Driving sustainable change within local businesses through student-led environmental consultancy

Traditionally, work experience placements for students in Higher Education were undertaken as a year in industry. The benefits for placement students are well established; higher final year grades, increased graduate job prospects, higher starting salaries. However, a more limited understanding of benefits for the employing organisation has been established and generally focuses on students as lower cost resource.

Recently, additional consideration of placement students providing innovative and diverse resource has emerged, with some research suggesting they may act as a catalyst for environmental impact reduction and sustainable change. However, these findings remain largely generic, with few specific benefits and outcomes received by the employing organisation established. This study seeks to close this gap.

To help local businesses, particularly SMEs, address growing demands for environmental stewardship and exploit opportunities offered by placements to drive environmental impact reduction and sustainable change, the Business School has established a short-term placement proposition, the Student Led Environmental Consultancy Programme. This places students with local organisations to undertake bespoke projects that identify and act on the organisation’s environmental impacts.

This study presents three projects from the Student Led Environmental Consultancy Programme and uses reflections from organisational Project Leads to explore the sustainable change created. The findings suggest a Student Led Environmental Consultancy Project can provide an affordable innovative resource that brings a creative and evidence-based perspective to their environmental aspirations. This will be of interest to educators seeking to develop partnership projects with their local business community and to business personnel seeking to improve environmental sustainability.