Leeds University Union

#PlasticFree2023

In 2018, Leeds University Union partnered with the University of Leeds on an ambitious campaign to eliminate our use of single-use plastics (SUPs) across our operations. The production of SUPs generates significant carbon emissions, and their disposable nature embeds a culture of irresponsible consumption and waste.

Through our campaign, we sought to reduce our organisation’s carbon footprint and encourage behaviour change towards circular use. Over the course of the campaign, we’ve faced various challenges to meeting this goal, and its taught us a lot about sustainable change as a continuous journey, not a destination.

The union has made huge progress in reducing and eliminating our SUP use, and we are committed to developing and expanding on the work we’ve done. 

Top 3 Learnings

1. I’ve discovered that there are a lot of ‘hidden’ single-use plastics in our operations, and even more so that we generate indirectly through our external partners and suppliers.
2. We learned that our staff and student community share a passion for minimising our environmental impact, but we need to provide more support in terms of guidance towards specific behaviour/consumption change and opportunities to take further action.
3. I’ve learned about the complex, continuous nature of establishing and maintaining sustainable changes which affect multiple teams with unique goals, practices and constraints, especially as these changes require collaboration from multiple stakeholders and a change to culture/norms.