Student ambassadors and Ben and Jerry's Philippa Marshall speak to WWF's Sonia Fèvre about what makes the groundbreaking Climate Change College an effective tool to harness grassroots action around climate change.


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Interview transcript

PM: The Ben and Jerry's Climate Change College really began with the shared values of WWF, Ben and Jerry's and Marc Cornelisson, a polar explorer and environmentalist, who we really got together and felt that there was a great opportunity to share all of our knowledge and network with a young generation and help inspire great new grassroots climate change solutions ideas.

WWF: So, it's more than just ice cream?

PM: The Ben and Jerry's Climate Change College is way more than ice cream. It's really a very unique partnership which leverages the strength of a business, the strength of an NGO and the strength of an adventurer and environmentalist to create a very dynamic, results-driven campaign for young people to come up with really innovative ideas for reducing CO2 emissions.

WWF: One year in, what do you think would be the most successful thing we can say about what the College has done so far?

PM: One year into the Climate Change College, I think the biggest success has been spreading the message about climate change and solutions around climate change mitigation that's come through the project, has been the most inspiring and successful thing so far.

Ben and Jerry's Climate Change College 2007 brings with it even greater and more ambitious campaigns from the students. Every year Ben and Jerry's runs its own festival called Ben and Jerry's 'Sundae on the Common' in Clapham Common, and it was a great way to really bring the message of the Climate Change College and the work that WWF is doing to life for tens of thousands of London festival-goers.

WWF: And do we have the dates for 2007?

PM: The dates for the Ben and Jerry's Sundae on the Common festival will be July 28th and 29th, so put those dates in your diary.


Hello, I'm Sonia Fevre, Campaigns Officer at WWF-UK. I'm here with Neill today to talk to us about the Ben and Jerry's Climate Change College. Neil, it's great to have you here. Could you tell me a little bit more about the Climate Change College and about your campaign?

NJ: Yeah, the Climate Change College is a way of getting people more involved in climate change awareness raising and ways of encouraging people to become more aware about climate change and to save energy. My specific campaign is called the Student Switch Off, it's studentswitchoff.co.uk. The Student Switch Off is an energy saving campaign which is getting universities - halls of residence at universities - to compete against each other to see which hall can reduce their energy usage by the greatest amount, and to provide students with an incentive to get involved in this project we're providing them with prizes for the hall that wins, so communal prizes, and also prizes to individuals who take on a proactive role within the hall.

WWF: And what got you interested in the Ben and Jerry's Climate Change College?

NJ: Well I've had a long-standing interest in the environment, so for example when I was an undergraduate I was a Green Officer for my college at Cambridge, and I went and did a Masters in environmental issues, and I'm now doing a PhD in climate change. And to take my scheme that I've been running at the University of East Anglia that step further, it would be great to become a Ben and Jerry's Climate Change Ambassador.

We've been receiving training and expertise from Ben and Jerry's and the World Wildlife Fund which is providing us with excellent experience and information about how to take our campaigns forward.

WWF: OK. Now it's a challenging job running any campaign, especially in the current climate - lots of people are talking about climate change, and not everybody seems to know what to do about it. What do you hope to bring to the current 'movement for change' within the climate change arena?

NJ: I suppose the thing I hope to bring to the area is to try and make saving energy fun, and that's the focus of the Student Switch Off - it's that it's providing students with real incentives to change, providing them with interesting and enjoyable prizes for doing so in the hope that in the future they will change their behaviours so they will continue to save energy.

Having been a student I was really aware of the problem energy usage in a situation where you didn't have to pay any more for your electricity. And that's why the Student Switch Off is such a good idea, because it's providing students with incentives throughout the entire academic year so that people who are proactive in encouraging others can do so, and for people who are not necessarily usually concerned with the environment, there's an incentive for them to keep involved throughout the entire academic year.

WWF: And the Climate Change College has a lot of incentives for you to keep involved as well. Could you tell us about some of the exciting things that are coming up in the next year or so?

NJ: Yes. The main incentive and the thing that really interests all of the Climate ambassadors is the trip to Greenland. We go off there in mid-April for 10 days and that's just going to be an absolutely awesome experience to go and see one of the areas that's being significantly affected by climate change and to really understand. I mean, I suppose I don't think such a thing as wilderness really exists anymore given the global impacts of climate change. So to see that area which is being affected by everyone's behaviours all around the world, will just be an awe-inspiring experience.

WWF: Fantastic. So tell us a bit more, what can people do to join your campaign?

NJ: People who are going to be going to the London universities next year - to get in contact with me - so to go onto the website, studentswitchoff.co.uk, and to drop me an email to basically say that they'd like to take a proactive role in this.

WWF: Rob, it's great to have you here today. Unpluggit - what's it all about?

RB: Unpluggit is a campaign that I'm running through the Climate Change College. Today up to 20 million people in the UK don't unplug their mobile phone chargers when they're not using them, and that wastes electricity. And that amount of electricity that's wasted at the moment in the UK could actually power up to 65,000 homes for a whole year. Unpluggit is all about getting people to unplug their mobile phone chargers, as well as providing them with a vehicle to put pressure on the mobile phone industry to develop a next generation of mobile phone chargers that don't waste electricity when we don't use them.

The Unpluggit campaign is based around a website, unpluggit.co.uk, and visitors can go online to the website and sign up to a petition to the mobile phone industry with a very strong message.

WWF: How did you come to focus on mobile phone chargers?

RB: There are enough mobile phones in the UK at the moment in circulation for every person in Britain. It's the first step towards being more aware of all the other areas in your life that energy is wasted, like not filling your kettle up to the top when you're only wanting one cup of tea, like switching your lights off, like switching your TV and your Hi-fi off and not leaving them on standby. And once you start getting all these actions into your everyday life, the energy savings become much bigger and bigger for you personally, and that's when the money savings start to come in.

WWF: It's an interesting partnership, WWF and Ben and Jerry's working together. What value do you see in those organisations coming together?

RB: Ben and Jerry's was set up around social responsibility across a number of areas, and climate change is one of those areas. We have the advantage of having access to the expertise of WWF, again, to help make our campaigns more credible and more robust.

WWF: It's been great speaking with you today, Rob. What would you tell me to do - what's my call to action?

RB: Sonia, I'd encourage you to visit unpluggit.co.uk, to sign up to our petition and actually start unplugging your mobile phone charger every day from today.

WWF: Hayley Potter, it's good to have you with us. A Climate Change College Ambassador with a diploma. You've completed the year's gruelling ordeal, could you tell us a bit more about it?

HP: Yes I guess that's right, I have officially graduated from the Climate Change College and have spent yesterday and today getting to know the Year 2 candidates.

You learn quicker than you ever thought you could and progress as a campaigner in so many ways.

I think there's two valuable lessons that we learnt. Firstly, going out to the Arctic inspired me to take more action in my own life and inspired me to take the message forward. And an inspired person can do so much as far as campaigning is concerned because you then go on to inspire other people. So going out to the Arctic, meeting the Inuit people, seeing how climate change is affecting their way of life, seeing how it's affecting the animals out there as well - something I'm very passionate about - just gave me that extra edge to move my campaign forward.

And the second thing that the Climate Change College taught me is, everybody is passionate about climate change even if they don't realise it, because everybody's got something that makes them tick. People are either very passionate about humanitarian issues, or they're very passionate about animal welfare issues, or they're very passionate about making money. All of those things tie in greatly with climate change, and if you can appeal to an individual's perception of what is most important to them, then you can widen the scope for your campaign greatly.

WWF: And what makes you tick?

HP: What makes me tick? It was something that changed while I was out in the Arctic, because originally I came at the climate change issues very much from an animal welfare point of view. There are so many amazing species in the world that my children are never going to be able to see, they're going to know about in exactly the same way as I know about the dodo. But being out in the Arctic and meeting the Inuit people, and seeing first hand just how badly it already affects humans, that really hit home to me.

WWF: You said you'd graduated from the Climate Change College? Does that mean your work on climate change is ending now?

HP: Absolutely not. You don't ever stop being a campaigner until your campaign is fulfilled, and we've got many many years of hard work to go.

WWF: Great, thank you.


Brought to you by WWF's One Planet Living campaign