How the University of Kent reduces its impact on the environment

Interview transcript

Now, among the many things that Kent Wildlife Trust does to try and protect and promote wildlife conservation is the Wilder Kent Awards to recognise the work that people and organisations are getting up to in their bids to help out. Now, one of the gold award winners in 2023 is the University of Kent Canterbury campus. It's a sprawling estate covering some 300 acres at the top of Tyler Hill overlooking the city and the cathedral. It's a lovely spot and their sustainability coordinator is Emily Mason. And I met up with her in the café of the Gulbenkian Theatre on campus before we went off to walk right across the site and see some of the projects that they already have underway. That makes them a Wilder Kent Gold award winner.

Emily Mason: Three hundred acres makes up our campus, yeah.

Rob Smith: And a lot of buildings on that? So obviously you do have a lot of your carbon footprint as an organisation is probably quite hefty, isn't it?

Emily Mason: It is, but we're working quite hard to get it down. We've set our net zero targets for 2040 and we're putting a lot in place, working in partnership with Siemens to look at how our buildings function to make them more efficient. But, yeah, how we respond to the climate crisis goes hand in hand with how we manage our campus.

Rob Smith: How many students have we got on the university at the moment?

Emily Mason: Oh, good question. I think we're somewhere between 16, 17,000.

Rob Smith: So, you've got quite a big job, haven't you?

Emily Mason: Yeah, it's a really broad remit in the sustainability team. There's two of us and we cover broad sustainability, so environmental and social sustainability across the board.

Rob Smith: Nice, okay. Loads of stuff to go and look at, then. Let's go and have a look. So, Emily, we've come for a little yomp down the southern slopes. Is that what we call it?

Emily Mason: Yeah, the southern slopes. So, everything that sits to the south of our campus is known as the southern slopes.

Rob Smith: And this is just a – I mean it’s a glorious day. The sun is shining, it's quite cold, but it's a lovely place to be and we are surrounded by hundreds of freshly planted fruit trees.

Emily Mason: Yes. So, there's 300 fruit and nut trees, and they were planted to welcome in the class of 2025. So, they're the students that will graduate in our Jubilee anniversary year. And so, the university wanted to mark that, and so we decided to plant an orchard for them.

Rob Smith: Okay. As opposed to doing something else, there was a suggestion you were going to buy everybody iPads or something like that, and you were like, no, no, no, no. Let's do something better than that.

Emily Mason: Yeah, we thought, let's use this as an opportunity to actually demonstrate the kind of stuff we do with our campus. And I think a tree is a better legacy to leave for a student, so we wanted to do something that was different that we've done on the rest of the campus. We've done tree planting before, but we specifically wanted to do fruit and nuts, so to create a food area as well as something valuable for wildlife.

Rob Smith: And this is quite a big – so it's 300 fruit and nut trees, as you say. And they're all completely different varieties?

Emily Mason: Yeah, there's about ten different varieties of fruit and nut trees here. They were purchased from Brogdale, so locally sourced for us. And, yeah, we wanted to do something to create a habitat we didn't have. But also, we are embarking on a right to food journey, which is we're trying to be the first right to food university in the country, and what we want to do is look at how our food supply chains work, but also what we can do locally to secure food. So, this was part of that as well.

Rob Smith: And so, we got a pear tree here, a William Bon Chretien, dating, according to the label, to the 1770s in Berkshire, so we've got some proper old varieties of stuff. These aren't kind of new, heavy cropping type trees you're putting in?

Emily Mason: Yeah, we want to strike a balance between our heritage as a site, so this used to be an old orchard before the university was here. Working with local people like Brogdale, they're experts in fruit trees, to understand what would work here, work with our soil and produce food, but this isn't a commercial orchard. This is about actually creating a destination for people to come relax in, enjoy, maybe pick some fruit off the trees, so we wanted to create something that was a little bit different.

Rob Smith: Because 300 acres in total across the campus, that makes you actually quite a significant landowner. Not you personally, but the university. You've actually got a decent enough bit of land to do something meaningful here.

Emily Mason: Yeah, I think that's something that I think we think of as a big responsibility. We want to be good neighbours, we want to use our site responsibility, and we've got some really interesting protected species on site. This is their home, too, not just ours, so it's really important for us to look at that 300 acres, how we're using it, how we create a mosaic of different habitats and how they all join up.

Rob Smith: So, you've been in post for, what, two years now?

Emily Mason: I've been, oh, about five years now coming up to. Yeah.

Rob Smith: About five years, right, yeah. So how have things changed in that period? How is the university doing stuff differently now to maybe ten years ago?

Emily Mason: Yeah, I've seen a huge amount of change. I actually graduated from here in 2010. So even from then, being a student here, how we manage our site, I think, has changed massively from how we coppice our woodlands, how we leave our grasslands to grow.

There's been a real culture shift in the decision making of really trying to do what we can and bring our students with us so students can see that difference, use the natural space as an education tool, not just the lecture halls.

Rob Smith: So, as I look around me here, you know, sort of under the trees, for instance, we can see there’s brambles and things that are growing. Would they have all been cleared away in times past?

Emily Mason: Yeah, I think on the outskirts of campus maybe not cleared away, but certainly things like the dead wood would have been picked up to make it look more neat. We're starting to see a relaxation of those things. The grounds team work really hard across our 300 acres, and so actually giving spaces over to nature for them is a wonderful thing that they can do. And they can then look at other different projects that they can work on, like planting 300 trees.

Rob Smith: Okay. And in terms of sort of biodiversity, then, have you seen a difference in the number of species that you actually get on the campus?

Emily Mason: Yeah, I think one of the things that's been really exciting is we have a 24 hours security team, so they are here all the time and they get to see stuff the rest of us that go home at five don't get to see. And the feedback we've had from them of you know, hedgehogs running around central campus, actually seeing the bats fly over central campus, they really feel that abundance more than they ever did. And people talking about the birdsong seems to be richer in spring than it used to be, so it does feel like campus feels a little fuller than it did before.

Rob Smith: Excellent. And these fruit and nut trees, I mean, they're going to take a few years before they actually start bearing fruit, aren't they? I mean, how long before an orchard becomes kind of fully grown and productive?

Emily Mason: Yeah, I think we've got another three to five years to go before we start seeing any significant fruit.

I hope that students always feel like they can come back to Kent and see how their trees are getting on, but I think it's something where we're going to see a much more immediate impact than if we did some like whip planting, which is like the traditional way of planting trees.

Rob Smith: Excellent. We're walking along and you just pointed out this pond here, the Elliott Pond. This has got great crested newts in it.

Emily Mason: Yeah. So, they're currently hibernating, but this is one of their main breeding ponds on site. So, once we get into spring, you can see flashes of silver from the male's tails as they go about the pond doing their business.

Rob Smith: Yeah, I mean, great crested newts. They're almost mythical, aren't they? They've been such a kind of like a poster kid for conservation down the years. Have you had to do anything? They just happen to be here or?

Emily Mason: Yeah, so on the site, we're quite fortunate. We've got really healthy, a large population. We have a monitoring project on the north side of our campus, run by Richard Griffiths, who set up kind of the longest running great crested newt monitoring programme in Europe. And, yeah, they were already here. And so, we've been monitoring them with the ponds. The main thing we try and do is just keep the ponds healthy. So, looking at how pollution moves across the campus, making sure that our ponds are out of the way, making sure there's no risk to them. So actually, we don't have to do a huge amount, but we do take great care when doing any work around the ponds, making sure that we're not disturbing them in any way.

Rob Smith: And this is the thing, isn't it? Because, as we said, there's, what, 17,000 students plus all the staff. You know, the campus is 25 odd thousand people. It's a little city in its own right, and yet you've got this here right in the middle of it. So does that cause problems because I haven't seen a sign saying keep out or anything like that.

Emily Mason: Yeah, it doesn't cause problems. What we find is most people don't know they're here. They're quite a small, secretive species, so people just walk right by them and don't know they're there. Where there are kind of pinch points – so we've got quite a fast cycle lane that cuts just behind where we are. And we have little signs that – great crested newt crossing signs, because when they come out of hibernation, they'll often come out of the woods there, come back to the pond they want to breed in, so they have to cross that cycle lane. And so, we have had some casualties over the year, so we put up the newt crossing signs and we haven't had any casualties since. So, people are aware that, oh, I should maybe slow down and keep an eye out, see if there's newts moving. And then they're curious and then they'll write to me and say, I've seen this sign. What does that mean? So, it builds interest in our campus.

Rob Smith: And as we were walking, and I just want to ask you about it now, you're building a kind of a vegetable superhighway through the middle of the campus. What's that all about?

Emily Mason: So, the river of vegetation; so, what we're trying to do is link the orchard project with the Kent Community Oasis Garden. There are two kind of flagship food projects, in a way, but also they’re for wellbeing and what we want to do is create an uninterrupted path of vegetation, be that high pollen value plants for our pollinators, but also food for us that takes you on a trail right through campus is a kind of wildlife corridor pollinator highway, but also a navigation tool for people to be able to move between those two projects, so it will deliver a lot of value for us and for nature.

Rob Smith: Yeah. So, you're actually putting in sort of food crops in amongst it? It's not just wildlife?

Emily Mason: Yeah, so the first sort of breaking ground of the river of vegetation is actually taking place in a couple of weeks, where the student conservation society are going to be planting a nuttery in Parkwood.

And Parkwood is our main student village on site. And so, there'll be a kind of nut tree collection there being planted by the students in a couple of weeks time.

Rob Smith: Right, okay. What kind of nuts will we see on campus, then? Sort of walnuts and hazelnuts, that kind of thing?

Emily Mason: Kentish cobnut, of course. There's five different varieties that are being planted in three different coops in the student village. And so, yeah, they're going to be – there for years to come and for students that live in Parkwood; they'll be free to collect from them in a few years time.

Rob Smith: Excellent. Go nuts on campus. Brilliant.

Rob Smith: So, we've done a little yomp across the campus and we've come now to the Oasis Community Garden on the other side of the campus.

Emily Mason: So, also known as Kent COG. So, the COG is the Community Oasis Garden, and it is a predominantly food growing site, and it is managed by student staff and community members in collaboration. And it's run by the university and our partner, East Kent Mind.

Rob Smith: And as I'm looking across here, we've got dozens of beds which have got – we've got sort of brassicas growing at the moment. I can see brussels sprouts and I can see a variety of different cabbagey type things that are actually growing at this time of year; various people are putting stuff into compost bins and wheeling wheelbarrows around. It's like an allotment, really, isn't it?

Emily Mason: Yeah, it's a collaborative allotment in many ways. It's designed, run by volunteers, and the dual purpose is to produce food, so we produce about a metric tonne of food a year. Volunteers get first pick and then the rest is sold back to the university catering outlets, so everyone gets to eat it.

Rob Smith: And so why is this important to you as the sustainability person?

Emily Mason: Yeah, so I think, firstly, for me, I wanted people to see how food grows and what the time it takes and how valuable soil is as a resource. I wanted people to have somewhere to come take time out and I wanted to create a space where people could discuss their interests, their worries around sustainability in a way that was adjacent to nature. So actually, be in nature while you discuss some of those things and really create something that is sustainability in action, as well as fulfilling a need to bring people together.

Rob Smith: And for you personally, how does it make you feel when you see all these things going on? Because obviously sustainability is your job, but it's kind of your passion as well, isn't it? It's everything about who you are. When you see all this stuff coming together, what does it mean to you?

Emily Mason: So, this, actually – you shouldn't have favourites, but this is my favourite project because I get to see what it means to other people. I know what it means to me, but to see others engage with it, and I have quite a history with this site. I was a student here in 2010 and I was one of the first students to put a garden here. And so, when I came back to work here many years later, to see it still be a garden and then be able to be involved in it and to create this space and what it's become, it's a real privilege. I love it. I come up here; I smile. When I don't want to be in the office, here's where you'll find me. So actually, to be amongst nature, we garden in a nature friendly way, but to be with everyone, to mix with students, work alongside student staff and community members altogether, it's the best part of the job.

Rob Smith: And of course, part of the point of you doing this as a university is that you can be a kind of a flagship organisation to let other organisations know what you can do, give people lessons, let people know the mistakes you've made, all that kind of stuff?

Emily Mason: Yeah, I think if universities aren't doing this stuff, then who will? We should be leaders in this kind of stuff, but also to look for solutions.

You know, we're a home of research, so trying to find ways of working, trying to find solutions to this kind of future vision we've got. Universities should be at the forefront of that, but also to learn how to listen again. I think universities should have their ears open and listening because we don't know all the answers. So having this space in collaboration with East Kent Mind, bringing in actual mental health professionals so we can start to look at that transect between mental wellbeing and nature and actually do research here and collaborate with an organisation that they've got their own expertise. That's what this is. It's a test bed of a different way society can structure around food as well. Food is so vital to all of us. It's our shared human experience, so that's where the kind of right to food element also comes in.

Rob Smith: Well, it's been a privilege wandering around on such a lovely day here and looking at it all. Yeah, keep going.

Emily Mason: We will. We will. We're only really at the beginning, I would say. I think there's so much more to do and a university is a great place to kind of test all these and have fun in sustainability and try stuff out. Yeah.

Rob Smith: Emily Mason from the University of Kent. And it really was remarkable to see how lovely a lot of the woodland is out there, especially when you consider how busy and bustling the campus is. The Elliott Pond that we saw, that's such a great spot for spotting great crested newts, is literally just a few yards away from the university's main nightclub venue and they really don't seem to mind. Perhaps newts are literally party animals, who knows? Be that as it may, entries are now open for the 2024 Wilder Kent Awards, so if you know of a school or a business or a community group that really is doing some amazing stuff and taking positive action to restore nature, then make sure that they get entered and get recognised. Just go to the Kent Wildlife Trust website and search for the Wilder Kent awards to get all the details.