Sustainability Matters Now

What does it actually take to embed sustainability across a university of 30,000 people, and where do you even start?Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla, Academic Director for Sustainability at the University of Warwick, discusses the launch of Warwick's new Environmental Sustainability Strategy: a focused, governance-backed plan that moves beyond broad ambition towards measurable, accountable change.Stéphanie explains why the new strategy deliberately narrows its scope to environmental sustainability - not a retreat, but a clarity move. When a strategy tries to do everything, it risks doing nothing well. She shares how two significant gaps in the previous strategy have now been addressed: circular economy, now supported by a dedicated action group, and digital sustainability, including the environmental impact of AI, which can no longer be ignored.We discuss governance: how moving from an informal action group to a formal sustainability committee with reporting lines to Council, Senate, and the University Executive Board creates the accountability needed to turn strategy into action. Stéphanie reflects on the challenge of measuring progress, the role of data in telling Warwick's sustainability story, and why getting the right systems in place matters as much as setting the right targets.Stéphanie also shares what it means to act as a bridge across a complex institution, connecting operations, research, education, and students, and why Warwick is introducing a sustainability induction for all new staff and students, even amid the significant pressures currently facing higher education.A conversation about strategy, leadership, and what it means to walk the talk on sustainability when it would be easy not to.Sustainability Matters NowExploring how universities, organisations, and communities put sustainability into practice across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Dr Tom Ritchie⁠⁠⁠⁠, Chair of the ESD Action Group at the University of Warwick.This podcast is supported by the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Energy and Sustainability Team⁠⁠⁠⁠ at the University of Warwick, with particular thanks to ⁠⁠⁠⁠Yurong Tian⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Gemma Wilkins⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠ Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla⁠⁠⁠⁠.Join for conversations at Warwick and beyond, exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals, institutional sustainability commitments, and the real-world challenges of creating equitable, thriving, and resilient communities.If you want to join the podcast as a guest, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠.

Can gamification and rewards actually change sustainable behaviour, or do they just drive short-term compliance? And how do you engage a campus community as diverse as university staff and students in environmental action?Josh Cleall, CEO of Team Jump, and Yurong Tian, Sustainability Coordinator at the University of Warwick, discuss Warwick's Green Rewards Platform: a gamified system where staff and students earn points for sustainable actions like active travel, recycling, and sustainable shopping, then enter monthly raffles to win vouchers.Josh explains why gamification works: it breaks down the enormity of climate change into small, accessible steps. The platform makes sustainability manageable through points, leaderboards, and badges, but the real goal isn't the rewards, it's building habits. Once users engage with one behaviour (like active travel), habit stacking makes it easier to layer on additional sustainable actions.Yurong shares how Green Rewards connects individual behaviour to institutional commitments like Warwick's Nature Positive Universities pledge. When users upload nature photos or record species sightings through iNaturalist, they contribute real data to science while connecting directly to biodiversity work on campus. The platform bridges big institutional commitments and everyday individual actions.We discuss reward design: the most popular voucher option is on-campus operations offering ethically sourced coffee and healthy food, meaning people doing sustainable activities choose sustainable rewards. Yurong shares that Green Rewards started from sustainable transport behaviour change but expanded to food, energy, nature, and more because everyone comes to sustainability from different angles.Josh reveals the university difference: students bring burning passion for climate action from school but find many organisations don't prioritise it. Green Rewards gives them an outlet. The challenge is students are transient (three or four years versus longer-term staff), but peer influence amongst students is stronger than other cohorts.Over 1,200 users have logged 77,000+ actions at Warwick. Interestingly, some of the most sustainably active people on campus hadn't heard of Green Rewards, showing that multiple engagement methods work and reach different audiences through different channels.Josh addresses the lasting change question: rewards are a hook to get people listening and engaging with content, but the business is building habits and getting people to think about sustainability day in, day out, not just when receiving push notifications or vouchers.Essential listening for anyone interested in behaviour change, campus sustainability engagement, gamification for environmental action, and whether rewards-based platforms create genuine transformation.Sustainability Matters NowExploring how universities, organisations, and communities put sustainability into practice across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠Dr Tom Ritchie⁠⁠⁠, Chair of the ESD Action Group at the University of Warwick.This podcast is supported by the ⁠⁠⁠Energy and Sustainability Team⁠⁠⁠ at the University of Warwick, with particular thanks to ⁠⁠⁠Yurong Tian⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Gemma Wilkins⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠ Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla⁠⁠⁠.Join for conversations at Warwick and beyond, exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals, institutional sustainability commitments, and the real-world challenges of creating equitable, thriving, and resilient communities.If you want to join the podcast as a guest, contact ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠.

How does a university campus become home to an endangered species, and what does biodiversity restoration look like in practice?Dr Molly Williams (School of Life Sciences) and Gemma Wilkins (Head of Sustainable Campus Operations) discuss Warwick's white-clawed crayfish reintroduction project, bringing 30 of the UK's only native crayfish species to campus as part of a national species recovery effort.White-clawed crayfish have declined by 50-80% in the last decade, outcompeted by invasive signal crayfish and devastated by crayfish plague. The UK is home to a quarter of the global population, making UK conservation efforts critical.Molly explains how environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling identified suitable "ark sites" – isolated water bodies safe from invasive species – and why the NAIC Rill, a formal water feature in a busy urban part of campus, turned out to be an unlikely conservation success story.Gemma shares how cross-sector partnerships with Warwickshire Wildlife Trust, Coventry City Council, Middlemarch Environmental, and Natural England made the translocation possible, and what it takes to prepare a campus site for endangered species.We discuss how universities can approach nature recovery beyond legal obligations like biodiversity net gain, why landscape-level collaboration matters more than individual projects, and how student and community engagement strengthens both research and conservation outcomes.Essential listening for anyone interested in campus biodiversity, species reintroduction, conservation partnerships, and how universities can deliver meaningful sustainability action through collaboration.This project is supported by funding from Natural England via the Species Recovery ProgrammeSustainability Matters NowExploring how universities, organisations, and communities put sustainability into practice across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.Hosted by ⁠⁠Dr Tom Ritchie⁠⁠, Chair of the ESD Action Group at the University of Warwick.This podcast is supported by the ⁠⁠Energy and Sustainability Team⁠⁠ at the University of Warwick, with particular thanks to ⁠⁠Yurong Tian⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Gemma Wilkins⁠⁠, and⁠⁠ Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla⁠⁠.Join for conversations at Warwick and beyond, exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals, institutional sustainability commitments, and the real-world challenges of creating equitable, thriving, and resilient communities.If you want to join the podcast as a guest, contact ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠.

What does student-led sustainability activism look like in 2026, and how are young people reconnecting climate action with social and economic justice?Helena Ratcliffe (Students' Union Ethics and Environment Officer 2025/26), Luke Davies, Taran Talbott, and Finlay Arcos-Archard from Warwick Students' Union Sustainability Forum share what brought them to climate activism.This conversation then explores how student engagement with climate activism has shifted since the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis side-lined sustainability as a priority. The team discusses why environmental issues are "downstream" of other political concerns - from immigration to economic justice - and how the Green Party's surge reflects a new conversation unifying climate justice with social justice.We explore how sustainability shows up (or doesn't) in university courses, why it's too easy for students to avoid climate content entirely, and what meaningful integration could look like, from donut economics models to encouraging staff to situate teaching within broader ethical frameworks. Helena shares her work on an ethical AI policy for the SU that considers environmental impacts, not just efficiency.The team reveals what they're working on through the Sustainability Forum: co-organising Green Week with staff and societies across campus, promoting a £5,000 student sustainability fund most students don't know exists, collaborating on new green spaces, and creating community where change feels possible.Essential listening for anyone interested in student leadership, climate justice, how universities can better integrate sustainability across disciplines, and what the next generation of activists needs to rebuild momentum.Sustainability Matters NowExploring how universities, organisations, and communities put sustainability into practice across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.Hosted by ⁠Dr Tom Ritchie⁠, Chair of the ESD Action Group at the University of Warwick.This podcast is supported by the ⁠Energy and Sustainability Team⁠ at the University of Warwick, with particular thanks to ⁠Yurong Tian⁠, ⁠Gemma Wilkins⁠, and⁠ Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla⁠.Join for conversations at Warwick and beyond, exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals, institutional sustainability commitments, and the real-world challenges of creating equitable, thriving, and resilient communities.If you want to join the podcast as a guest, contact ⁠[email protected].

In this first episode of Sustainability Matters Now, we are joined by Gary Stocker, Test Engineer and Green Champion at the Energy Innovation Centre in Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), to discuss how one person's dedication can transform campus culture around sustainability. For over five years, Gary has been collecting niche recyclable materials across the University of Warwick: soft plastics, cosmetic tubes, blister packs, dental products, pens, and postage stamps. These are items that would otherwise go to landfill.Gary shares how he built his recycling network from a single collection box to a university-wide initiative, starting with conversations in familiar buildings and growing through word-of-mouth as colleagues asked him to expand to their areas. He explains the practical logistics of what he collects and where it goes, from Tesco's soft plastic stillage to Boots collection points to the Materials Engineering Centre's recycling project.Gary's environmental commitment began in primary school in the 1970s, shaped by conservation programmes on TV and radio, and was solidified when he read Trevor Hoyle's cli-fi novel 'The Last Gasp' in the late 1980s. The book's dystopian vision convinced him that protecting the environment wasn't just important, but potentially vital to all life on Earth, including humanity.We explore how Gary's engineering background influences his approach to sustainability challenges, why diplomatic relationship-building matters as much as environmental passion, and how his dual roles as Test Engineer and Green Champion create complementary networks that amplify impact. Gary discusses what keeps him motivated despite the scale of environmental challenges, comparing his work to standing against insurmountable odds like heroes in films. "If I don't do it, who is going to do it?"The conversation examines broader systemic questions about creating a sustainable future. Gary argues that while individual action matters, we need direction from business and government that looks at environmental issues "from A to Z," avoiding solutions that solve one problem while creating another. He uses examples like solar panels on agricultural land and UK industry regulations to illustrate why we must consider the whole picture, including unintended consequences and perverse incentives.Gary's story demonstrates how grassroots initiatives, supported by encouraging institutional culture, can create ripple effects that change how people think about sustainability both at work and at home.Sustainability Matters NowExploring how universities, organisations, and communities put sustainability into practice across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.Hosted by Dr Tom Ritchie, Chair of the ESD Action Group at the University of Warwick.This podcast is supported by the Energy and Sustainability Team at the University of Warwick, with particular thanks to Yurong Tian, Gemma Wilkins, and Professor Stéphanie Panichelli-Batalla.Join for conversations at Warwick and beyond, exploring the UN Sustainable Development Goals, institutional sustainability commitments, and the real-world challenges of creating equitable, thriving, and resilient communities.If you want to join the podcast as a guest, contact [email protected]