Well folks, I have some very exciting news to share with you this week regarding something called the Green Gown Awards. These awards recognise exceptional sustainability initiatives at universities, colleges and other places of learning across the UK. With sustainable development moving up the global agenda, the awards are the most prestigious recognition of sustainability and environmental excellence.

I’m very honoured to say Growhampton was highly commended in the food and drink category for our lovely Hive Café at the awards ceremony which took place in Manchester last week. You can watch the video we submitted for judging here.

Guests heard how Growhampton also looks after our bee hives and polytunnel,  as well as running a farmers' market and bike maintenance sessions every week. Our Hive Café has a strong community link with Regenerate’s The Feel Good Bakery who supply our delicious sandwiches made by young people form the community. It’s the sale of these sandwiches and our delicious tea and coffee that help our project to become financially self-sustainable.

The judges were very impressed with our café and edible campus and said we were an exciting project which was showing students, staff and the wider community how food can be fun and sustainable. The judges were taken with what had been achieved in a relatively short space of time and looked forward to hearing about Growhampton’s future success. This amazing news comes less than a month after The Hive Café won the national Soil Association Organic Award. Needless to say, we are well chuffed.

And at the end of a month of awards results, we’re also pleased to have made it to the finals of the Wandsworth Business Awards in the Best Green Business category. We’re very involved in the local community so it’s great to see business leaders recognising our contribution.

The Growhampton project is led by the Students’ Union and supported by the University and sums up what the University of Roehampton is about. This spirit of innovation and collaboration runs through everything we do. We are proud to have one of the greenest campuses in London, and prouder still that we can put it to good use with this engaging sustainability project.

Joel
Joel Williams is the Grower for the University of Roehampton Students’ Union’s Growhampton project