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Green League 2009 Summary
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People & Planet are delighted with the results from this year’s Green League. Published in the Times Higher Education, the Green League 2009 shows greater transparency and accountability within the sector, with many universities continuing to successfully pioneer environmental management. Nottingham Trent University, LSE and Oxford Brookes University top this year’s Green League, which has seen a remarkable improvement in environmental management and policy across much of the HE sector.
Unfortunately, many universities are consistently failing to effectively manage their environmental impact. Some of the UK’s leading universities, well respected for their research and teaching on sustainability and climate change, fail to effectively improve their own environmental performance.
All universities need to take comprehensive and ambitious environmental action to achieve the systemic changes needed and it is clear that the current voluntary measures are not enough. We need a carbon reduction strategy driven by the government for the whole Higher Education sector that uses the most powerful tools available to drive the change needed across the board.
Ian Leggett Director People & Planet, 2009
There was a very high response rate to People & Planet’s Green League questionnaire and more institutions submitted data to HEFCE’s Estate Management Statistics. Of the 131 universities who were eligible for inclusion in The Green League 2009, 127 universities provided People & Planet and HEFCE with enough information to be entered in the League, an increase of 4.5% from 2008.
Published in Times Higher Education, People & Planet’s Green League 2009 ranks all British universities based on 11 environmental related criteria that include both policy and performance. It incorporates data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, including the percentage of waste recycled and CO2 emissions for each individual institution. The table also shows the change in each university’s ranking between 2008 and 2009.
Background
Excellence in environmental management has not historically been a key priority for the Higher Education sector in the UK. In the early 1990s the Toyne Report represented an initial effort to raise the profile of the issue and to drive up standards. But a subsequent review (the Khan Review 1996) concluded that most of the institutions and organisations targeted in the 1993 Report, including government, had demonstrated “considerable indifference” to its recommendations. Environmental management within the HE sector was, with rare exceptions, characterised by short-lived initiatives and slow, patchy progress.
A number of factors have helped to bring about significant improvements in recent years. The creation of a dedicated organisation, the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges, in 1996 provided a focus and resource point for institutions which want to improve environmental performance; and the growing awareness about the threat which climate change poses to our economy and society is beginning to influence the curriculum and stimulate an appreciation of sustainability which gets ‘beyond recycling’. In this context, People & Planet’s Go Green campaign — launched in 2003 — added the dimension of nationwide, student activism demanding the kind of systemic change which the Toyne and Khan reports recommended.
There is no doubt that the thousands of students who have been campaigning for greener campuses have driven systemic change within the sector. The Green League 2007 brought sustainability to the forefront of Vice Chancellors’ minds and, two years later, the Green League 2009 was a clear indicator that there have been tangible changes within the sector.
Green League 2009 key results
The number of universities taking part has increased to 127 universities
The Green League provides a comprehensive and authoritative measure of progress towards transforming environmental performance in the sector. There is now active interest on the part of UK universities in being a part of the Green League, and in that sense it is already beginning to change institutional culture towards the role and status of environmental management.
120 of 127 universities now have publicly available environmental policies while 27 universities achieved full marks on policy.
A publicly available environmental policy is a basic building block of environmental management. The best are regularly reviewed at a senior level, and include time bound targets and objectives in all areas of environmental impact. The most limited provide a statement of commitment and intent. Those institutions with no publicly available policy are serious environmental laggards.
Universities with full-time environmental officers/managers has increased to 85
Experience is clear — this is the key step for universities to take if they are to bring about long-term, systemic change. Since the Green League 2007 33 universities have created such a post and in the last year alone 15 universities have created such a post. It also means that, for the first time, more than two thirds of all universities now employ at least one full-time member of staff dedicated to environmental management.
Universities which audited all areas of environmental impact has decreased by 1 to 10
this means they’ve reviewed the following areas in the last five years: waste management, transport, sustainable procurement, energy, water, construction & refurbishment, emissions & discharges, community involvement and biodiversity; and that the institution is part of an external environmental management system.
The number of universities with ethical investment policies has more than doubled to 38. Driven by student campaigning universities are realising that the environmental and ethical impact of their investment is as important to tackle as their own environmental impact.
There was a significant disparity in both the scope and quality of the policies. - The best policies, such as those of the University of Edinburgh, the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford were all introduced after sustained student campaigns.
There are still improvements to be made
Despite the clear and impressive improvements in environmental management and performance in the sector demonstrated by the Green League 2009, there is still a long way to go on the path to sustainability.
While almost all universities have a publicly available environment policy of some sort, only 12 picked up full marks in this year’s Green League, for a regularly reviewed policy with specific time-bound targets in 9 areas of environmental management. The challenge now is to convince universities to set ambitious and comprehensive policies that will be the basis for changes in practice.
There are still 42 universities with no full-time staff member dedicated to environmental management. This means little or no capacity for policies to be developed and implemented and performance improvements to be won, in a significant proportion of the sector.
In terms of direct environmental impact (carbon emissions, water usage, waste etc), environmental management should be a process of continual improvement. The Green League shows some universities improving performance this year, with others maintaining or even worsening their impact.
The accuracy, transparency and reliability or environmental monitoring needs to improve. The environmental performance indicators used in the Green League are based on the Estates Management Statistics, which are voluntarily provided by universities with no external auditing.
