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education@misco.co.uk 18 | ROUNDTABLE | THE GOING GREEN DEBATE
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THE GOING GREEN DEBATE
Rebecca Paddick asks some of the sector's experts how sustainability will continue to change education technology
Does the education sector have a duty to 'go green'?
✥ John Bailey: Absolutely, the sector has a duty to 'go green' for a number of good reasons. Universities are centres of excellence for teaching, research and the place for new ideas to be tested and good ideas to be championed. Universities should be pushing the boundaries in research and teaching surrounding sustainability and hand in hand they should be implementing the best ideas in their estates. There are 170,000 students in the University of London community, many of whom will become leaders of businesses, public sector organisations and governments – if we can influence these students so they leave the university understanding sustainability and the challenges we have globally then we can be positive about the future and how our students will make their mark on the world. Aside from that reason, which is probably unique to the
education sector, we have all the other reasons for going green that make good business sense. Initiatives that reduce carbon emissions and cut waste will inevitably make the business more efficient, reduce costs and ultimately improve the university as a place to study, live and work. Doing nothing would be shirking our duties to our staff, students, funders and ultimately the environment as well.
✥ Robert Meakin: Whilst there is no 'duty' as such for the education sector to make a full commitment to sustainability, education institutions are under increased pressure to prove their environmental credentials. Their greater and more important obligation is to teach, and offer the students the most engaging and effective education experience possible, but having said that, this often goes hand in hand with sourcing the latest and best practices/tools to do so. Ultimately if there are multiple solutions meeting the needs of the customer, it is wise and forward-looking to invest in the most ‘green’ solution.
✥ James Hsu: You can't just educate how to 'go green' if you don't lead by example. The education sector should be showing their pupils how to be conscious of the environment and how our choices can impact our planet and eco system.
✥ Amy Edwards: Absolutely. The only way to combat climate change is to alter our own habits and atitudes, and that should be instilled in children from a young age. Schools have a vital
role to play; they have the opportunity to produce a generation of responsible energy users, who view energy as a valuable resource, not a disposable commodity. The teachings of a green school impacts at home and in the community, it should be one of the easiest initiatives to embrace but have the greatest impact on students' lives and the world around them. Done properly, going green should save schools money.
Are technological advances helping or hindering the sector from becoming sustainable?
✥ JB: Technological advances are hugely important in helping the sector become more sustainable. That said, there are interesting developments, particularly in the field of IT, that could lead to far more sustainable operations. The University of London has a large data centre that uses a huge amount of energy to keep cool, however, in the coming years I would expect we will see new cooling technologies becoming widely available at more atractive prices. We have visited a company based in Yorkshire which is developing liquid cooled servers, which could potentially cool your IT at the fraction of the cost of air cooling and potentially heat your building in the winter with the warm water as an output. It is this sort of joined-up thinking between services that will become more popular in the future and continue to push the sector towards being more environmentally sustainable.
✥ JH: There are always pros and cons to using new technology, but if technology is implemented wisely and durable investments are made, technology can indeed assist in making the sector sustainable. The use of paper for hand-outs can be reduced by teaching via interactive projectors; tablets could replace or reduce the needs for books; just some small examples of technology that is already frequently implemented. Moreover, the distribution of digital content is quicker, more reliable and less expensive, and doesn’t depend on transportation/logistics, which is an advantage in large countries.
✥ AE: Technology has opened up endless opportunities for the education sector to become both more sustainable and self-sufficient. It is allowing us to create new and cheaper ways of producing power, as well as finding ways to use less power. Although technology is a significant consumer of power, it is only
“You can't just educate how to 'go green' if you don't lead by example” James Hsu
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