Fresher’s Fair & Environmental Sustainability

Marketing and promotional activities can have significant environmental impact. The good news is that Fresher’s Fair provides the opportunity for best practice in this area through positive face-to-face conversations and the clever use of digital marketing.

Rule number one is to avoid or minimise the procurement of single-use or plastic ‘freebies’, date-specific leaflets/flyers or PVC banners and clothing.

Lancaster SU has policy on single-use plastic. Please eliminate or drastically reduce the quantity of single-use plastic water bottles, cups, cutlery etc. that you use on your stall. Instead encourage your exec members to bring re-usable and re-fillable cups and water bottles to keep themselves hydrated.

To promote your activities, make maximum use of laptops, tablets and other devices to display promotional photographs of your activities or sign-up members to Union Cloud etc.

If you are printing leaflets or flyers, take great care in ordering the correct quantity and ensure that the leaflet or flyer can be used again throughout the year (for example at Refreshers in January). Lancaster SU encourage using supplier Solopress and choosing one of their 100% recycled paper materials such as ‘bond’ or ‘kraft’.

If you are considering providing ‘Freebies’ to prospective members, have a real think about the resource implications of any products you’re ordering. How and where are the materials sourced that they are made from? What labour, manufacturing and ethical issues might be associated with them? How useful are the items to your prospective or actual members? Will they end up gathering dust or sitting in a drawer?!

Event or exec clothing. It’s great to ensure your society exec or teams can be clearly identified with your logos and names etc. However when ordering dedicated clothing, identify or challenge suppliers on the materials they use. Look for natural fibres such as organic cotton, recycled wool or hemp for t-shirts and hoodies/jumpers. When ordering, ask suppliers not to package the clothing in individual plastic bags, and just stack loose in a cardboard box instead.

At the end of Fresher’s Fair, please ensure you tidy away all your equipment and promotional items. If you do create any waste cardboard, paper, plastic bottles or cans, glass, please take it to the nearest internal or external recycling bins.