Growing your green skills for your future career

This week is Green Careers Week. We have put together all of the opportunities that are available to you as a student at the University of Essex. These opportunities will help you boost your skills to add to your CV for when you are looking for a job. Green skills are often required in traditionally non green jobs. Hiring for green jobs is growing fast. For more information on this read the Global Green Skills report.

Opportunities that the Sustainability team are offering:

• Competencies for Sustainability Big Essex award - The aim of this activity is to give students the opportunity to earn credits towards their Big Essex while developing their competences in sustainable practices of recycling and waste at the University of Essex. Working in a team, students will acquire transferable collaborative, investigative, and reflective skills by contributing to the evaluation and improvement of recycling and waste procedures and processes. This will encompass a variety of topics but could include:
  • Sustainability of food: how to reduce food waste, discussions with food outlets, analysis of food waste data, seasonal trends, vegan and vegetarian menus, local food production and sourcing, on-site food waste composting
  • Recycling: how we physically dispose of our waste on campus, types of waste streams used; dry mixed recycling, glass, general waste and food, review of current practice
  • Circularity of resources: evaluating the circular economy of the University from tendering, procurement, usage, reuse and returning life cycle analysis producer responsibility
• Carbon Literacy for Climate Action training on ChartMyPath - become a net zero hero with our Carbon Literacy for Climate Action Training sessions where we will cover your carbon footprint and the climate emergency. Celebrate your inner climate hero and discover what you could do to reduce your impact on the environment. You will also find out about what the university is doing to reach net zero by 2035. Contributing to these sessions will allow you to learn more about how you can help the university reducing it's scope 1,2,3 emissions. We have two events coming up Thursday 23 November and Monday 4 December.
• Sustainability in your studies on ChartMyPath - To meet the call for education for sustainability, the University's schools and departments have degree programmes or modules with sustainability content. Education for sustainability allows every person to acquire the knowledge, skills, attributes, and values necessary to shape a sustainable future (UNESCO, 2014). This activity will introduce you to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework as a tool for drawing links between your study and including reference to sustainability in your assignments.
• Circular Economy on ChartMyPath - The circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. In this way, the life cycle of products is extended. In practice, it implies reducing waste to a minimum (European Parliament, 2023). This session will consider why we need to switch to a circular economy to protect the environment.
• Sustainability is about the environment; isn't it? Incorporating social, economic, and environmental considerations of sustainability in research on Proficio - to encourage research students to consider sustainability issues in their research a new two-part programme has been added to Proficio. The first session is Sustainability is about....; Upon completion of this session, you will be able to better understand:
  • What we mean by considerations of sustainability in research
  • Why you should include them in your research
  • How you can include them in your research without moving away from your research question
  • How you can include them to strengthen your research
  • How you can demonstrate this in your application for research approval
  • Once completed, students are then invited to attend an in-person workshop. The workshop tutor will guide students with their ideas about the incorporation of sustainability into their research or research proposal.

Other opportunities:

SOS UK are running a webinar on Making the most of LinkedIn for your green job search on Thursday 16 November 12.30pm-1.30pm