Edinburgh Uni kicks off its 10:10 committment

Edinburgh University marked the launch of their '10:10' campaign with a 'Green Week' organising a series of events and visitors across the campus.

The week included a wide range of activities to raise awareness on the carbon footprint, with the goal to reduce the university’s CO2 emissions by 10 percent.

The event was organised by Transition Edinburgh University (TEU). A member of the team, Joseph Farthing told The Journal: “The amount of people who have attended the green week so far has been very encouraging, many people have signed up for the week."

Having already cut CO2 emissions by 10 percent over the last five years,  they have set themselves the ambitious target of cutting them by the same amount again by the end of the year.

Student and event organiser for people and planet Ruth Cape told The Journal: “Many of the people taking part of the week are already up on the issues brought forward."

The work of the TEU staff is funded by the Scottish government’s Climate Challenge Fund.

Mr Farthing said: “We have a total of £3000 for the whole week, which includes the wages of the staff members. We receive a good chunk of funding for our projects each year, a total of one third of a million pounds."

The week began with several hundreds of people attending the event 'Back to the Future: How old will you be in 2050?'. 

“We were very happy with the healthy number of people attending this event," said Mr Farthing.

The week saw speeches, films and hands-on workshops and ended with the unveiling of a three metre wide 10:10 sign made out of recycled aluminium from a scrapped Boeing 747 named “The City of Edinburgh”.

Transition Edinburgh University is just one of the groups organising the green week at Edinburgh University, other groups include the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh University Students' Association.