Here’s an update from the NUS on its campaigns around plastics:
- Over 40 students’ unions (SUs) have got rid of plastic straws through The Last Straw
- That has also led to Trinity Saint David’s SU becoming our first plastic-free bar!
- Reading SU has passed policy to apply a plastic tax on straws, which has delivered reductions in use
- Sheffield SU has made a waste-free shop that is doing a roaring trade and making money, and Leeds SU is putting in a plastic-free aisle
- In April 2018, at NUS Conference, students passed policy on plastics, mandating NUS to lots of action, see p135-6 here
- We are working with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to convene a roundtable in Manchester to see if/how Manchester can have the World’s first [single-use] plastic-free campuses
- We are doing lots of work in our supply chain through NUS Services
- We have some funding from WRAP to run a project next year that will reverse the social norm of single-use coffee cups to reusable, working with 5-6 institutions to trial interventions. As part of this, we have recently launched our coffee-cup pledge for institutions and individuals
- Approximately a third of the student-led projects through the My World My Home (NUS / Friends of the Earth) programme this year have been on plastics, see this film from Richmond College
Many think it’s a pity that the NUS writ does not run in schools.