IT crowd slows down City University’s green moves
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Environmental campaigns at City University (CU) are being held up by the university’s IT department, according to a senior member of the university’s Sustainability Group.
David Sims, head of the faculty of management and Professor of organizational behaviour, told The Four Corners: “We know IT has been behind the curve on this. IT has been a bit slow in taking sustainability issues seriously.”
Over the last year, CU has made a lot of progress in environmental initiatives. It was named ‘Best Environmental University’ at the Archant Environmental Awards and energy manager Stephen Kinnell was awarded the ‘Green Champion 2008’ title at Islington council’s annual sustainability awards.
Despite recent efforts City University occupies rank 105 out of 118 on the nationwide Green League table, equalling a ‘Fail’ grade. Mr Sims said: “We were very ashamed of this result.”
The annual environmental league table is produced by student activist group People + Planet and takes into account issues such as Fairtrade, ethical investment and energy sources.
Members of the CU sustainability group, including Mr Sims and Mr Kinnell, have pointed out that the extremely low ranking was partly due to a lack of data about the university’s environmental initiatives when the league table was being compiled. They expressed hope that the university would fare much better on the next league table, due to be published in June.
But the IT department might be holding up vital progress. The department’s sustainability champion Andrew Lack told The Four Corners: “There is much to do and we have run out of time.”
Seemingly simple IT measures to improve the university’s environmental performance are taking years to be put into practice. Printing, for example, is a contentious issue. Printers in most student computer labs are set to single-sided, full-size printing and every print job comes with a cover sheet.
Many students are unhappy about the printer default settings, especially the cover sheet. Jaswinder Kaur, a postgraduate student at the School of Arts, said:
“It seems like such a waste. I don’t understand why they still haven’t changed it. It can’t be that difficult.”
CU students’ union vice-president Khaleda Boshir, who has been lobbying the IT department on sustainability matters, said that the cover page issue had been raised several times over the years. Ms Boshir said: “We always get told: ‘It is going to happen soon’. But then nothing happens. It’s really annoying.”
Mr Kinnell, who heads the university’s Carbon Management Project, came to the defence of the IT department: “Some apparently simple measures we could introduce tend to have several unseen issues behind them that make them much harder to implement. “
There is more to the cover sheet dilemma than meets the eye, according to Ian Dickinson, IT operations manager. The university abolished cover sheets in the academic year from 2002 to 2003 in an attempt to reduce paper waste. Paradoxically, the result was an increase in paper use.
Mr Dickinson explained: “We did some investigating and found that we were suffering from people in a hurry.” Without cover sheets students frequently mixed up their print jobs and took away other people’s pages, leading to double printing and unwanted pages being discarded across campus.
Mr Dickinson argued that on-demand and double-sided printing could be the answer: “There is the smallest possible wastage with that system and we are testing it now in some staff areas before running it out to the much more demanding student environment, possibly next academic year. But there are some bugs to sort out first.”
In total, paper accounts for only 0.05 per cent of City University’s carbon emissions. Nevertheless, Nikhil Raj-Cumlajee, president of the students’ union, believes that even minor issues deserve to be tackled:
“You got the micro issues and you got the macro issues. The macro issues will make the bigger difference in the long run. But the micro issues are the ones the students are always going to notice. In terms of showing the students that something is being done, the micro issues are really important.”
Mr Raj-Cumlajee added that he believed the university would do much better in the next Green League table: “The university is doing a hell of a lot. There is no way we are going to be on the bottom of that list.”
