Your Union – Ethical & Environmental

Goldsmiths Students’ Union considers the environmental and ethical implications in all that it does, and we are committed to ‘Ensure ethical & environmental best practice is part of our culture’.

We use Fairtrade tea, coffee and sugar in all our outlets as well as stock a wide variety of Fairtrade good in the G Shop like clothing and chocolate. 

We also have regular campaigns on ethical issues such as our Palestine Twinning Campaign have gained accreditation for your employment practices from Investors in People.

GSU also tries to be as environmentally aware as possible. 

Every year we take part in the NUS Green Impact award scheme which evaluates and praises good environmental practices.  In 2010/11 we achieved a ‘Gold’ standard for the first time.  Some of the things we do already are…

Recycle all glass, cardboard and paper the union uses.  In fact we recycle about 90% of our waste (by weight)

Turn off all unnecessary equipment and have run internal and external campaigns on this (see ‘Links’ below)

Have sent three members of staff on a day’s training to enable them to be the unions ‘Green Champions’

Replaced all of the lights in the customer area in the G Shop with energy efficient LED alternatives, which will save £1,700 and 18 tonnes of CO2 over three years

These are just a few examples, but we realise we can do a lot more.  Please email Ben if you have any ideas on how we can improve!

You can also see what our main environmental impacts are and what we are planning to do about them by downloading Environmental, Ethical and Sustainability Policy at the bottom of this page.

Snap it Off is NUS’s campaign to get unnecessary lights that you can’t switch off switched off! When in the college have you seen outside lights on when it is sunny, lights on in locked empty rooms or too many lights. Through this site you can try and do something about it - go to snap it off to find out more.

Please get in contact if you have any questions or ethical and environmental issues to raise with us.

If you have any issues to raise about the Students’ Union buildings or outlet, or you want to get involved in helping to Green Goldsmiths please contact Ben at ben.macphee@goldsmithssu.org