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Sustainability

Newham College is committed to raising environmental awareness and promoting individual and collective effort in the implementation of sustainable practices across all areas of the College’s operation and academic activities.

Sustainability Committee

The College’s Sustainability Committee has the primary purpose to drive and deliver sustainability initiatives across the College by following the Climate Action Roadmap for FE Colleges with the goal of achieving Net Zero by 2030. It has also identified 5 areas of sustainable activities:

What is sustainability?

Sustainability means “Meeting our own needs without compromising the wellbeing of future generations to meet their own needs”.

It is a holistic approach that considers the integration of ecological health, social equity, and economic growth, to create resilient communities for this generation and generations to come.

What about Net Zero?

Net Zero refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by removal from the atmosphere. The term ‘net zero’ refers to the state at which global warming stops.

What have we done so far?

LED lighting

Newham College has invested in sustainable alternatives each year. In 2020, the Estates Department changed the old lighting to improve energy efficiency at East Ham and Stratford campuses. Each building (except Y Block) has been able to substantially reduce carbon emissions by completing LED lighting upgrades across campuses. Thanks to this initiative, around 160.14 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been saved from being released into the atmosphere in one year after implementation.

New boilers

Last year, old boilers were removed and disposed of and new boilers installed in all our buildings. While these new boilers are still dependent on fossil fuel, they are considerably more energy-efficient, producing less CO2 than the boilers they replaced.

Electric vans

Our old diesel and petrol vans were replaced with two new electric vans in February 2021, improving air quality by producing zero tailpipe emissions, as well as eliminating harmful carbon and other pollutant emissions from fuel.