At Bath, we're equipping our community with the knowledge and skills needed to drive positive change in an uncertain world. This Carbon Literacy Action Day, final-year student Charis Drain shares how taking part in a Carbon Literacy course helped her turn awareness into action, building lasting habits and valuable career skills.
When I first signed up for the Carbon Literacy course at Bath, I wasn’t entirely sure what it would involve. I quickly learned that it's all about building an awareness of the carbon costs of our daily actions, alongside gaining the confidence to cut emissions at home, on campus, and in the workplace. It’s a nationally recognised initiative developed by The Carbon Literacy Project, and being able to take it for free through the university was a great opportunity.
Across interactive workshops, we covered the core science of climate change, carbon budgets, and how to effectively communicate carbon reduction to people in industry, a skill that has really stayed with me. What has really stuck with me is an exercise we did early on using the WWF carbon footprint calculator. Seeing a visual breakdown of my own footprint made everything feel far less abstract and showed me how my everyday choices actually count.
Two pledges: from flat meals to cleaner energy
During the course to get certified, you have to make two specific pledges: one individual action and one group or system-level change.
For my individual pledge, I decided to organise a weekly vegetarian meal for my flat - veggie sundays. That habit over a year or two has now turned into vegan sundays as I now have a vegan flatmate. This has become one of my favorite parts of the week; we sit and have a good meal, and all catch up, especially as we are all so busy in the final year.
My second pledge focused on wider impact: I chose to focus on using cleaner energy for our private student housing. I researched suppliers, made the case to my housemates and switched to a 100% renewable energy contract (that was also cheaper!). I’ve kept this change going for two years running across my placement year and this year.
Why it actually mattered for my career
Finally, the course ended up having a real impact on my career prep, too. Putting the certificate on my CV gave me great concrete experience to draw on during interviews when employers brought up sustainability, helping me secure my internship offers.
Being able to explain how I approach carbon reduction and frame those discussions in an industry context gave us something really meaningful to talk about.
As a Computer Science student, I went on to complete the Green Software Foundation's SCI Fundamentals and Green Software for Practitioners courses through the Linux Foundation, exploring how software development can help reduce environmental impact.
If you want practical tools to make a difference and boost your CV, I’d really recommend signing up. You can register for the next Carbon Literacy course on Thursday 28 January 2027.
Charis Drain
4th Year Computer Science Student
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