Dr Anne Mc Gettrick Dillon wins Sustainability leadership award for the O’Neill lab
Congratulations to Dr Anne McGettrick Dillon who won a Sustainability Leadershio Award, on behalf of the O'Neill lab, having secured one of the first platinum Green lab certificates on the new 2.0 platform. She is pictured here at the awards with the Provost.
Congratulations to Dr Anne McGettrick Dillon who won a Sustainability Leadershio Award, on behalf of the O'Neill lab, having secured one of the first platinum Green lab certificates on the new 2.0 platform. She is pictured here at the awards with the Provost.
Anne adopted the position of Green lab lead in the O’Neill lab. Previously there was an uncoordinated approach that was not yielding significant results, especially as we had a turnover of students and visiting researchers. Anne took the initiative and signed our lab up for the green lab certification process. She carried out an initial assessment to identify areas where we needed to improve sustainability and presented a PowerPoint training session to the group on how to achieve it. Anne managed to have everyone on side with a competition to design poster/signs on how best to dispose of/reduce waste and energy conservation. She incentivized it by offering a best poster prize and it resulted in many great entries with a good fun element. The key was that people participated and felt motivated. Anne also engaged with the college green officer, Dimitri, to get water saving units on the taps to conserve water. To keep people exercised she routinely communicates to the lab about water conservation, waste reduction and energy conservation. Finally, she encourages lab members to purchase sustainable products using the ACT lab and Energy star Website.
All of her hard work has culminated in the lab achieving a Platinum Green lab certificate recently, being one of the first labs in Trinity accredited on the new Green lab 2.0 programme. This is not part of her job description but something she has taken on, run with and is having great success with. We feel confident it will endure as Anne is not easily dissuaded and so is just the right person to implement lasting changes that we all want to get behind.