December 15, 2017, by Liz Cass

A green Christmas for the University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham has been named the second greenest campus in the world.

Universitas Indonesia (UI) compiled the GreenMetric ranking for 2017 – measuring 619 universities in 76 countries.

The Greenrankings measure each participating university’s commitment in developing an ‘environmentally friendly’ infrastructure. They look at six indicators; setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation and education.

Andy Nolan, Director of Sustainability at the University of Nottingham, said: To maintain 2^nd place in this competitive ranking is another great achievement for Nottingham and recognises the hard work of everyone involved, from the grounds staff maintaining the campus, our cleaners who do invaluable work in achieving our recycling rates as well as engineers, architects, surveyors and environment managers. All of this is to support our students and staff delivering high quality teaching and research in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

“As a major global organisation we recognise that we have an environmental, economic and societal impact locally, nationally and internationally. Increasingly our students, staff and local community partners recognise and expect the University to be a leading advocate of sustainability in its teaching, learning, research, decision-making and operations.”

The 120 hectares University Park campus is renowned for its large leafy campus and is one of the big draws for prospective students. Highlights include Highfields Lake, large areas of long-established woodland, Lenton Firs rock garden and the tranquil Millennium Garden.

It was the first university to be awarded a Green Flag by the Keep Britain Tidy charity back in 2003 and has continued to achieve accolades for its sustainability, cleanliness and conservation ever since. There is real innovation in sustainable design and practice on our Jubilee and Sutton Bonington campuses too, such as the carbon neutral laboratories, the Gateway Building and the University’s first passivhaus building as part of the G-ERA research programme.

This year UI GreenMetric initiated a network hub for participating universities to share their best practices in implementing sustainable campus programs in their universities and collaborating together in three thematic priorities (Shaping Global Higher Education and Research in Sustainability; Creating Global Sustainability Leaders; and Partnering on Solutions to Sustainability Challenges). To date an international and 9 national workshops have been held in collaboration with host universities.

While Nottingham secured the top spot in 2016 this year it is the turn of Wageningen University in the Netherlands to claim pole position.

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