The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology is proud to have been awarded Beyond Gold Green Impact in 2025—an exceptional level of recognition within the University of Oxford’s Green Impact programme. This prestigious award celebrates departments that have gone above and beyond baseline targets, embedding sustainability into everyday practices and creating replicable environmental solutions.

The Beyond Gold Award recognises departments that have embedded sustainability at the heart of their culture and gone further to deliver innovative, impactful, and replicable practices. From pioneering laboratory reuse protocols and scaling them department-wide, to reducing single-use plastics and carbon emissions, to championing community initiatives such as the Community-Wide Food and Goods Rescue Network, the Dunn School has shown how science and sustainability can work hand in hand.

In 2025, our success was driven by a strong focus on following new actions:

• Recycling decontaminated lab plastics across multiple waste streams

• Increasing biodiversity through wildlife-friendly planting around departmental spaces

• Expanding the Community-Wide Food and Goods Rescue Initiative to 15+ UK cities

• Delivering lab environmental sustainability talk or posters or in panel discussions at conferences, symposia, and workshops nationally and internationally

• Installing glove and soft packaging recycling boxes throughout the Dunn School labs

• Improving energy use through better monitoring and increasing the temperature of ULTs to -70oC or even higher for emergency freezers. 

• Sending/purchasing secondhand equipment via the UniGreen scheme

This recognition is a tribute to the dedication and creativity of our staff, students, and the Dunn School Green Group, whose efforts have transformed sustainability from a set of individual actions into a shared cultural value. Winning Beyond Gold reinforces our determination to keep innovating, collaborating, and inspiring others — within Oxford and across the global research community. We remain committed to driving forward our environmental initiatives, reducing our carbon footprint, and demonstrating that research excellence can and must go hand in hand with sustainability.

Members of the Dunn School Green Group joined staff and students from across the University at the Green Impact End of Year Celebration on 19 June 2025, where Beyond Gold recipients were honoured alongside Gold, Silver, and Bronze awardees (see Oxford Sustainability news)