In the modern age, it's absolutely essential for a university, its union and its students to be environmentally responsible: this is the aim of GreenPad. To promote sustainability, they have declared next week (8-12 February) 'Green Week' and plan to hold a variety of different events to help raise awareness.
To run us through the schedule we spoke to GreenPad's coordinator Mark Spence. He told us the week will begin with a Swap-Shop on the Tuesday in Stoke and Wednesday in Stafford. Here students can bring unwanted Christmas presents, general bric-a-brac and clothing to trade in, whereas otherwise these things might be thrown away or left unused. The aim of this, Mark revealed, was to "reduce landfill, as well as encourage people to recycle and reuse stuff."
On Thursday there will be a nature reserve day, where 15 lucky students will get the opportunity to develop wildlife habitats around the university. This will also be attended by Jim Bentley of the estates team.
Friday is set to be GreenPad's biggest day of Green Week as they set up the 'For the Love of' stall. Here the students are encouraged to tell the stall something that they love in their own life and the experts at the stall will explain how this particular thing will be affected or even ruined by climate change. Football, for example, would be affected by flooded pitches, tea and coffee would be affected by ruined crops.
"It's just linking in how climate change affects a wide variety of things," Mark said. "The 'For the Love of' stall is always popular. We ran a stall last year and it was really successful."
The stall will be set up in the Ember Lounge and information will be available for students to pick up, as well as the much-loved freebies.
On top of GreenPad's involvement, several other groups have very kindly agreed to participate. The catering teams at both Stoke and Stafford are running offers throughout the week and promoting the environmental responsibility they already demonstrate - such as only using Red Tractor approved red meat.
Food and drink offers will include cheaper eco-mugs when bought with a tea or coffee, special prices for vegetarian main meals and a free piece of fruit for anyone who buys a Fairtrade orange juice or coffee.
Holdcroft Renault have also lent their support as they will bring an electric car on campus to help educate students and staff on green transport. The team will visit from their Leek Road dealership on Tuesday outside Brindley.
We asked Mark how he expects students to engage with Green Week and how the idea came to fruition:
"There's something in sustainability for everybody, which can impact their lives in any way they can imagine. The nature reserve day will appeal to the biologists, the engineers will like the electric car and so on.
"We've been organising this over January, but the idea for Green Week has been around for a couple of years now. The idea is just basically to raise awareness of sustainability issues especially after having the recent climate conference COP21 [21st Conference of Parties] last year."