World Earth Day - What We Do At SERC

Today is the 50th World Earth Day, celebrated every 22 April since 1970 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. SERC are committed to being environmentally conscious and working towards being greener and more sustainable in everything we do.   

SERC wish to “GoGreen” which includes ethical behaviours, social responsibility, and protection of the environment. SERC wishes to move away from being passively compliant to proactively 'green' and intends to achieve this using a Green Social Change Agenda that has a clear vision, defined strategies and measurable achievements.   

A recent campaign to help the college’s GoGreen efforts, was the launch of “Suited and Booted”. The idea of Suited and Booted is to encourage people to donate unused “smart” clothing, that can be borrowed by the college students for an interview or work, thus reducing the amount of fast fashion waste. The trend of fast fashion has negative impacts on the environment such as water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste, which most of the time ends up in landfill when we no longer want the clothes we rushed out to buy.    

Another initiative is the “Eco Shop” which sells eco-friendly alternatives to everyday items such as bamboo cups to replace your plastic bottles, or hand-made organic cotton dish cloths to do away with plastic sponges. You can see a full list of items available and place orders for said items by clicking here any profit made from the zero shop will be reinvested into the college’s environmentally motivated social enterprises.    

SERC also run an eco-committee to stimulate innovation, experimentation and risk taking and they will become a driving force of our sustainable college. The eco-committee are always interested in getting more students and staff involved, and you can do by contacting the group on gogreen@serc.ac.uk.   

Some other projects include working with a primary school in the Downpatrick area to build an eco-shed out of milk bottles, in Bangor various departments and students are working with the eco-committee to regenerate a courtyard, to make it into a gardening space. The college has received £9,000 from Ards and North Down Borough Council which will be used to purchase waste streaming bins for our Holywood, Bangor and Newtownards campuses.   

Our eco-committee send out newsletters regularly to inform staff and students of new ideas and initiatives and how they can get involved. To find out more about our eco-friendly work, find useful links and to read the colleges eco-blogs, visit https://www.serc.ac.uk/eco    

Apply now for courses commencing September 2020. Visit www.serc.ac.uk to find out how you could be #BetterOffAtSERC