This Monday, NUS hosted a parliamentary reception to celebrate ten years of its sustainable behaviour-change programme, Green Impact. 

Green Impact is NUS' sustainability accreditation scheme - which now operates in students' unions, universities, colleges, hospitals, fire stations and other institutions, not only in the UK, but abroad too!

The reception at the Houses of Parliament gathered an array of over 200 of Green Impact's stakeholders and supporters - from students' union staff advocates, to NUS officers past and present, to sponsors and university staff. Guests included environmentalists Jonathon Porritt and Tim Smit, James Bridge from UNESCO UK, Judy Ling Wong from the Black Environment Network, Tim Balcon from the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, prominent student activist Esha Marwaha, Samiah Anderson from Rethinking Economics, and Lili Sarkadi from the NUS/Friends of the Earth My World My Home project - among many others.

Invitees listened to a series of both interesting and entertaining speeches; outlining the history of Green Impact, its place in the wider student and environmental movements, and the evolution of NUS' sustainability work overall.

First up was Baroness Jenny Jones - the first Green Party life peer in the House of Lords - who spoke about the inextricable links between sustainability and social justice. "Control over resource-use is not fairly distributed," she said, "and neither is the way that environmental impacts are felt." Jenny highlighted that injustice relating to environmental and climate change is felt within generations, as well as between them. Addressing those in the room, she said: "Our generations have benefitted from the huge upsides of rampant consumerism, but the price of buying happiness today is unhappiness for the next generation." She ended on a positive note: "The younger generation have a greater sense of this than most who have gone before them. NUS has an important role to play to play by coming up with the positive and practical ways that students can make a difference," she concluded.

Jenny then welcomed Peter Ainsworth, board member of the Environment Agency and UK Chair of the Big Lottery Fund. Peter said that the event was "one of the biggest green gatherings" he'd ever attended at the House of Commons. He then congratulated NUS on Green Impact, "a wonderful thing." Last year alone, he said, Big Lottery Fund awarded £700 million to a wide variety of social and environmental impact projects. Among these was NUS' own sustainable food programme, Student Eats - which was supported through the environmental Our Bright Future scheme. Peter closed by saying that one of the reasons why programmes such as Green Impact are so vital is because, in years to come, "The green economy is the only kind of economy that's going to matter."

Next spoke Julia Heiss from UNESCO. Julia opened with an optimistic analysis of the House of Commons' aesthetic. "This seems an appropriate location," she said, "as green is already the official colour!" Last year, NUS was awarded a UNESCO-Japan award, and is now one of nine global laureates for Education for Sustainable Development. Julia said that Green Impact was a "unique" nomination, "entirely student-led... [using] simple and scalable ideas, aiming to change people's behaviour towards sustainability." She called the programme "an excellent example of youth leadership," and an example of a long-held UNESCO ethos regarding "the critical importance of youth in bringing about lasting and sustainable environmental changes, to reach the targets of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals." She thanked Green Impact for "empowering change through innovations and actions," and wished the programme a happy birthday - and many more to come!

The following speaker was of unparalleled importance to Green Impact's success: its founder, Anna D'Arcy! "The reason we're all here tonight is thanks to the University of Northumbria's rugby team, 2004," she said. She went on to explain that her idea, for Green Impact, arose with her desire to stop the colossal pizza box wastage at the students' union - and that the first obstacle to tackle was the rugby team. "What would it take to get them not just engaged," she asked, "but actively wanting to care and get involved?" She came up with "an annual environmental competition for students' unions with a glamorous awards ceremony attached." At the time, there was little-to-no precedent for such a scheme, so Anna approached NUS for backing - which she very much received. "My experience with NUS has been invaluable," said Anna, "it's given me the confidence to carry out the environmental work I'm doing now. I was very fortunate that NUS is a dynamic place, where students can turn up with an idea and be listened to."

Guests then heard from Charmaine Jacobs, who shared how she made Green Impact work in further education - and how it helped her get to where she is today. Charmaine attended East Kent College, where she was elected as vice-president of the Folkstone campus in 2014-15, and president of all three campuses in 2015-16. As president, she had a "mission to connect the college community with a common goal: to make a difference." In order to keep her "ear to the ground," she signed up to "all the NUS bulletins and groups," and came across Green Impact. Charmaine said "it was perfect - I was just so excited as I felt it would fulfil my goal." She signed her students' union up immediately. "I had no real knowledge of sustainability before," she said, "and Green Impact opened my eyes so much." She looked into the college's history of sustainable practice and found that it did have a committee - which had seemingly been inactive for six years. She went about turning everything around, through Green Impact.

Among her proudest achievements were: facilitating a COP21 craftivism event for supported-learning students; dramatically reducing plastic pollution and raising awareness of its harm; and lobbying the college for adequate recycling facilitates, including food waste. It was this last issue that really captured Charmaine's imagination. Thanks to NUS Student Eats funding, she now runs a food waste social enterprise, The Gastro Hub. "Green Impact gave me confidence and empowered me with knowledge and insight," she said. "It made me feel like I could make a difference as an individual."

Finally, everyone was thrilled to hear from NUS President, Shakira Martin. Shakira shared how inspiring she found Charmaine's proactive approach to sustainability, reminding the audience: "It's not just at uni where we can create leaders - further education is a hub, too." In addition, she said: "The sustainability movement isn't very diverse, there aren't many people who look like me - so to see Charmaine as an ambassador... she's just hitting it, all over the place!"

Shakira went on to thank the 150,000 students and staff who have been involved with Green Impact over the years - not least Anna D'Aarcy, who "made NUS sit up and listen about sustainability." Shakira underscored why NUS is so active on sustainability - because students want it. "Their interest is louder and clearer than ever before," she said, detailing statistics such as: 85% of students think sustainability is something their universities and colleges should actively promote.

"Through Green Impact, sustainability has become core to what students' unions do - it benefits the student movement as a whole. It's popular with students, and an area of consensus that helps build good relations with institutions. It reduces costs, brings in new income, and helps our students' unions provide transformational experiences like those we've heard from Charmaine," said Shakira.

Green Impact has worked with over 470 institutions to date, clocking up 300,000 sustainability actions. Shakira closed the event by stating her pride that the NUS was "equipping students to tackle the world's greatest challenges" through "sustainability with inclusivity and liberation at its core."