University of London

Reduce the Juice: Connect

Our project is a series of webinars covering a variety of sustainability topics such as, waste, water, and the circular economy. At the end of each webinar, we issue a challenge related to the topic of the webinar a winner is chosen and that winner receives a sustainable prize.

Throughout, we encourage debate and discussion within the webinars and through a Facebook group. In addition, if you complete a certain number of challenges, you receive the sustainability advocate award. Our audience is made up of students and staff from the University of London, University of London Worldwide, University of Surrey, Goodenough College, and London School of Economics.

Originally (pre-pandemic) this initiative was exclusively face-to-face in UK student halls and involved very little staff involvement. We focussed on behaviour change around water and energy consumption and waste production. During the pandemic we adapted to turn it into a series of webinars that allowed participation from a global cohort of students and our staff.

With the potential global reach of 75,000 students and through making it accessible to the universities worldwide programme that includes 50,000 studying remotely in every continent, the programme has been revolutionised.

Top 3 Learnings

1. Co-creation – student engagement always gets a better response when co-created.
2. Students value discussion especially when it involves speaking with students in other countries where their opinions on sustainability are less amplified.
3. When working globally consider varying perceptions of climate, sustainability, and biodiversity emergencies.