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26 Jul 2010, 7:35 PM
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In a matter of weeks, the University of Nottingham's freshers will realise they're living on an eco campus. "Some students get it very quickly," says its environmental manager Dr Keith Pitcher, whose work is to make the campus even greener and who was highly commended in this year's Green Gown Awards. "We also realised they get very competitive, so we run an inter-halls competition, the winner being the hall that achieves the biggest cuts in energy and waste."
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Much of Nottingham's sustainable outlook is "designed in". If you leave your networked computer on, for example, it powers down after 30 minutes. And it's not just what you learn but where you learn it: the new bioscience block is being built using straw bales, and there are six buildings with green roofs that slow down rainwater and grow vegetation as an insulator. The showstopping, passively ventilated building on the Jubilee Campus, with photovoltaics embedded in its glass, uses a quarter of the energy required by a comparably sized building.
But Pitcher thinks the biggest achievement is in increasing biodiversity in the surrounding landscape while making the land sing for its supper. The lawns have been turned to meadow and to a willow crop for biomass; the five lakes dug for the original campus now provide heating and cooling for three of the main sites, and students can get involved with the allotment.
"I don't know if potential students are specifying an eco university on their Ucas forms," says Pitcher, "but I hope they become inspired. And they seem to appreciate that employers in environmental industries will like the fact that they've lived among sustainable design and engaged with it."
Credits:: Lucy Siegle / The Guardian
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