Dust is settling from an extraordinary month of climate and sustainability related activities at King’s. This year’s Climate & Sustainability Month saw more members of the King’s community than ever before engage in a festival of environmental events to educate, inform and inspire.
Running over five weeks from late January to the end of February 2024, Climate & Sustainability month saw nearly 2,500 members of the King’s community participate, engage and take action, attending a staggering 47 events that took place across all King’s campuses, which equated to 110 hours to activities.
The month comprised of many returning favourites – including a sustainable clothes swap, a student hackathon, tree planting, and Careers in Sustainability Week – as well as a number of brand-new events, including a climate crisis scenario simulation, community gardening, and botanical snapshots – creating art from plants!
Climate & Sustainability Month not only built on existing momentum for climate action at King’s, but reached brand new audiences through event partnerships and a broader array of subjects and activities. The King’s Climate & Sustainability team also ran pop-up events at all King’s campuses, conversing and engaging with staff and students alike.
Early success was achieved in the month through a partnership event with Beyond Meat, King’s Food partner and producer of plant-based meals, where Ethan Brown (CEO) attended to give a talk on sustainability in agriculture and the food industry. Beyond Meat also provided a selection of over 1,000 free plant-based burgers and nuggets to event attendees, with a vegan influencer in attendance as well as games and prizes to give away.
Another new event saw creative submissions from the KEATS Sustainability & Climate module on display, highlighted as part of a new gallery exhibition entitled ‘Ripple Effects: Voices on the Climate Crisis’, ran for two weeks at the Arcade, Bush House, Strand Campus.
Consisting of poems and posters created to explore a variety of complex topics and issues, the exhibition demonstrated the breadth of insight on complicated matters from across the King’s community, exploring diverse subjects from biodiversity and carbon footprints to societal issues and sustainability. The exhibition saw nearly 1,000 people attend over the fortnight and engage with the interactive elements of pledge boxes and collaborative poems.
One of the highlights of the month saw a panel of King’s COP28 delegates come together to discuss their experiences of attending COP28 in December 2023. The well-attended event saw the delegates each present pitches to demonstrate their own experiences of COP28, before answering audience questions and discussing the achievements, potentials and limitations of the conference.
A partnership with Southwark council saw a day-long Bike Fair at Guy’s Campus, where attendees enjoyed access to free bike repairs and learned about effective security and cycling infrastructure, providing a fantastic array of tips, tricks and information to help staff and students get the best out of their bike.
Events across the month covered a wide array of climate-related topics, often relating to actions and topics laid out in King’s Climate & Sustainability Action Plan, which sets out 14 key impact areas to guide the university’s approach to sustainability and climate change, informed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). A second iteration of the plan, reflecting updates and progress over the past year, was published late February 2024 as part of Climate & Sustainability Month.
Professor Frans Berkhout, Assistant Principal (Climate & Sustainability), called the event a resounding success.
Climate & Sustainability Month is one of the highlights of the King’s calendar. Seeing our students and staff coming together in this way to highlight the importance of climate action in incredibly inspiring. As King’s continues in its march to achieve Net Zero and tackle the global challenges of the climate crisis, it is brilliant to see the strength and commitment of our community to helping create systemic change at all levels.
Professor Frans Berkhout, Assistant Principal (Climate & Sustainability)
King’s Climate & Sustainability Month was devised and run by the King’s Climate & Sustainability team. King’s Climate & Sustainability is a transformative project created to address the climate crisis by embedding sustainability into research, education, operations, policies and services at King’s.