Reduce Week

The University of Manchester is committed to eliminating avoidable single-use plastics by 2022. With this in mind, our annual Reduce Week campaign is focusing on plastics. During the week of 16-20 March, this campaign run by our Environmental Sustainability Team will aim to highlight the University’s progress towards reducing plastics and give tips on how staff and students can reduce their own plastic waste, both on campus and at home.

Tips on plastic-free actions will be promoted on the UoMSust social media platforms all week. Students can also take part in an online quiz on plastics, for the chance to win prizes including reusable coffee cups.

The University’s commitment has already included a charge on single-use cups in Food on Campus outlets, multiple stationery amnesties and ambitious measures to reduce plastic in teaching laboratories. We are also encouraging staff to let us know what their department or School is doing to reduce its plastics use. This could include handing out reusable water bottles to staff or students, changing suppliers to avoid excess plastic packaging to stopping using plastic cups in water dispensers or removing plastic packaging from publications – we’d like to hear about any actions our staff and students have taken to reduce plastic use.

Please email es@manchester.ac.uk so that we can share the stories and celebrate successes during Reduce Week and in future.