Reducing the use of plastic water bottles at university events
As the summer months can often be slighlty stifling, we sometimes order bottles of water for volunteers who help people that come to our campuses for events like open days and graduations.
Identifying the problem
After realising that the number of bottles ordered was quite high and contributing to single-use plastic use, we made a change.
The steps taken...
Service Development Manager Kirsty Richardson applied for funding through the WastNott fund and secured some money.
This means hundreds of single-serve sachets used every week during term being binned. Condiments are now offered in bottles which are recyclable at end of life, and breakfast butter and jam are waste free.
It is expected that if this trial proves successful with diners it will be expanded to catered halls on University Park.
With that, she bought more than 300 reusable University of Nottingham water bottles.
Over the next few months, Kirsty and her team helped to hand out the reusable bottles to our helpful volunteers on campus - saving the University from buying lots of plastic water bottles.
Kirsty said: "It was brilliant - not only did we get to do something positive and reduce our plastic usage, but we could also use the reusable bottles as a thank you and memento that people can take with them."