By SHS ES co-leads Harriet Bickley and Stephanie Greenwood-Davies 

The School of Health Sciences (SHS) Environmental Sustainability (ES) Champions Network, comprising staff and students, runs events throughout the year to help staff and students live, work and study in an eco-friendlier way. We also encourage the incorporation of environmental perspectives into our undergrad and postgrad curriculums. 

The Tree Stall with a tree identification game

For the last five years we have held a welcome week stall with eco-giveaways of houseplants, kitchen herb plants, surplus university stationery, crockery and even some random items like suit carriers, hula hoops and children’s Roman togas! Our stalls also advertise the student-run eco and refill shop Want not Waste, the University’s Furniture Reuse Station, the Tree Musketeers’ and Botany Society student societies, the UoM Tree Trails and living walls, and The Firs’ Green Wellbeing Project.  

Our stall visitors are invited to download our ‘Easy Eco for All’ booklet which shares practical ways to lead a green lifestyle such as campus and high-street recycling facilities, waste reduction, repair cafes, eco-travel and wildlife.  

We hold stalls and give talks at the annual FBMH Sustainability Showcase, and help with FBMH eco-crafting events, and have held a vegan sharers lunch.   

We hold engaging and interactive stalls at the annual Universally Manchester Festival. One stall asked members of the public to think about how being in green spaces makes them feel, adding a leaf with their thoughts onto a sustainable homemade tree; people were also given the opportunity to experience a forest bathing experience using virtual reality! Another stall was ‘Trees for Life’ including origami plant pot-making, tree identification, sapling and seed giveaways, molymod structures, with colouring in and tree identification sheet giveaways, using both scientific and wildlife perspectives.  

The SHS ES Champion Network litter picking at Whitworth Park

We have presented in the Educational Gains series of talks to students on extracurricular ES activities and opportunities in Manchester, sustainable healthcare and planetary health, and eco-related pharmacy projects. We have shared our eco-activities and ideas with other universities at conferences so we can learn from each other.  

In 2024 SHS joined the Planetary Health Alliance, demonstrating our commitment to embedding environmental sustainability into all aspects of our work and opening up doors to global collaboration and up to date resources to support our mission. Part of that mission is to weave environmental sustainability and planetary health into all SHS curricula – an audit of our curricula across the school completed last year, alongside use of the student-led Planetary Health Report Card, demonstrated several areas of strength and good practice, which we hope to share and become a model to help all programmes within the school develop their teaching practices to include such content.  

We’re always looking for new student and staff members, so please email SHS ES co-leads stephanie.greenwood-davies@manchester.ac.uk and Harriet.Bickley@manchester.ac.uk if you would like to join us.  

To find out more about Environmental Sustainability in FBMH, visit the Faculty’s intranet page, website or contact srbmh@manchester.ac.uk.   

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