What is Carbon Literacy Training you might wonder? It is a programme designed to educate people on how their everyday activities create carbon impacts and how these can be reduced. It is currently available for all staff and students at the Open University to undertake for free. It involves approximately 4 hours of self-study e-learning, a 4 hour interactive workshop through teams and submitting carbon reduction pledges.
The programme provides a basic knowledge of climate science and carbon footprints as well as climate justice issues, household carbon reduction and climate impacts. UK climate policy and HE climate action is also covered. Tips on communicating climate and identifying your spheres of influence are also really useful topics that are included.
“It covers a lot of ground but in a way that is accessible and easy to digest”
I first came across the Carbon Literacy Trust when I was running my business Boy Wonder and signed up to take the training as my local council funded it. Although I was already very environmentally aware I still found it very useful and the pledges are a good way to push you to do more. I then came across it again at the OU and decided to become a Carbon Literacy facilitator so that I could train others. I am now fully trained and have run several workshop sessions.
I have recently spent quite some time updating the content of the course to include new information as the impacts are ever-changing and increasing. However, a heartening sign was that the data for the carbon footprints section shows there has been good reductions by most countries. Although the subject is often hard to think about I find that delivering the training helps with my eco-anxiety as I am training others to become more aware.
The pledges that attendees are asked to submit are an individual pledge and a group pledge based within the workplace (or a personal one if you are a student). We hope that the group pledges which come from this programme will help to foster collaborative sustainability networks that reduce carbon impacts supporting the OU’s overall Net Zero targets.
To date we have trained 749 people and 489 of those got certified. You can register your interest in Carbon Literacy Training here or book directly on My Learning Centre or read more about the Carbon Literacy Trust here. If you are interested in also becoming a facilitator like me then please email sustainability@open.ac.uk with your CV and a 200 word application.
Written by Ismay Mummery, 3rd year PGR
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