Environmental Society – It's easy bee-ing green

Being Green should be something you strive to do all year round, but if you don’t know how then Imperial’s Green Week is a good place to start! The Environmental Society has an exciting calendar of activities planned from the 12th to the 18th of February aiming to inform and help you to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. With bike workshops, vegan food tastings, clothes swaps, and film screenings you’ll be sure to find something to do.

On Monday and Thursday we’ll be running bike repair workshops so you can fix your bike (for free!) and also learn how to do it yourself. If painting is your thing, we’re also organising an art workshop with LeoSoc. Tuesday will see a film screening of Black Ice about Greenpeace activists protesting the first-ever oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean. In addition to having members of Greenpeace joining us on the evening, we are extremely lucky to have one of the Arctic 30 with us to answer your questions following the film!

On Wednesday there will be a Marine Conservation Society information stall during the day followed by a film screening of Chasing Corals, in the evening.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we’ll be running various workshops in our Secret Garden. Our Secret Garden is where we keep our bees and plant our vegetables, and we’re always looking for people who want to help maintaining it. It’s also a wonderful place to escape the regular hustle and bustle of London! Finally, Friday we’ll be holding a clothes swap in Metric. If you’re looking to unload some of those jumpers you’ve outgrown, or want to look fresh but without the pain of making your wallet lighter then come and find us there!

Aside from Green Week, we have a number of campaigns running with the aim of making Imperial a more sustainable and green campus. Fashion Friendly is our campaign to raise awareness about the pollution associated with clothes production, and also the human exploitation involved. Our campaign Chasing Corals is inspired by the film of the same name and encourages people to reduce their plastic consumption to avoid it going into our oceans.

Many people associate being green with being vegetarian or vegan, and for good reason: animal husbandry has significant detrimental impacts to the environment. Our Less Meat Less Methane campaign teaches people about these by organising a Less Meat Awareness week and petitioning the Union for Meat Free Mondays. We also run a Food Co-op where you can buy locally sourced food with little markup. In short, there’s a lots of ways of getting involved with us and helping to make Imperial a university you can be proud of having attended!

You can find the Facebook page for the Green Week at www.facebook.com/Imperialgreenweek/. We’re looking for volunteers, so if you want to help us out with any of the events contact us at esoc@ic.ac.uk.