Sustainable student house

vegetable garden In 2011 four students from the BSc in Environment and Sustainability programme lobbied the University for the opportunity to live in house on campus that they could turn into an ‘exemplar’ of sustainable student living, giving them the opportunity to ‘live what they are learning’ and to use the house to encourage other students to live more sustainably. 

The students moved into a standard bungalow on the University campus in September 2011.  Throughout 2011/2012 the students have built a substantial vegetable garden with funding from the Keele Key Fund, have monitored their energy use, segregated and monitored all of their waste production, and explored collaborative consumption and behaviour in their day-to-day living. 

The students have disseminated the project through a Facebook page, a website and a blog that collects the stories up to 2013. In addition through the Keele student magazine Concourse, and externally through The Sentinel newspaper, and Radio Stoke. 

The project has involved many more students than just the four living in the house.  The ‘housemates’ estimate they have had over 100 visitors to the house, with many of them getting involved in establishing and maintaining the garden.  For 2012/13 an application process was undertaken to select the new ‘housemates’. 

Four new students have taken over the project and the running of the ‘Sustainable Student bungalow’, with two students from the BSc Environment and Sustainability programme and two students from different programmes.