20 years of Green Impact Students’ Unions: Celebrating the GISU awards for 2025-26

For returning after a few years off and receiving the Excellent accreditation every year since!

For working hard at a Good or Very Good level until 2017, and then receiving Excellent almost every year since!

For taking part in GISU for all 20 years, and maintaining Excellent since 2016!

The Green & Blue Space
It’s a sustainability hub with a proud 13-year history of empowering students to create positive environmental change. The Space’s initiatives span the circular economy, food security, waste reduction, biodiversity and more. These include the Fair Share (a circular economy project), the Food Hive (a zero-waste shop), the Community Garden (a permaculture growing space), and the Community Food Initiative, which redistributes surplus food to reduce waste. 
 
Over the past 13 years, the Space has hosted more than 470 gardening sessions, recorded thousands of volunteer hours (including over 5,000 hours in the last academic year), re-used, re-sold or recycled more than 50 tonnes of items diverting them from waste streams, and prevented over 700 tonnes of CO2e emissions through the Union’s carbon insetting projects. The project is led by student volunteers and our 5 student staff members and is financially sustained through revenue generated by the Food Hive and Fair Share, making it a unique, student-run model that is one of our proudest achievements as a Students’ Union. 

For the sheer amount of commitment, capacity and resource given to GISU each year – this year, they achieved 400 points, including 8 impactful campaigns in just one academic year! 

Rosa champions sustainability across both The Students’ Union at UWE, UWE Bristol and across Students’ Union’s nationally. She takes an intersectional approach to sustainability and has overseen the strategic leadership of projects relating to the climate crisis, biodiversity, student welfare, and liberations. Her dedication this year has encouraged the senior leadership team to adopt a new ‘Ethical Purchasing Guidance’ document, supported the university in creating a new anti-racism strategy, and secured the Union’s highest green impact accreditation score to date at 99.7%. She has also driven city wide campaigns in both drugs & alcohol harm reduction and anti-sexual violence, helping to drive these cultures throughout both the university and the areas surrounding it.

Rosa is the first to offer support to other Unions and Associations that approach us asking for guidance when implementing projects similar to our own, and has spoken at conferences, workshops and catch ups across both Green Impact and Drugs and Alcohol Impact.

This group of students have shown exceptional leadership on sustainability this year , winning the inaugural Sports, Societies and Colleges Sustainability Competition, scoring incredibly highly. Here’s a summary of their achievements:

•  Set up a 9-person sustainability committee

• Raised £719 for Movember and over £100 in a plant-based cake sale for MacMillian

• Organised a sewing cafe, paint and sip and knit and natter events

• Organised 63 sober socials for students to get involved in such as a craft event, plant pot painting and a dance class

• Created a sustainable transport plan for their Exec members.

• Introduced a confidential texting-based Welfare Number

• Collaborated with a local eatery to provide discounts to all students who eat plant-based at their restaurant on campus

Sam is an Environmental Management MSc student who has led the Fossil Free Careers and Plant-based Universities campaigns over the last two years.

This year, she has:

• Successfully set up Lancaster’s Fossil Free Careers campaign, getting first-time campaigners involved and submitting a motion to Union Assembly, which was successfully passed into Union Policy

• Organised a workshop with Solid Sustainability Research to provide students with the tools to uncover Lancaster’s institutional ties with the fossil fuel industry and arms trade.

• Met with the Director of Employability and other staff to lobby on sustainable careers, and excluding destructive industries

• Led Lancaster’s Plant-based University campaign

• Organised the first Big Green Fair in collaboration with LUSU Green and a bunch of different societies and campaign groups!

• Organised a Veganuary Gathering, lobbying the University to provide free catering for all those in attendance

• Cooked and distributed free plant-based waffles every week in Michaelmas term to encourage students to join the PBU campaign

• Successfully lobbied LUSU Green into going 100% plant-based in our events

• She volunteered at LUSU Green, helping us plant a micro-woodland, helping us remove rhododendron, and helping shape a sustainable Morecambe bay for 2050 at our Green Solutions Event

When she graduates this summer, she is leaving behind a wonderful legacy, and has single-handedly built up these campaigns and communities from the ground. Her legacy will last a very long time in Lancaster.

For bringing enthusiasm and commitment in their first year back working on GISU!

Highly Commended:  

Enactus Society, Birmingham Guild of Students (Student Leadership: Group)

Elvira Surovsteva, Fife College Students’ Union (Student Leadership: Individual)

Scott Barker, Lancaster University Students’ Union (Sustainability Hero)

Imperial College Union 

Hull University Union

University of Ulster Students’ Union

University of Westminster Students’ Union

Canterbury Christ Church Students’ Union

Fife College Students’ Association

Northumbria Students’ Union

University of the West of Scotland Students’ Union

Swansea University Students’ Union

University of Bath Students’ Union

Bucks Students’ Union

Lancaster University Students’ Union

Liverpool Guild of Students

University of Birmingham Guild of Students

University of Stirling Students’ Union

University of the West of England Students’ Union (UWE)