Sustainable Development

Did you know that all of Westminster’s Film and Television undergraduate courses are delivered through a partnership with BAFTA albert Education? This provides staff and graduates with the tools and techniques needed to learn about environmentally responsible working practices and their professional relevance. The partnership will help students develop knowledge about sustainability, carbon footprinting and planet placement in programmes. 

Westminster Business School (WBS) is proud to be a signatory of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and a member of the international PRME community.

The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) is a United Nations-supported initiative founded in 2007. As a platform to raise the profile of sustainability in schools around the world, PRME equips today's business students with the understanding and ability to deliver change tomorrow. By joining PRME, a voluntary initiative with over 800 signatories worldwide, Westminster Business School has made a powerful commitment to advancing values such as sustainability, responsibility, ethics in teaching, and research leadership.

To learn more about the PRME community, visit the PRME website.

The Sustainability Fund (formerly known as Green Fund) provides students, regardless of their course degree or level, with the opportunity to carry out short-term sustainability-related projects and interventions through funding that are co-created, designed and implemented by Westminster colleagues and students working in partnership. Students who contribute to project teams also receive a bursary as a recognition of their efforts. 

The fund supports Westminster’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting understanding, awareness, and change in sustainable leadership, and by empowering students and staff to design and create sustainable local projects.

See the Sustainability Fund projects for the 2023–24 academic year ​

Get in touch with us at [email protected].

Dr Pooja Basnett, Dr Linda Percy and Dr Dipankar Sengupta are leading the vertically integrated Cavendish Living Lab, which focuses on building sustainable solutions using AI-based and data-driven methods against global contemporary challenges. Students can choose to work on either or all of the following three strands of the project over two years:

• urban food growing using hydroponic systems
• bioplastics production using food waste from Westminster campuses
• water management

Follow the team's progress via the Cavendish Living Lab website.

Run by the University of Westminster Law School, the Legal Advice Clinic offers free, one-hour appointments where law student advisors listen to a community member’s housing, family, employment or immigration legal problem and provides bespoke advice. With the most diverse student body in the country, our friendly and approachable law student advisors come from all walks of life which means they can relate to a whole range of problems and situations. This free service aims to offer tools, tips and practical solutions to help the community member move forward and feel empowered and supported to take the next step.

The CETI and the Sustainability Team have developed an ESD toolkit. It offers resources, guides, and good practice examples to ensure academic colleagues have all the guidance they need as the University of Westminster continues its commitment to embedding sustainable sevelopment into its educational framework, research and knowledge exchange, infrastructure, and daily operations. 

The ESD toolkit is located within the Online Professional Development for Teaching section of Blackboard and is accessible to teaching members of the University. 

Bass Culture is a research project led by Mykaell Riley within the Black Music Research Unit (BMRU) with an aim of defining Black British music through exploring its historical and cultural significance over six decades.

The key objective of Bass Culture is to change the narrative and associated perceptions of the history of popular music in Britain, recognising the role played by reggae music and its accompanying historical and political narrative in the British music industry, media and scholarship.

The Gene Editors of the Future programme, run by Dr Kalpana Surendranath in our Genome Engineering Lab, offers students within the School of Life Sciences the opportunity to work alongside experts from the basics to the advanced stages of Biomedical Engineering.

Over 170 students from the School are participating in the newest iteration of the programme running from October 2022 to August 2023, impacting their future careers and the wider society. The project also led to the publishing of scientific articles and a presentation at a Royal Society Heads of University Bioscience event.

SCUE and the School of Architecture + Cities has unveiled a captivating initiative - the walking tour project. This project, a resounding success, seeks to co-create sustainability-themed walking tours with students, intricately linking our central London campuses while embracing the SDGs.

In June 2023, SCUE hosted the walking tour through Hampstead Heath ‘A Journey of Urban Wilding’ where participants were immersed in the captivating world of urban wilding. Exploring the principles and practices of sustainable urban development, participants delved into meadows, woodlands, and sheep care management practices. In-situ presentations and workshops provided deep insights into ecological succession, wilding principles, and effective maintenance strategies.

Westminster’s Active Travel Academy has recently published the first-ever research exploring the cycling experiences of UK-based women of colour who are regular cyclists, showing that the interplay of race and gender is a key factor; and stereotypes and lack of representation could reinforce low cycling rates. 

The researchers found that cyclists are already marginalised on car-oriented roads, and the dominant perception of these cyclists is that they are masculine and sporty. Women of colour who do not fit these stereotypes are further marginalised on the road and may struggle to negotiate how they are represented. The study connects to the theory around ‘oppositional gaze’, which discusses how Black women, misrepresented by the dominant media, would think critically to challenge misrepresentation. Read the study titled In the Opposite Lane: How Women of Colour Experience, Negotiate and Apply an Oppositional Gaze to Dominant Cycling Discourses.  
 

To monitor and measure the use of water, the University has installed automatic meter reading devices on the water meters at Marylebone Campus and Alexander Fleming Hall. This allows the University to track water consumption in real time via a live digital portal and compare water use over various durations. We are rolling the installation of AMRs to all campuses.

The University has procured 100% renewable electricity from the grid for nine consecutive years. We are keen to install our own renewables across the Westminster campus. A new combined solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal system was installed at Harrow Halls in 2021, providing self-generated solar electricity and heating to the halls. The estimated carbon saving is 40 tonnes of carbon per annum. We will be rolling out PV installations at other campus sites.

We have made continuous improvements to our University sites by ensuring that energy efficiency and environmental improvements are considered in our capital projects and programme of refurbishments. Specifically, we have continued to upgrade lighting, heating, and building fabric to ensure that our campus operates in the most sustainable way possible and offers a comfortable environment for building users.

Our targets and performance

In 2022 we commissioned decarbonisation energy audits which involved detailed surveys of the buildings and infrastructure that make up Westminster estate and aimed to identify how we can reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions from heating our buildings.

The results of these audits provided us with the information needed to set data-driven net-zero commitments. In our pathway to becoming completely net-zero in 2050, we have set an ambitious target to reach net-zero for Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2035 accompanied by a reduction in Scope 3 carbon emissions by 50% by 2035.

We have reached our previous target set by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 43% between 2005-6 to 2020. We achieved this in 2018-19, reducing our emissions by 56% from our baseline.

Carbon monitoring and certification

We have signed up for Planet Mark’s Net Zero Certification. This programme will measure and verify our carbon emissions and ensure we have credible, science-based net zero targets in place. We have also expanded our energy monitoring system across the University to ensure we proactively make energy reductions and carbon management improvements across our sites. This includes developing a methodology to measure our Scope 3 carbon emissions in a more robust way.

Carbon Reduction Project

Westminster secured a £1.2m grant as part of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme to transform one of our buildings at Harrow Campus by installing a low-carbon heating system, improving the energy efficiency of the building and adding solar panels to generate renewable energy. This will reduce the carbon impact of the building significantly and is a great step towards achieving our net zero ambitions.

We are committed to reducing waste across all campuses. The university encourages re-use and recycling wherever possible and adheres to our legal 'Duty of Care' obligations as dictated by the Waste Hierarchy. 

We have numerous waste reduction and reuse schemes currently in use across campus and plans for the implementation of new waste reduction initiatives.

General waste

Our licensed contractor regularly removes general waste from each of our sites. For the 2024–25 academic year, we aim to achieve a 99% diversion from landfill.

Dry mixed recycling waste

This consists of recycling materials that include paper, cardboard, metal cans and plastic. Caddies to segregate recycling from general waste are located across campus. For the 2024–25 academic year, we aim for a recycling rate of 60% across the University. For more information on recycling, visit the Recycle Now website.

Glass and wood

Our glass and wood waste is collected separately at specific campuses. Recycled wood waste is made into feedstock for animal bedding, made into chipboard or particle board products. Glass waste is recycled into new glass products.

Food waste

Food waste is currently collected for our catering partners across all campuses, and this is soon to be rolled out to campus-wide collections. Food waste is sent to an anaerobic digester which creates biogas to be used as a fuel.

WEEE and IT waste

WEEE is collected by licensed contractors and disposed of efficiently. Our IT waste is disassembled, segregated and reclaimed where possible.

Other waste streams include batteries, confidential waste, clinical and anatomical waste and fluorescent tubes.

Across our campuses, we are working to implement reuse schemes and facilities to make it easier to reduce waste. We are committed to diverting 99% of waste from landfills for the 2024–25 academic year and encouraging the reuse of materials, where possible.

Fashion Conscious Space

The space, based in Harrow campus, has been developed by the Fashion Department to create an area to support sustainable fashion and generate ideas and actions. University of Westminster students can use the space to run events, learn to merchandise stock, and host guest speakers. The space was originally developed as part of the Sustainability Fund.

Clothes bins

Clothes donation bins are present at our Harrow and Marylebone campuses. Any unused or unwanted clothes will be donated to the British Heart Foundation, TRAID or Love Not Landfill. Usable clothes will be sold, and the proceeds donated to charity. 

Partnership with Hazaar 

We have partnered with the buying and selling app Hazaar. Through their app, users can sell pre-loved clothes, books and everyday household items. Hazaar host drop-off points on campus and pop-up markets, which provide opportunities for students to manage events.

Bike donations

Colleagues and students can get rid of their unwanted bikes through the University. We have worked with The Bike Project who collect and refurbish second-hand bikes and donate them to people seeking asylum in the UK. Second-hand bikes can also be purchased through The Bike Project.

Reusable sanitary products

Ethical sanitary products are given out for free at each campus. Reusable period cups are sold at our UWSU shops.

The University of Westminster Investment Management Policy contains a statement on Ethical and Sustainable Investment, demonstrating a commitment to responsible investing. The policy actively screens businesses and companies with links or deriving income from unethical and unsustainable activities such as fossil fuel extraction. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations are accounted for in the selection, retention and realisation of all investments.

The policy also includes investment in organisations and countries that demonstrate a positive approach to individuals, communities and environmental performance and those that develop environmental technologies to reduce the impacts of polluting and destructive industries and climate change.

The University of Westminster hold a responsibility within purchasing decisions to choose the most sustainable, ethical options. We are dedicated to building strong supplier relationships.

Sustainable travel is very accessible in the heart of London, as detailed in our Sustainable Travel Plan. The University of Westminster aims to allow easy access to sustainable travel to all students, colleagues and visitors. Information about different transport methods can be found below.

Walking

Walking is one of the most sustainable ways to travel. It is easy to walk between our central London campuses. Our Harrow campus is located near vast green spaces which allow safe, accessible walking routes.

Cycling

Visit our cycling web page for more information on cycling facilities at each campus. Find out about the location of bike shelters at each campus, cycles for hire and safety and security. We currently have the following opportunities available:

• Check out Peddle My Wheels’ 'Try Before You Bike’ Scheme available with your local council.

• Sign up for cycle skills sessions with your council to gain confidence riding in London.

• Purchase discounted bikes with our colleague CycleShare Scheme.

• Students aged 18 and over can save 25% on the cost of annual membership for Santander Cycles. To activate the discount, sign up with Student Beans.

• Dr Bike is a free drop-in service where staff and students can have their bikes safety-checked and some basic maintenance done. These are organised regularly throughout the year. Keep an eye out on the University of Westminster's events page

Public transport

Discover the most convenient route for you by using the TFL journey planner. Routes can be planned for journeys using the bus, tube, DLR, London Overground, Elizabeth Line and tram. 

Sign up for a 16–25 or 26–30 railcard for a discount on rail travel. This discount can also be applied to your Oyster card. Sign up for an 18+ Student Oyster photocard.

Driving

Check whether your vehicle is exempt from the ULEZ emissions tax if driving in central London. From 29 August 2023, the expanded ULEZ tax is operational at our Harrow Campus. Harrow Campus car park has six electric vehicle charging points, offering 100% renewable energy to charge vehicles.

Our Connected London page offers more information on getting around in London.

Located in the heart of London, it is vital we as a community as mindful of the ecosystems around us. We maintain growing spaces at our Cavendish, Marylebone and Harrow campuses for both students and colleagues to enjoy. This helps to conserve habitats for local fauna and flora.

Throughout the year, we regularly hold gardening sessions available to both students and colleagues. If you would like to be a part of our Growing Spaces group chat, please get in touch at [email protected].

The University's Cavendish Living Lab is a vertically integrated co-creators group focussing on urban food growing, water management, health and wellbeing. Students and colleagues work together to drive sustainable solutions using applied research and authentic learning.

We work closely with our catering partner, Aramark, to integrate our sustainable ethos into all kitchen and catering facilities. In June 2023, we achieved the Food for Life Served Here Bronze Accreditation, in partnership with the Soil Association. We aim to minimise waste across our facilities and promote good practice.

Our caterers have partnered with TooGoodToGo with the aim of reducing food waste across campuses. The 'Wipe Out Waste' campaign aims to eliminate food waste within our campus kitchens by reusing food items which are usually disposed of.

We aspire to undertake new construction development to achieve a BREEAM rating of Excellent as a minimum. For the majority of our refit and refurbishment projects, we will align ourselves to SKA-level standards and other emerging measures of building performance, such as LEED and the WELL Building Standard.

This will be achieved through early collaboration in the development of all building projects, ensuring the best long-term outcomes for our students and colleagues whilst minimising the impact of our built environment on the planet.