The Southampton Blackout will be back this year on Friday 13 November and it’s growing to include parts of Southampton General Hospital.
Each year, more than 250 students and staff come together on a Friday evening to audit equipment left on unnecessarily over the weekend.
The aim is to highlight the huge collective impact that we can all have with small actions on campus – like switching things off before we go home.
Last year’s Blackout was the biggest to date, with students from all eight faculties signing up to audit 40 buildings across Highfield, Avenue, Winchester School of Art and, for the first time, Boldrewood.
The results were positive, with over three quarters of computers already switched off when the audit team arrived.
Last year the University and SUSU also started working with the National Union of Students (NUS) and, as a result, 11 other higher education institutions ran their own Blackout events in 2014. Across the UK, 563 students and 193 staff members switched off a total of 16,935 appliances!
To find out more about the event and its impact, read our latest post on the Sustainability Action blog. If you’d like to take part this year, please get in touch with Julia Kendal.