Sustainability matters
Friday, 05 March 2010
By taking simple steps like turning off lights, computers and printers in the evenings and at weekends, some areas of the University have reduced electricity consumption by 5 ÔÇô10%.
You can make a personal difference to help the University save electricity. The University's Environment, Energy and Sustainability Team (EEST) have been working hard to prove that every one of our actions - no matter how small - can collectively make a massive difference.
"By taking simple steps like turning off lights, computers and printers in the evenings and at weekends, some areas of the University have reduced electricity consumption by 5 -10%. When you consider we spend over £2.5 million on electricity as an organisation every year, we could be saving up to £250,000 just by remembering to turn things off when they're not used!"
So how did the team arrive at these figures? They are currently running a series of pilot projects around the University, focusing on reducing our energy consumption. These range from installing high-tech monitoring equipment in buildings to creating their own Facebook group to communicate with everyone (search for EEST@Reading).
In the past six months, the team has managed to increase the percentage of the University's waste that is recycled to 37.4% - just 2.6% shy of their 40% target for the academic year 2009/10.
To read more about the excellent work that EEST have been involved with over the last few months, you can view the full Spring 2010 edition of the ‘Sustainability matters' newsletter on the Clean and Green website.