Skip to main content
About us

Breadcrumb

  1. Queen Mary University of London
  2. About us
  3. Sustainability
  4. Sustainable development goals
  5. Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
  6. Engagement

Engagement

Promoting responsible water use and caring for our local waterways

Queen Mary promotes awareness of responsible water use and the protection of local waterways through community activities, citizen science and public engagement. 

Through ChessWatch, Queen Mary provides publicly accessible information and educational resources that help local communities, schools and other users understand the relationship between water use, water quality and river health. Citizen-science activities encourage participants to consider how human activity affects freshwater environments and how local water resources can be better protected. 

Closer to campus, Queen Mary Students’ Union works with the Canal & River Trust to care for the Regent’s Canal alongside Mile End. Big Green Canal Cleans bring students, staff and the wider community together to remove litter while raising awareness of pollution and responsible behaviour around urban waterways. 

During Climate Action Week 2025, 51 students and staff contributed more than 100 hours of volunteering through a two-hour canal clean. Queen Mary runs regular canal-cleaning activities with the Canal & River Trust, combining practical action with wider awareness of the importance of conserving and protecting water resources. 

 Preventing Plastic Pollution programme

Through the Preventing Plastic Pollution programme, Queen Mary combined community learning with practical action to protect rivers and coastal environments. 

Working with 18 organisations across England and France, the project developed a citizen-science approach that enabled members of the public to identify, record and monitor plastic pollution in and around rivers. This gave communities opportunities to learn how pollution enters water systems, moves from rivers to the sea, and how changes in behaviour and waste management can help protect waterways. 

Community participation also contributed directly to practical conservation. Across the programme, 107 tonnes of plastic were removed, 1,469 km of rivers and coastline were cleaned, and river health improved by 6.1% in participating areas. 

The project’s open-access data became the UK’s largest dataset on river plastic pollution, supporting communities, researchers and policymakers in identifying pollution sources and developing future interventions. 

ChessWatch: A water observatory for the River Chess

ChessWatch combines free community education with practical conservation of the River Chess, working with the River Chess Association, Chilterns Chalk Streams Project and Thames Water. 

The project uses four water-quality sensors to continuously monitor indicators including dissolved oxygen, turbidity, electrical conductivity, pH, water level, chlorophyll-a and tryptophan. This provides local partners with evidence to understand pressures on river health and support catchment-management decisions. 

ChessWatch also enables schools, A-level students, STEM clubs and local communities to learn about good water management through citizen science, publicly available water-quality data and educational resources. Participants can explore how pollution, water use and environmental conditions affect river health while contributing to understanding and protecting an off-campus freshwater ecosystem. 

Working together on water security

Queen Mary works with local, regional, national and international government bodies to improve water quality, strengthen water security and protect aquatic environments. 

At local level, the Queen Mary-led Preventing Plastic Pollution programme worked with public authorities including Plymouth City Council and Brest Métropole to reduce plastic pollution entering rivers and coastal waters. The programme also involved regional authorities in France, including the Conseil départemental de la Manche, alongside environmental and catchment-management organisations. 

At national level, Queen Mary works with Defra and the Environment Agency. In June 2024, a Queen Mary-led team received £2.9 million from UKRI and Defra to investigate how flooding and coastal erosion can expose historic landfill sites and threaten coastal water quality. The project works with the Environment Agency and partners to develop more resilient approaches to coastal management. 

Queen Mary also works internationally with government and public bodies. Preventing Plastic Pollution brought together partners in England and France, including Defra, the Environment Agency, the Office Français de la Biodiversité, Brest Métropole and French regional authorities, supporting cross-border cooperation on river and marine pollution. 

Queen Mary’s wider partnerships include collaboration with Waternet, Amsterdam’s water service provider, on sustainable drinking-water treatment. In December 2024, Waternet installed advanced purification equipment at Queen Mary to support research into emerging contaminants, including PFAS. 

Back to top