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Aston Go Green Awards

The Aston Go Green Awards were designed to give our staff the opportunity to get involved with our efforts to improve environmental performance and awareness at our University.

In our first year, we had 15 teams sign up on behalf of their departments, with some very succesful results. Our 2010 Gold Award winners were the Languages and Social Sciences Office, who also scooped our Innovation Award.

The competition's second year was launched on Monday 14th March 2011, giving those teams who have already competed the chance to improve their score and allowing those teams who missed out in year 1 to get involved.

As of Monday 14th March 2011 teams could sign up and receive a workbook to be completed. All information is available through the Blackboard Go Green Awards module. The workbook helps you to focus on some of the easy steps you can take to improve sustainability in your department, focusing on actions for energy saving, recycling, paper reduction, etc.

The deadline for completion was Friday 8th July 2011. The workbooks are then graded and the departments ranked against each other – the perfect opportunity to see how you measure up and to get some recognition for your department!

Sign up for the Aston Go Green Awards 2012 by contacting the Environment Team – environment@aston.ac.uk

For more information, check out the FAQ's below...

Go Green Awards

FAQ's

  1. How does it work?
    Go Green is an environmental accreditation scheme. It comprises a list of criteria with each delivering a practical action that will help your department to reduce its impact on the environment. Each criterion is worth a score of  between one and ten marks. Each score has been calculated by adding a value for the potential of the criterion in protecting the environment to a value for the difficulty in implementing it. Departments simply work through the list of criteria marking those that they meet, in doing so collecting the points along the way. 

  2. How are the awards calculated?
    All entrants will be awarded one of four qualifications: Working towards accreditation; Bronze standard; Silver standard; Gold award. To gain the Bronze standard, departments need to have met all the criteria marked as Bronze essentials - these are the actions that we think could and should be done as a minimum.
    To gain the Silver standard, departments need to have met all the Bronze essentials plus all criteria marked as Silver essentials. The highest scoring department(s) will receive the Gold award.
    There will also be one bonus prize; to encourage departments to think outside the box with their greening efforts, The Go Green Innovation Award will go to the department that has the most innovative and successful environmental scheme as outlined in the open ended criteria "Innovation".

  3. What happens if more than one person signs up from one department?
    We will only register the department once, but the workbook will be sent to all the people who have requested to sign up and these individuals will be put in touch with each other so they can work together and to ensure that there isn't any duplication. However, you might find it easier to discuss signing up with your colleagues first so that you can nominate a champion for the team.

  4. Will all departments be measured the same, regardless or size or staff?
    We plan on measuring all departments equally, because most of the criteria are not dependant on staff numbers. However, if you feel that your department would be at a disadvantage, then why not contact a colleague and see if two smaller departments would like working together? This would work particular well if you share office space or have similar responsibilities. As long as you inform us of this, we can look into it and if it doesn't disadvantage other teams, then we will be happy for you to work like this.

  5. Is this the same for the schools?
    This goes the same for schools and school groups - recognising that the schools are different sizes, we would suggest initially that the school groups work separately to encourage a bit of healthy competition. However if you feel that this won't work for you, please contact us and we can discuss this.

  6. When is the sign-up deadline?
    We ask that all departments have signed up before the end of January. However, the earlier you sign up, the earlier you'll receive the workbook and be able to get started. We have tried to design the timeline so that all departments will have at least two months to complete the workbook, but those that sign up early will benefit from the added early bird advantage!

  7. What is the deadline for completing the workbook?
    The deadline is 5pm on Friday 10th June, 3 months from the launch of the competition. The workbooks will then be marked, checked and, in some cases, audited, before the Awards are given out.

  8. How much time will we need to complete the workbook?
    The workbook shouldn't take up too much of your time. It is designed to be completed by the department, not by an individual so the workload should be shared by a number of people. Almost all of the questions can be answered with a simple Yes / No so it is fairly simple to complete. We have tried to ensure that those questions which require more time or work to complete are not 'essential' criteria, so we do not penalise those departments which have started from further behind.

  9. Will we get any help with completing the workbook?
    Yes. The Environment Team are always available to answer your queries, contact them via email on environment@aston.ac.uk. There is also a Blackboard module which you can use to pick up some hints and tips and ask any questions through the Discussion Forum.

You will find further guidance on how to complete specific sections and questions on the first pages of the workbook, but please contact us in the meantime if there is anything that you would like to ask.