University News Last updated 13 August 2013
Birmingham City Students’ Union is proud to announce the launch of the Reuse and Upcycle Café - a transformative sustainability project, which will create a huge increase in pro-environmental behaviours at Birmingham City University and within the local community.
The Reuse and Upcycle Café seeks to take the University’s zero-waste philosophy further by embedding it into the lives of students and their homes, using a mobile sustainable café to establish a presence across the University’s campuses.
The Café will be the central focus of a four-themed project: grow, upcycle, reuse, and learn, which will include the collection of unwanted clothes, books and accessories to be either utilised by the Café itself or donated to Oxfam.
Some items will be incorporated into the upcycling aspect of the project, where paid interns from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, part of Birmingham City University, will be given the opportunity to run sessions on upcycled fashion, as well as incorporating the idea into exhibitions such as Graduate Fashion Week.
The University will be inviting students to help grow produce at one of three of the University’s student-led allotments, with the Café also playing host to educational workshops including sessions on bike maintenance and energy saving, as well as promoting the use of public transport.
NUS (National Union of Students) is providing Birmingham City Students’ Union with the funding required for the first two years of the project’s delivery, with a longer term legacy being built into the project to ensure that its positive impact continues expanding over the coming years.
Birmingham City Students’ Union are part of a wider collection of students’ unions across the country, using £5million to make their institutions and wider communities green, with the overall Students’ Green Fund engaging 50,000 students nationally, and embedding sustainability into the core purpose of higher education across England.
Birmingham City Students’ Union President, Joe Boyd, said “BCUSU is over the moon that our bid for the Students’ Green Fund was successful. The mobile Reuse and Upcycle Café will act as a focal point as we educate communities on various sustainability themed initiatives across our 8 campuses, at local schools and at community events."