THE UCD BUSINESS ALUMNI GLOBAL COMMUNITY IS TAKING ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
From 13th February to 14th March 2023, we’re inviting members of our Global Alumni Community—as well as our students, faculty and staff—to join the fight against climate change by making sustainable changes to our daily lives. Over the next 30 days, our College of Business community will take planet-positive actions and track them on the climate action platform, Pawprint. Our challenge goals are to take ownership of our environmental impact, make sustainable changes to our daily lives and collectively save 40,000kgs of CO2e from entering our atmosphere by the end of the challenge—that’s the equivalent of saving 68,000kgs of rubbish from landfill!
Download the Pawprint app now to join our UCD College of Business Green Challenge. The in-app eco-library houses over 350 actions, ranging from planet-friendly dietary swaps, energy and waste-saving hacks, to ways we can protect biodiversity and amplify the sustainability agenda. We’ll be highlighting themed actions each week, but all actions logged on the app throughout the challenge will count towards our grand total!
GETTING SET UP
Download the Pawprint app via the Google Play store, the App Store, or access the desktop version at https://app.pawprint.eco/login. To create your account, you’ll need to provide your name, email and post code.
Once your account is set up, you’ll see the option to add a code. To join the UCD College of Business Green Challenge, input the code 5f8800. You’ll then be added to the UCD College of Business group!
HOW IT WORKS
Each week (Sprint) of the 4 week challenge is focused on sustainable actions you can take under the following themes:
- Week 1: Diet
- Week 2: Travel
- Week 3: Energy
- Week 4: Environment
The actions under each theme will include suggestions like switching the car for the bike, single-use to reusable, imported to locally sourced! However, you can also use the in-app search function to find a daily eco-friendly action you prefer
TRACKING PROGRESS AND LOGGING AN ACTION
To log an action go to the UCD College of Business group page via the group button at the bottom of the app. Here, you’ll be able to keep track of your network’s progress towards your target, as well as what actions are being highlighted that week. That said, any actions you log on the app will count towards your overall total, no matter the week’s theme! The search function allows you to explore our eco-library, where you can toggle actions by category, popularity, impact and more. Looking for inspiration? Browse through the featured collections on the home page, which bundle together timely, themed actions
OUR CHALLENGE TARGET
Our goal is to prevent 40,000kgs of CO2e from entering the atmosphere. What impact does 40,000kgs of CO2e have on the environment? Well, it’s roughly the equivalent to the emissions created by:
- 4,000,000 plastic bags
- 68,000kgs of rubbish sent to landfill
- 11 return flights from London to Hong Kong
- 100,000 showers
All our small changes over the next 30 days—every light switched off, every small action taken - will make a difference in our fight against climate change. By thinking and acting more sustainably together, we can form planet-positive daily habits and build a better, healthier, and safer future for all.
UCD CLIMATE TARGETS
As Ireland’s largest university, UCD is playing a pivotal role in our national response to the climate emergency. From our Green Campus Initiative to integrating sustainability into core curricula, we are actively preparing our students to become climate leaders of the future. In terms of our own environmental impact, UCD has set a 2030 target to improve energy efficiency on our sites by 50%, and to reduce emissions by 51%. We are also hiring a Vice-President for Sustainability, in order to further our global contribution to climate solutions.
To learn more about what we’re doing as a university to combat the climate crisis, you can read our 2021 Sustainability Report.
