Our commitment

We believe that to be truly sustainable, we must work to regenerate and integrate systems in order to create thriving communities. Our practice of sustainability recognises that environmental, social and economic issues are interconnected and require a holistic approach to tackling these problems.

We’re dedicated to being as sustainable as possible and we’re committed to continuous improvement.

We work closely with the University’s Sustainability Team to help to ensure that the University is as sustainable as it can be. This includes our Officers and staff attending all of the University’s Sustainability Committees, Working Groups and Advisory Groups, as well as having our own Sustainability Policy to guide our work.

Green Impact

Green Impact is a United Nations award-winning programme designed to support environmentally and socially sustainable practice and the Guild is proud to have been awarded 'Excellent' status since 2010. You can see the Guild's results from 2022 year here.

Although it’s called ‘Green Impact’ it’s not just about planting trees or getting recycling in order as the framework takes a holistic approach to assessing the Guild’s environmental impact by considering the social and economic aspects that also play a part in sustainability. The Guild uses the framework to build impactful projects and campaigns around climate justice and equality, curriculum reform, health and wellbeing and much more. Green Impact's vision is that students graduate from further and higher education equipped to deal with the global challenges we face. We believe that students’ unions play a key role in helping students gain the skills, knowledge and experience needed to make this happen. The Guild uses the Green Impact toolkit as a framework for union staff, officers and students to collaboratively address key issues to lead on embedding sustainability and social justice across campus, the curriculum, and wider society. We assess ourselves on the Guild's Knowledge and Understanding, Leadership and Strategy, Partnership and Policy, SU Operations, Campaigning and Influencing, Outreach and Collaboration as well as Outcomes and Self-defined Criteria.

To find out more information or to get involved with the project this year, or to give any feedback or comments, please contact Laela Purvis Greenway, Sustainability Manager on elizabeth.larner@liverpool.ac.uk

Education for Sustainable Development

UN SDG Curriculum Mapping

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 goals created by the United Nations in 2015. The goals work towards eradicating the world’s most prominent social, environmental and economic issues.

The SDG Curriculum Mapping project maps individual course modules against the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs set out a global 'to do' list to meet ambitious targets such as no poverty, zero hunger, inclusive economic growth, equality, diversity, human rights and an environmentally sustainable planet by 2030. We believe that Higher Education has an important role to play in addressing these goals, particularly through the curricula and the development of the leaders of the future.

The mapping project aims to:

To provide information on the extent to which the SDG’s are currently embedded in the University of Liverpool’s curricula.
To identify the modules that are significantly lacking in inclusion of SDG teachings.
Identify areas of best practice which can then be published as case studies that can support improvement in other modules.
Inform module leaders and module approval boards of the potential for the embedding the SDGs into their delivery plans with the aim of enhancing relevance to current issues arising from social, environmental, and economic sustainability.
Provide an opportunity for students to influence positive change in their curriculum and to encourage the University to take a more impactful approach to sustainability in Higher Education.

For students to participate in SOS Curriculum Mapping Training that will develop auditing skills, critical evaluation and analysis that will further their knowledge in SDG’s. A SOS digital badge to be awarded to students and can be used on their LinkedIn and CV’s as recognition for their participation and learning.

Every year, in collaboration with SOS-UK, we ran the Curriculum Mapping project and trained student volunteers to audit their modules. Each year we aim to scale up the project so that we can get an insight into how well the modules are embedded in the curriculum.

Read the 2022 report here. The report is passed on to the Education for Sustainable Development Working Group (a sub-committee of the University Sustainability Board).

Take a look at the modules we mapped here.