Discover how you can embed sustainability across a Higher Education organisation.

Dr Alex Ryan, Director and Founder of Learning Energy, returns to her old Lancaster University haunts to tell us about her work inside and outside universities on the ‘great big gobbling monster’ of sustainability. Alex helps people and organisations address sustainability challenges: work is not always easy.

We discuss the evolution of understanding and action in universities over the last 20 years; the importance of changes to culture and strategy; how to place the common good ahead of self-interest when making changes; and how the university sector mirrors other areas of society and the economy when it comes to attitudes and behaviours around sustainability.

We discover how a positive mindset change across an organisation can help overcome ‘change humps’; the essential role of universities in brokering systems change; and how to think differently around reporting and numbers.

Plus, Jan questions her own knowledge and skills, we discover Paul and Alex’s differing experiences of Lancaster University Library and its fines system, the Great Vowel Shift gets belated publicity, and we consider becoming the Pentland Centre for Love and Justice in Business.

Read the Advance HE Measuring What Matters report here: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/measuring-what-matters

Antibiotics have been around for hundreds of thousands of years – no, we didn’t know that either! They are harmful to bacteria, and without them we would have a world where life is much harder.

But in recent decades, overuse of antibiotics has led to the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This evolutionary response has been accelerated as humans have developed more and more antibiotics – leading to a biological arms race.

Dr Oskar Nyberg, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Dr Patrik Henriksson, from Leiden University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, are part of a project looking into the effects of antibiotics in the food system on humans and the animals involved.

We take a deep dive into Thai shrimp farming (and contrast them with the shrimp living in Morecambe Bay), learn more about aquaculture, and ecotoxicology in the marine environment, consider how long it takes and what conditions are needed to raise a shrimp (they do not eat sausages), discover how you measure how much antibiotics are in a shrimp (something that many farmers do not know themselves), and discuss why the drugs are used and how you can avoid needing them in the first place.

Oskar and Patrik tell us more broadly about superbugs, the regulations and protections in place for using antibiotics in farming, and the differences between human and animal treatments.

Plus, Paul’s aversion to penicillin, Oskar’s history in the culinary industry, and why is Patrik in a German beer garden?

Discover more about the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Keystone project: https://seabos.org/anti-microbial-resistance-amr-keystone-project/

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Culture is visibly lacking from the Sustainable Development Goals – but why? History, tourism, the arts, and even video games all have a part to play in the sustainability picture, so we need to consider the sector’s importance.

Dr Chiara Donelli, from the University of Venezia, is an expert in cultural sustainability and she is here to keep us informed. She explains why culture does not have a specific SDG assigned to it, how it fits into the big picture, and how it has been involved in sustainability activity for longer that you might think.

Taking Venice as a prime example, we look at sustainable business models for tourism, the problems of over-tourism – and how the industry can be just as destructive as other more obviously damaging sectors – and how a place can lose its very nature and identity through an excess of visitors.

We discuss Venice’s new tourist tax, conservation at Machu Pichu, population displacement in the Dolomites ahead of the Winter Olympics, Lake District honeypots, Morecambe jetties, and much more.

Find out why Paul is speaking Italian – while the Biennale leaves Jan flummoxed; why Venice at one point needed to stimulate tourism; the role of hippies in the sustainability movement; and the arts as advocacy for positive change.

Discover more about Chiara and her work here: https://www.unive.it/data/people/25748316

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If you carry out fascinating work on entrepreneurship and sustainability, you still need for people to understand it.

Professor Sreevas Sahasranamam, from the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow, pipped Jan and Paul to the Management Publication of the Year Award – but do they hold a grudge? No, they don’t!

Sreevas is a keen proponent of communicating research and expertise in novel and accessible ways. His blogs aim to reach and engage policymakers and government, as well as the public, opening previously inaccessible doors for him, such as opening up access to the world of the G20, and giving his work new impact potential.

We talk through Sreevas’s work in his India homeland looking at the role of digital ecosystems among entrepreneurs, and on how rural entrepreneurship ecosystems are built in remote communities, as well as more broadly on the links between the Sustainable Development Goals and entrepreneurship.

Sreevas has found that despite a lot of talk about entrepreneurs in the Global North engaging with sustainability, it is those in the Global South who are taking the lead – where the impacts of climate change are being felt more keenly.

Discover the difference between SDG awareness and SDG action, the familial links to natural resources in parts of India, and the benefits to business of the spread of cheap internet access across that country.

Plus, buying chai from a small roadside business with contactless payments, the rise of the Chinese sustainability market, and the benefits of QR codes (even for accounting).

Find out more about Sreevas and his work here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/staff/sreevassahasranamam/

And read some of his award-winning blogs here: https://sites.google.com/view/sreevas/media?authuser=0

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What is the reality for a small business when it comes to adopting sustainable practices? How hard is it to turn ideals into practical applications?

In the first of our Local Heroes episodes, Steve Parkman, from Cumbrian design studio 42 Creative Thinking talks us through the changes he has made to his company’s operations to make it more sustainable.

Steve has been part of the Transforming Tomorrow journey since before it was a podcast, and he discusses his learning journey in both design and sustainability. We discuss how sustainability has changed fundamentally the role of a designer – when they work in both print and digital; how Steve has switched to solar power for his design work; and the attitudes of the businesses and customers Steve works with towards being greener.

Steve talks us through how print and paper products can be sustainable, the growth of European forests in recent years, how green servers can reduce digital carbon footprints, and the advantages small businesses have when they decide they want to make a switch in their operations.

Discover why Jan turned down the chance to cycle to Malaysia, how the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fits into everything, whether Paul and Jan understand a word of Welsh, and why Steve has gone off the grid.

Find out more about 42 Creative Thinking here: https://www.42creative.co.uk/

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What is servitization? Could it be the future for more businesses? How does it link to productivity and sustainability? And why is it spelt with a z? We answer at least three of these questions as we explore an area that is relevant to giant global corporations and small businesses alike.

What if, instead of a crane, you charge by the number of lifts it carries out; if instead of selling a physical tyre, you provide a certain amount of miles; if a company offers you so many air miles from an engine? These are all examples of servitization that already exist – it even applies in industrial food packaging.

Lancaster University Management School’s Professor Andreas Schroeder is a servitization expert, working with numerous firms on how they can change their operations to move to a servitization model to benefit their operations, and others on how they can use their data in new ways.

He tells us about the key differences between products and services; how servitization blurs the boundaries on relationships with customers and suppliers – are they now more like partners?; the differences between rental agreements and servitization; and why it can be easier for smaller companies to pivot their operations to this model.

Discover some of servitization’s success stories, how it can affect a company’s carbon footprint and align profit with sustainability, how it encourages an operation to design and create products for service, repair and circularity, and how data collection, analysis and optimisation can identify where value opportunities lie and improve practical operations.

Paul lets his anger at American spelling take over; Jan discovers a new friend who can put on a Kiwi accent; and everyone becomes fascinated by tyres, hydrogen-powered diggers and aeroplane engines.

Find out more about Andreas and his work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/people/andreas-schroeder

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A location for romance, violence or murder – sleeper trains in film and fiction are always places for drama. But the reality may be somewhat different.

As a sustainable travel option that is enjoying a resurgence in Europe – and, perhaps surprisingly, in China – they link big cities and are evolving to meet modern needs.

Lancaster University Management School Marketing Lecturer Dr Nicole Bulawa may never have taken the midnight train to Georgia, but her work on sleeper trains tells her that Murder on Orient Express and From Russia With Love may not be the most accurate depictions of the medium.

She tells us why sleepers went into decline and how attitudes towards sustainability played a role in why they came back; the importance of speed – and sometimes the lack of it; how services have evolved to include private mini-cabins for individual travellers; and how issues of logistics tend to lead to arrivals that are either really early or too late for some travellers.

We find out that Jan’s knowledge of 1970s and 80s soul and R&B music is sadly lacking, but that she is the only person in the studio to have been a regular sleeper user; that Paul’s James Bond watching may have put him off this particular form of transportation; and that Austria has been a leader in the sector’s resurgence.

Plus, everyone picks out their favourite train journeys – taking in Sweden, Morecambe Bay, Switzerland, and beyond.

Discover more about Nicole and her research here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/people/nicole-bulawa

Enjoy the drama set on a sleeper train between Glasgow and London that Jan mentions here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002265y/nightsleeper

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How can we educate university students around the world on important sustainability topics? You cannot talk to them all in the same way as those in other countries – because different countries and cultures have different attitudes and priorities.

Dr Stephen Homer has gone from being a commercial fisherman and a fishmonger to a leader on sustainability education at Sunway Business School in Malaysia, inspired by his experiences before moving into academia.

He tells us all about the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) and how they help management and business schools make sense of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Stephen explains the need to educate students on sustainability actions, so they take values with them into their careers; how different universities take varying approaches to sustainability; and the importance of understanding what students want to learn.

We talk about Malaysia’s chocolate and palm oil industries; the desire of students in Malaysia to achieve economic success, and how his can be balanced with sustainability; the challenges of delivering a sustainability education that is interesting and engaging to the country’s different ethnic groups, and to those on a wide range of programmes; and the problem of accountancy students (to Jan’s disgust).

Discover more about Stephen and his work here: https://sunwayuniversity.edu.my/sunway-business-school/staff-profiles/dr-stephen-thomas-homer

Find out about PRME here: https://www.unprme.org/about/

And read Lancaster University Management School’s PRME report here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/lums/PRME-Report.pdf

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