Candidate for the position of Environment Officer

Jacynthe Roesch

Hi, my name is Jacynthe (she/her), I’m 26 and in the 3rd year of my development and economics degree.

I’m committed to this issue:

I have a HNC in sustainable environmental management (2015) from college and at the time I got involved in the food cooperative and divestment campaign there. In London I volunteer with CPRE London an environmental charity where I help organise events; right now I’m working on setting up things for ‘London Rivers Week’ (23-31 oct). I don’t think I come in with a ton more skills than other candidates as we would all have to learn along the way but I just wanted to give you a sense of my own personal commitment and interest.

If elected here’s a couple of practical (and very much doable) things I’d focus on first:

Support the Food Coop to be up and running again and support and encourage students to apply to the Green Community Fund this year; £5000 has been made available by Solar SOAS for environmental projects!
To organise regular activities throughout the year like litter picking in parks and gardens in London, hold vegan pot-lucks in the JCR, have clothes-swaps and other second-hand points where people could give unwanted items a new home.

Here’s some more campaign-y stuff I’d like to get started:

To campaign for the SU bar to stop the use of single-use plastic cups; hundreds get thrown out in one night for the late license and it is just not acceptable! There are reusable alternatives that aren’t glass - if clubs can do it, we can too.
To assess and address food waste in the canteen - the JCR shop has a sound management of their waste but the SU has no information on the canteen yet, so I hope to consult with the staff working in the canteen to see what they do with their leftovers at the end of the day - Potential here to collect food and distribute it.

Through these actions we can set a better score on the People and Planet University League (currently we are 31st and we haven’t improved for a couple of years). The last review shows where we could do better, so let’s give that a go!

GET IN TOUCH! It would be great to support new connections to form by having a series of meet-ups between students to share ideas, discuss projects and potentially bloom into new environmentally- focused projects, collabs with other societies and campaigns.