Keele University is celebrating success at this year’s prestigious Green Gown Awards which honour sustainability in higher education.

Keele’s biggest success of the night went to Tom Bedford, a 3rd-year Environment and Sustainability student who won the Student Sustainability Champion Award for his involvement with the climate movement, which included attending the UN Summit, working with UK Youth Climate Coalition, and organising a UK climate conference.

Keele was also highly commended in the Benefiting Society award category, for which the CLOCK initiative (Community Legal Outreach Collaboration Keele) was nominated for providing 9,000 volunteering hours to provide access to justice to 4,000 people.

Established in 2004, the Green Gown Awards recognise the exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken by universities and colleges across the UK and Ireland.

With sustainability moving up the agenda, the Awards have become established as the most prestigious recognition of best practice within the further and higher education sector, and Keele’s success this year is a testament to the University’s ethos of embedding sustainability in all that we do, with the University being named as a finalist in all six categories that it entered this year.

Professor Mark Ormerod, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost and the Institutional Lead for Sustainability said: “Sustainability is a key overarching priority for the University, and is embedded in all aspects of our activities across our campus, community and external engagement, as well as research and education.

“Our continued success in the sector’s Green Gown Awards is a reflection of our sector-leading work in sustainability. I would particularly like to congratulate Tom on his superb achievement in winning the Student Sustainability Champion Award, as well as the very well deserved recognition for CLOCK.”