Sustainability

Student Project Grant: 2020-21 recipients

We are delighted to announce the student-led projects that will be receiving support this year.

The Social Responsibility and Sustainability Student Project Grant, delivered in collaboration with Edinburgh University Students’ Association, provides funding of £500 for University students to develop and implement projects and initiatives that will promote awareness and implement actions around social and civic responsibility issues.

Poster presentations from each of the student-led projects will be made available in March 2021.

plant society

Concrete to Jungle

The Plant Society, is a place for students and non-students of all backgrounds to develop and share their passion for plants, with the aim to increase the involvement of plants in peoples’ lives.

They hope to achieve this goal by encouraging students to take their first steps to growing their own food. The project will demonstrate how simple a task this can be by showing our members how to make and maintain indoor herb gardens. The society will host craft events over Zoom during which we will instruct our members on how to make their indoor herb gardens.

 

Conscious Change Workshops

Conscious Change is a student-led initiative that promotes changes to reduce the environmental impact of day-to-day life, through workshops, events, and online information.

They are delivering a range of online workshops that will teach people how to create everyday products in a sustainable manner from scratch, by reusing, combining and transforming materials. Each workshop will have a specific theme, and will use local materials and be zero waste. The aim is to upskill participants and encourage people to live more sustainably.

 

ConveRACEions

ConveRACEions is a project set up by PhD students within the School of Health in Social Science. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this group aims to create a space for all of us to learn, discuss, reflect and actively work towards equality, diversity and social justice within academia.

In collaboration with the Equality and Diversity Committee of the School of Health in Social Science, we have worked on an initiative to discuss and dismantle barriers to racial equality, as well as ways of moving forward from here. The team will invite monthly guest speakers to give one-hour-long talks on their research and/or experiences with racial and equality issues within (and outside) academia.

 

Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show

The Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show is a large student-run event that has raised £48,000 for charities over the last four years. The aim of the initiative is to showcase innovative and collaborative project of artistic talent.

The grant will be used for a new Thrift Initiative, a new platform designed to raise awareness of the perils of the fashion industry, its environmental destruction and the inequality inherent within it. Through this platform, we will facilitate slow fashion practices through our pop-up shops and online shops, as well as encouraging shopping habits that support local, sustainable and small businesses. All the money raised is donated to our two partner charities. 

 

Free Libraries Community Project

A group of students want to bring sustainability and literature together to enhance the environment and the local community. The project will set up free small scale libraries around different sites on campus, when students are back on campus, to enable people to access free books.

The idea is that people take the book that they want to read, and replace it with another of their own, in order to enable a self-sustaining circulation of literature. The project will promote circular economy thinking, responsible consumption, community inclusion and equal access to knowledge and culture.

Logo for Marine conservation society

 

Ocean Advocates – Beach Cleans

The Ocean Advocates Society brings together students with a shared passion for protecting the world's oceans. The society aims to provide a balance between academic lectures, fundraising events for our chosen conservation charities, beach cleans, engaging in politics and educational workshops.

The project aims to bring people together by organising beach cleans, when Covid-19 restrictions enable. The grant will be used to provide proper equipment, including health and safety. Beach cleaning has an immediate visible impact on the level of the City and encourages active citizenship. It is inclusive of a range of students who share a desire to make a difference. In this way, beach cleans help to build a community of students aware of their surroundings and passionate about environmental topics.

ROBOCEAN

The ROBOCEAN project brings together students from different academic disciplines with a shared passion of protecting marine ecosystems and climate change. Seagrass meadows play an important role in combating global warming as they are responsible for 11 per cent of all saltwater CO2 storage, and are critical to marine biodiversity.

The team seeks to improve the efficiency of ongoing seagrass meadow restoration efforts by mechanising the process, by designing and manufacturing a remotely operated underwater vehicle that is capable of sowing seagrass seeds along the seabed. ROBOCEAN’s long term goal is to engineer a fully autonomous fleet of underwater vehicles to support the growth of marine ecosystems.

 

thebox.gallery

To reduce unnecessary waste and encourage reuse, students from the Edinburgh College of Art, aim to build a miniature contemporary art space, so students can test, display and document scaled work.

The space will make it significantly easier for students to test large installations, helping students arrive to an idea worth upscaling that will only require the materials and resources needed for a final piece. 

Wind turbines on a mountain at sunset, with clouds below the mountain peak

 

Winds of Change

Winds of Change is a student-led project that is building a 1kilowatt wind turbine from scratch to supply clean, free energy to the Cyrenians Community Garden. Cyrenians is a charity that tackles homelessness, poverty and illness in the local community.

The second part of the project involves manufacturing and designing a flat-pack turbine to be used in workshops and classrooms for young people and children, to educate them on clean energy, with local youth charities and organisations. The children will be able to assemble the turbines themselves under guidance and supervision.

 

Young People’s Guide to COP26

The project, as part of Yale’s Global University Climate Forum, is a free, accessible guide to COP26 and a brand-new service that will help demystify confusing parts of climate change policy and inspire young people in the process. The overarching goal is to educate young people, specifically students, on COP26 and climate change policy through a combination of educational videos, infographics and an integrated social media campaign.

The guide will feature leading academics and experts in the field and we will take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on own specialisms to engage students from a diverse range of backgrounds. The project will draw on personal expertise, as we believe students are the best group to be leading creation of an educational resource specifically for students. 

Find out more

SRS Student Project Grant: more information

SRS Student Project Grant: previous winners