Green Gown Awards 2021: Sustainability Champion – Staff - UWE , Pilar Garcia - Finalist

Pilar Garcia

"Ask not what your university can do for the environment, but what YOU can do!".

An old wartime quote befitting the Climate Emergency we are facing. In my role as (Internal) Comms Officer for the Estates & Facilities department, I saw an opportunity to help dispel the notion that it is the Sustainability team’s job to tackle Climate Change at UWE whilst at the same time establishing some “ground up” climate action among 450+ staff in 60 teams across 16 departments.

My role includes helping to embed our department values and through my advocacy, in Feb 2020, “Sustainability” was given full backing of the Executive and 16 Heads of Departments as the theme for our “Commit” value. The campaign asked, “what are YOU going to do about Climate Change?”. Through discussions, local meetings/surveys (on Teams during lockdown), staff pledged over 100 specific sustainability / carbon reduction actions and targets, half of which are now in progress.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Break big tasks down - I saw the value in capturing and pursuing many small conversations.
2. Use an existing system - I made good use of the departmental team brief process.
3. Adapt and keep going! COVID derailed us but we got going with new working methods.