College secures Beyond Gold Green Impact Award

Green Templeton is proud to have achieved a Green Impact Beyond Gold Award. The award was announced at the Vice-Chancellor’s Sustainability Awards at the Divinity School on Tuesday 20 June 2023.

One of only two colleges to achieve this level, this built on previous successive Gold Green Impact Awards. It was received in recognition of how Green Templeton has maintained and improved on exiting sustainable initiatives, as well as three specific projects underway: around heat decarbonisation, energy saving and travel.

In a hat trick of awards, on top of this Natasha Lutz (DPhil Geography and the Environment, 2022) collected the winning project award on behalf of the Net Zero Tracker team and Saadiyah Mayet, (DPhil Health Data Science, 2021) was runner up in the Sustainability Photographer of the Year Award for ‘Midsummer Meadow’.

Green Impact is a United Nations award-winning programme designed to support environmentally and socially sustainable practice within organisations. The ethos is about changing behaviours and making physical improvements to improve our sustainable practises in and around our buildings and college life in general.

Staff, students and fellows have all contributed to the college achieving the Beyond Gold Award with a wide range of initiatives across our estate including in accommodation, catering and events, and promoting sustainable activity among our entire community.

Natasha Lutz is a Data Co-Lead at the Net Zero Tracker, where she manages the growing and international team of volunteers that keep the Tracker’s database up to date. She is also pursuing a DPhil investigating how remote sensing data can be used to map vulnerability to fire, carbon reversal risk, and the current and future role of offsets in national and corporate decarbonisation pathways.

Natasha holds a BSc with Honours in Environmental Science and Economics from the University of Western Australia, and an MPhil in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University. She has worked as an environmental consultant and analyst in Australia.

The Sustainability Photographer of the Year Competition this year invited participants to show the judges what moves them to take environmental action.

Describing her second-placed photo, Saadiyah Mayet said,

‘This quintessential summer scene in Port Meadow was captured in August 2022 at sunset. The horse grazes in the foreground amidst the wildflowers, and the sky is awash with a pink and lilac glow. A double rainbow, a rare and hopeful thing, stretches across the clouds. […]. On the day this photo was taken, the sunset drew people from the neighbourhood to come and to marvel. This magical scene is a beacon of hope, not only in the peaceful coexistence of people and animals, but in the wider campaign for environmental sustainability.’

Green Templeton is committed to a sustainable future, with an ambition to become carbon net zero by 2035 aligned with the wider university’s strategy. The college is driving changes across its estate and activities at the same time as developing a detailed climate action plan to reach this target.

Visit the sustainability at Green Templeton page to read more about our sustainability actions and how you can help. If you have ideas of where we can still improve and take action, please get in touch with college or the GCR community to share your ideas or thoughts on sustainability issues.