Sustainability

As a community, we are committed to reducing our energy consumption. In October - December 2023 we reduced our energy use by 113,750 kWh (£6,825) compared with the same period in the previous year.

We have begun a trial of EyeSense. This smart distributed Energy Management System is specifically designed to manage energy usage in student accommodation. It measures and controls automatically energy usage at every socket and at every radiator in each room. EyeSense allows us to monitor room occupancy, heating, lighting and electricity usage in real time. We have started with six rooms in Staircase 32, as well as the Accounts and Accommodation Offices.

Some further energy saving measures are as follows:

• We use the eco-sync platform to ensure that rooms are not heated when not in use.
• We are replacing our lighting with LED bulbs. These automatically dim when not in use.
• New energy-efficient appliances replace end-of-life equipment. For example, hot and cold counters in the refurbished Refectory are energy efficient.
• We have added secondary glazing to listed buildings where conservation approval allows. New building developments are double glazed.
• Sustainability was central to the construction of the William Doo Undergraduate and Dr Lee Shau Kee Buildings, which were completed in 2021. They were designed to maximise natural light and have solar panels on their roofs.
• The main College site has several electric boilers installed.
• Dual flush toilets are replaced with single flush toilets with water-saving devices during staircase refurbishments. Water saving devices are being fitted to showers as part of our maintenance programme.

Our students are encouraged to get involved with the Student Switch Off. This is a not-for-profit campaign encouraging student action on climate change in university halls of residences.

Hundreds of parcels are delivered to the Lodge each week. Wadham is taking part in a one-year pilot project for "final mile" parcel delivery by cargo bike. We have engaged Pedal and Post, who already work with companies including Evri and DPD. Fedex, UPS and DHL will follow. We are encouraging College members to change the address on every online order they make to have them routed through the Pedal and Post system. This will reduce our environmental impact, particularly in that last mile through our streets, and support the University’s Vision Zero ambitions, where cyclist and pedestrian safety is improved through fewer couriers and vehicle movements in the city centre.

Our Gardens Team works hard to keep our grounds looking beautiful, while reducing the environmental impact of maintaining them. The Team has reduced moving, hedgerow cutting, and the use of pesticides.

We encourage sustainable travel. We have a cycle loan scheme, and a bus/train pass loan scheme for our staff. The College supports hybrid working where operationally feasible and agreed by relevant line managers. We encourage visitors to the College to consider sustainable ways to get here: https://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/visit-us

Refillable glass bottles are used in meeting rooms and water filtration machines are available in communal areas.

We sell Wadham keep cups and there are reusable cups in the bar. We do not use plastic coffee pods in our machines.

We use cardboard compactors to condense our rubbish, so we need fewer pick ups, thus reducing our carbon footprint. Oxford Direct Services (ODS), the College's waste contractor, has an electric lorry. ODS does not send any waste to landfill.

Wadham is committed to sourcing local and seasonal produce as much as possible. We support local businesses, including Mayfield Farm, Oxford Oils, and Aldens Oxford. An increasing number of our suppliers are using electric vehicles and moving towards plastic-free deliveries.

Healthy options are offered at meal times. We have 'Meat-Free Mondays' across both student and staff dining and we have reduced the amount of red meat in all our menus. We reuse and repurpose food into other dishes where possible to reduce waste. Minimal water is used in cooking.

We work closely with our suppliers to ensure that we are all following sustainable practices.

We reduce food waste by asking staff and Fellows to book in advance for lunch and to choose one of two sittings so that we can cater accurately.

All offices, kitchens, communal spaces and student rooms on the main site have their own food waste caddy, as do the kitchens on the Merifield and Dorothy Wadham sites.

Uncooked fruit and veg waste from the main kitchen is composted on site and used on the gardens.

Unused dry goods go to the Oxford Food Hub.

Cooked food waste is collected by our partner organisation, Oxford Direct Services. It goes towards producing electricity and liquid fertiliser for Oxfordshire.

Oil waste is recycled by Oxford Oils. Fats and oils are collected, filtered and cleaned to be used for producing low carbon energy.

A Sustainable Food Working Group was set up in 2022 to monitor progress and introduce new initiatives.

We are committed to reusing and recycling and to reducing waste as much as possible.

The College makes compost in a three-year cycle. Seventy wheelbarrows of compost are needed for the whole site. Head Gardener, Andrew Little, and his team use all the organic waste they can to produce it, including lawn mowings, prunings, and waste food from the kitchens.

Our Works Department is reducing waste by refurbishing and reusing materials where possible.

We are progressing our ongoing programme of restoration work in the historic Front Quad by carefully re-roofing the spaces above staircases 1, 2, and 3. We will reuse as many of the old slate tiles as possible. Where the tiles cannot be reused because they have severely deteriorated, we will source replacement tiles in an environmentally conscious manner. Our specialist project team is exploring the possibility of sourcing good quality tiles that have been previously used on other buildings in the local area. As part of the project, we will also be carefully upgrading the insulation material in the roof, ensuring that it is compatible for this heritage building, to improve thermal performance and reduce energy consumption.

Some glass panels that were no longer needed in the Dorothy Wadham Building have been incorporated into the new staff room in the Bowra Building on our main College site.

All the College doors with the exception of the one in the main entrance date back to the College's foundation. A restoration contractor has stripped and chemically cleaned them, removing all stains and in some cases paint, that has gathered over the years. From now on, the doors will need to be oiled only every three - five years to keep them in this condition.

In Staircase 29, some of the window shutters that date back to the 1700s had been nailed shut for some years since curtains became popular. The team has opened them up again and had them restored. The shutters keep the sunlight out and the rooms cool during warm weather. They help to retain heat in the colder months, helping to keep our energy consumption down. The wooden shutters do this more efficiently than double glazing.

Where possible, food is delivered to our kitchens in reusable containers. The housekeeping team uses reusable bottles for cleaning solutions instead of single-use plastic.

We aim to repurpose as much of our furniture as we can and refurbish old items when possible. When we need to replace furniture, we buy second-life items rather than new ones. Instead of going to landfill, end-of-life electrical items are collected by local suppliers and stripped for scrap metal and spare parts that can be reused.

We provide a British Heart Foundation donation box for unwanted items from College members. Lost property is retained for 60 days before being passed to the Heart Foundation or to Oxford Food Hub.

Our students are encouraged to help us to recycle, particularly at the end of each term. We provide information about separating waste streams so that we can reduce the College's carbon footprint. We also want to share anything that can be reused, e.g. unwanted clothing or dry foods, with others.

We conducted a biodiversity audit of the city centre College site in Trinity Term 2022. We have set targets for a year-on-year increase in the biodiversity of our grounds. We are planting a wide range of pollination-friendly species across the garden. More native trees and shrubs have been planted to attract birds and insects. We have installed two beehives.

Our development of the Dorothy Wadham Building site on Iffley Road included planting 15 trees, including Rowan, Beech, Malus, flowering Cheering, as well as shrubs, climbers, and bulbs. We installed bat boxes and installed boundaries to allow wildlife, such as hedgehogs, to move freely through the site.

We encourage Wadham's community members to join our iNaturalist project. By recording and sharing our observations of animals, bats, birds, and insects, we are helping to create data for scientists working to understand and protect nature.

iNaturalist's vision is a world where everyone can understand and sustain biodiversity through the practice of observing wild organisms and sharing information about them. Its mission is to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation.

We meet termly to review existing sustainability projects and to implement new ones.

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