Sustainability in STEM: Small changes, big difference
Wednesday 28 October 2026 at 10:07
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Christopher Douce, Wednesday 28 October 2026 at 14:00
On 19 May 2025, I attended an online professional development session in my capacity as teaching sustainability lead for the School of Computing and Communications. What follows is a set of notes that I made during the session, which have been vigorously edited (especially since there has been quite a gap between the date of attending the session, and pushing them as a blog post).
I noted that the university is addressing sustainability in three different ways:
Embedding sustainability within teaching, research and knowledge exchange.
Facilitating public outreach in association with open education and co-productions.
Ensuring that sustainability is embedded within a 5 year strategy.
The university I understand there is a unit called the sustainability office. One of its roles is to put in place training and development for colleagues, educating employees and individuals. There is also an intention to embed sustainability into key performance indicators (KPIs).
A useful way of thinking about carbon emissions (which is something that is introduced in the Carbon Literacy training) is in terms of levels, or scope:
Scope 1: Fuels that we buy (a direct contribution to greenhouse gas emissions). The petrol, diesel or heating fuel that we buy. This is something that we have most control of.
Scope 2: The electricity that we buy and use. This has an indirect contribution. In most cases, we don’t generate our own electricity, but we can make choices about how it is used and (in theory) which suppliers we use (although I’ve always thought it made non sense to use ‘Scottish Power’ when I’m living in London).
Scope 3: The carbon cost of goods and services that we use. I work from home, which means that I’m using cloud services. I have little control how those third party services make use of energy. The biggest choices I could make is to make decisions about whether or not to use them. The carbon trust has a nice summary about Why Scope 3 emissions are important.
I made a note that, in terms of government policy, there was an aim to move to net zero on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, net zero for Scope 3 in 2050. One of the responsibilities of the office (as far as I can understand) is to help to refine procurement policies, and to take an active role in setting and guiding policy.
Resources
A couple of useful resources were shard during the session. The first is a resource called SPARK, which is an abbreviation for Sustainability Planning Action and Reporting Kit. Apparently, every school has to have something called a SPARK plan, which is linked to school plans and strategy.
This has all led to a number of questions. The first is: to what extent do the modules within my school take account of the UN sustainability goals? Arguably, it is my responsibility to answer this question, and do so thoroughly. A related question is: what should SPARK plans look like? Should they be published? If so, where should they be published, and how often should they be reviewed?
Sometimes, policies conflict with each other. Since attending this event, I’ve had a reason to contact the sustainability office for advice. The IT department emailed me to tell me that my laptop needs to be upgraded for security reasons. My laptop contains a huge amount of embedded carbon. The thing is, my laptop is fully patched and is working well; I don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a new machine. I appreciate the intention behind the IT policy (to manage complexity, and to mange risk), but the IT industry continues to push new features and ‘innovations’ to its users, which requires users to continually upgrade to the latest model. This just isn’t sustainable.
Whilst there is always more to read, it is important to get things done. A really important question I’ll also be asking is: what does our school’s SPARK plan look like?
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are extended to the facilitators who ran this session.
Sustainability in STEM: Small changes, big difference
On 19 May 2025, I attended an online professional development session in my capacity as teaching sustainability lead for the School of Computing and Communications. What follows is a set of notes that I made during the session, which have been vigorously edited (especially since there has been quite a gap between the date of attending the session, and pushing them as a blog post).
The starting point for the session was the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
What is the university doing?
I noted that the university is addressing sustainability in three different ways:
The university I understand there is a unit called the sustainability office. One of its roles is to put in place training and development for colleagues, educating employees and individuals. There is also an intention to embed sustainability into key performance indicators (KPIs).
A useful way of thinking about carbon emissions (which is something that is introduced in the Carbon Literacy training) is in terms of levels, or scope:
I made a note that, in terms of government policy, there was an aim to move to net zero on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, net zero for Scope 3 in 2050. One of the responsibilities of the office (as far as I can understand) is to help to refine procurement policies, and to take an active role in setting and guiding policy.
Resources
A couple of useful resources were shard during the session. The first is a resource called SPARK, which is an abbreviation for Sustainability Planning Action and Reporting Kit. Apparently, every school has to have something called a SPARK plan, which is linked to school plans and strategy.
Another resource is an organisation called Students organising for Sustainability (SOS), a campaigning organisation that also carries out research and training. A notable article that I’ve found is Sustainability in HE and FE – State of the sector research. There is also a page that introduces the Responsible Futures framework. More information about this is available on the Responsible Futures website.
Reflection
This has all led to a number of questions. The first is: to what extent do the modules within my school take account of the UN sustainability goals? Arguably, it is my responsibility to answer this question, and do so thoroughly. A related question is: what should SPARK plans look like? Should they be published? If so, where should they be published, and how often should they be reviewed?
Sometimes, policies conflict with each other. Since attending this event, I’ve had a reason to contact the sustainability office for advice. The IT department emailed me to tell me that my laptop needs to be upgraded for security reasons. My laptop contains a huge amount of embedded carbon. The thing is, my laptop is fully patched and is working well; I don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a new machine. I appreciate the intention behind the IT policy (to manage complexity, and to mange risk), but the IT industry continues to push new features and ‘innovations’ to its users, which requires users to continually upgrade to the latest model. This just isn’t sustainable.
Whilst there is always more to read, it is important to get things done. A really important question I’ll also be asking is: what does our school’s SPARK plan look like?
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are extended to the facilitators who ran this session.