What is the Sustainability Showcase?
Bristol Medical School Sustainability Champions Lakshmi Aggarwal and Matthias Mitra presented their work at the annual sustainability showcase, hosted in the Students Union. Staff from across the University attended to discover more about our efforts to embed sustainability into all aspects of the academic experience. There were a mixture of poster and oral presentations from 16 different departments, displaying the progress made this year by each Champion.
Bristol Medical School highlights
Highlights of our talk included coming 2nd out of 139 medical schools across the world in the Planetary Health Report Card, creating the new Bristol Medical School Sustainability website and SharePoint for students across all years of the Medical curriculum, writing two chapters for an upcoming book on Education for Sustainable Healthcare, and our collaboration with local organisation Facts4Life on a student choice project for Year 2 and 3 students – launching in 2025/26, so look out for it! Another big achievement briefly mentioned was the new Sustainability Representatives in Academies Scheme, which we will be advertising to Year 5 students for 2025/26 in September.
Inspiration from other departments
It was a memorable day featuring lots of ingenious ideas from colleagues, such as a bingo competition in Engineering where the winners received grant money for completing rows of sustainability-themed projects. Other great events included a ‘Life Sciences Careers Panel’ spotlighting green SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and a wellbeing series in the Cabot Institute for the Environment, which focused on addressing climate anxiety through yoga, reiki and meditation. We were definitely inspired by the other departments and hope to implement some of their great ideas.
We are so proud of the sustainability work done in Bristol Medical School this year, but there is a lot more ground to cover: we look forward to building upon this momentum next year and achieving even bigger and brighter results!
Lakshmi Aggarwal – Bristol SU Sustainability Champion