A First Class Sustainable University
Bangor University is among the top 30 universities in the UK to receive a 'First Class Honours' degree style classification for the University’s sustainability credentials.
This latest table sees the University, rising nine places, and going from a ‘2:1’ to a ‘First Class Honours degree’. The University achieved its highest score ever with an increase of nearly 8.5% and also scored a perfect 100% in 4 of the 13 categories. The University League is drawn up by People & Planet and is the UK's only independent ranking of the sustainability of all public UK universities. It is assessed on a wide range of environmental, social and financial sustainability criteria.
The University is also currently ranked in the top 3% of the world’s greenest universities in the UI Green Metric as the 5th greenest suburban university in the world and 6th greenest in the UK. Sustainability is a key driver at Bangor and is embedded in the University’s strategic plan. The University has pledged to become “The Sustainable University”, and has a long-standing commitment to improving the environmental, social, ethical, cultural and financial aspects of all its operations.
Bangor University Vice-Chancellor, Professor John G Hughes commented:
“We take immense pride in the quality of our environment at Bangor University, and are committed to its protection and enhancement. Our commitment to sustainability means thinking about the impacts of everything we do, and whether it can be done better. I’m delighted with the continued progress that we are making in managing our environmental and sustainability impacts at Bangor. As a University community, we take our responsibilities very seriously indeed.”
Dr Einir Young, Bangor’s Director of Sustainability said:
“I’m delighted with the result. The University has tasked its Sustainability Lab team with actively putting sustainability at the heart of our teaching, learning, research, innovation and public engagement using the Welsh Wellbeing Goals and the Global Sustainability Goals as our frameworks for action.
The last year has been an eventful one for us as we move towards a team approach to our environmental management reaching beyond the traditional domain of Property and Campus Services. We have established a Campus Environmental Performance Team to co-ordinate the many strands of our EMS.
Our campus calendar for the coming year is full of student led and student focussed activities, with details available on our website.”
Earlier this summer Bangor University’s Undeb Bangor Students’ Union was awarded a highly coveted Excellent accreditation for the NUS Green Impact Students’ Unions Awards, having achieved the Gold Award three times in 2011 and 2013 and 2016. This latest achievement for the University itself builds on a string of successes in sustainability management over many years. In the last twelve months alone successes include gaining the coveted ISO14001 international standard for environmental management, and being the first organisation in the UK to achieve Level 5 of the new and more stringent version of the Green Dragon Standard for Environmental Management, receiving a plaque of recognition for our contribution to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) over the last 50 years, and winning first prize for “Sustainable FE/HE Institution” in the Sustain Wales Awards.
Publication date: 16 November 2017