Student sustainability ambassador activities in the Department of Sociology

Being a Sustainability Ambassador has been an amazing opportunity to get involved in improving departmental sustainability and get an inside glimpse into what the department is doing to be more sustainable. Across this year, we have coordinated with the department to make sustainable changes, held an induction talk and events for students, and created blog posts and social media content. Having a diverse team with members all the way from New Zealand to Brazil, we all have unique perspectives on sustainability and have been able to share our experiences and ideas with each other to have creative discussions.

We have found particular success in writing blog posts, some of which have reached a wide audience. The Sustainability Blog has been a great opportunity to develop our own research and writing skills, learn about issues not covered in our course, and spread the word about issues and ideas that we find personally important. We have written blogs about climate migration, sustainable transport, climate conferences, volunteering, and plant-based recipes! In the future, we hope to open the blog to other sociology students to be able to publish their own writing.

Alongside the blog, we have also organised events. From these events, we were able to reach students directly to engage with sustainability, and have great discussions about how the environment connects with sociology. We did a sustainable living prize draw in term one, where students could submit a tip for sustainable living and be entered into a draw to win a voucher to a local sustainable refill shop. In term two, we held a bird feeder craft event, where we brought plastic bottles to upcycle into bird feeders. In term three, our most successful event was a charity shop crawl in Leamington Spa, where we visited around eight charity shops, and had lots of successful finds!

As well as raising the profile of environmental sustainability amongst students, we have also become members of the Sociology department’s Green Team and joined the University’s Green Champion Network. Participating with these groups have enabled us to have a voice in department activities and the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which have helped us to develop our ideas and discussions into positive changes.

The 2025/26 Sustainability Ambassador team: Madison Sexon, Luca de sa Amado, Kaashvi Khurana, Aleesha Vaughan, Charlotte Rowlatt, Reyha Ayesha, Azaria Eddy.