Students see red over greening East Anglia

Students at the University of East Anglia are planning to launch a blistering attack on the institution's record for environmental management and responsibility.

Josh Busby, student union environment officer, said the union has made big efforts to work with management to create a greener UEA, but with little success.

"Despite our efforts no policies have been formulated or structures created to implement them," he said. "What little has been done is fragmented and has been driven largely by cost considerations and not the environment."

An article in next week's Concrete, an independent newspaper produced by UEA students, says that the university registry has "consistently paid lip service to environmental initiatives".

Author Dominic Scholfield, a member of the union's society for environmental action, claims that a "corporate charter" signed by the UEA in 1992 committed the institution to writing an energy policy yet it has not been done.

But a UEA spokesperson said that the university is "committed to a responsible and practical approach to environmental issues. Since the early 1980s we have had a policy of requiring our new buildings to be as energy efficient as is cost-beneficial".

She said that recently built student residences and teaching blocks "are among the most energy efficient buildings of their size ever constructed in the UK". The university is also running a continuous programme of smaller projects to reduce the use of energy and water in existing buildings, she said.

The union says it has vigorously lobbied UEA to start a full recycling scheme, claiming that it could save the institution more than Pounds 10,000 a year in reduced waste disposal costs. Mr Busby said: "As yet the programme has not been implemented and no policies exist to back it up."

The UEA spokesperson said that a review of recycling will be completed soon.