Alma greener

Universities rated, ranked on environmental performance

The most important index for prospective students used to be the cost of beer at the university bar. Now school leavers are being encouraged to consider the environmental footprint of their future alma mater.

Alongside course summaries from UCAS, students can now check out a new roundup of the greenest colleges around the UK.

The Green League for Environmental Performance, compiled by student group People & Planet, ranks over 100 institutions on issues such as carbon emissions, renewable energy use, recycling, green travel plans and Fairtrade status. Points are also awarded if the college has a comprehensive environmental policy and auditing system.

Unlike most standard league tables, the top six places are occupied by former polytechnics. Leeds Metropolitan emerged top of the tree, while Cambridge came eighth; Oxford was 27th.

“If universities want to attract the very best students, the most engaged applicants, they should be looking to their environmental credentials,” says Robbie Blake, co-ordinator of the Go Green Campaign at People & Planet. “Our league table is the first opportunity to allow that to happen.”

Another report from the Association of Colleges highlights a number of inventive environmental solutions among 150 universities and colleges. The study found that seven in ten of Britain’s colleges and universities have undertaken an energy survey and over half (58%) have an environmental energy policy in place.

Students at Walford and North Shropshire College, for example, can sit in on lectures in the new £2.7 million Harris Centre, safe in the knowledge that the lights are run by biogas produced from cow dung at the college farm. Duchy College in Cornwall, meanwhile, runs four cars and a minibus on biofuel made from used chip fat.

Jane Wilkinson, principal sustainability advisor at Forum for the Future’s Public Sector Programme, said the table showed “students that living sustainably is both possible and desirable”. But, she added, “students also need to have sufficient knowledge and skills to act in a sustainable way. Colleges have a real opportunity to equip students with these key skills, and could do more to integrate sustainability into the curriculum. They will need the support of the awarding bodies to embed sustainable development in all qualifications.”

Meanwhile, Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development programme is celebrating its twelfth birthday.

Changing courses
Learning to live well in a low carbon world? This September the Centre for Alternative Technology, in collaboration with the University of East London, launched a unique practical MSc in Renewable Energy and the Built Environment.
www.cat.org.uk/courses

At the other end of the pipe, as it were, this October sees the opening of the University of Nottingham’s new £1.1 million Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage. Cutting edge R&D could be crucial for this still controversial but widely supported ‘technofix’ approach.
www.nottingham.ac.uk/ carbonmanagement

Also new this autumn is a distance-learning course for the chemical industry on promoting sustainability – launched by Hydro Polymers, one of Europe’s major PVC manufacturers. It’s hosted by the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden and runs until May 2008.
www.bth.se/eng

19 September 2007

Martin Wright and Oliver Balch

Add new comment
Harri Centre The Harris Centre - where cow power lights the path to knowledge Click Photography Ltd