How to Make a Green Campus

IARU begun collaborating on issues of sustainability in 2006, 10 years later, each university has made real headway and developed a robust dialogue.

In 2009 the campus sustainability initiative was established with the aim of promoting collaboration between member institutions and developing best practices strategies in environmental management. All IARU universities are faced with a variety of challenges to which they each answer with a variety of solutions and initiatives. The continuous and fruitful exchange between IARU partners has contributed to making these solutions even more valuable.

To celebrate 10 years of collaboration in IARU, this video provides an overview of the range of practices put in place at IARU universities to enhance IARU campuses and encourage engagement in sustainability.

To learn more on each university’s efforts for sustainability on campus, please watch the individual videos below.

Sustainability at UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley intends to be a leader on environmental issues and to promote action and awareness through educational and research activities.

"Globally, we face significant environmental, economic, and social challenges, from inequality to climate change, from food security to water shortages. Today, more than ever, we need to act and to help create a world that supports generations to come. Berkeley works to find solutions to these pressing issues and to make the world a better place."

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Cambridge - The Living Laboratory

The ‘Living Lab’ provides opportunities for Cambridge students to carry out research and projects across the University to improve its sustainability.

The options are almost limitless. Topics and themes might focus on transport, biodiversity, energy, waste, food, behaviour change, wellbeing, the built environment, consumption patterns, culture...the list goes on. As long as what you are doing aims to help improve the University's environmental sustainability, we would love to hear from you.

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UCPH - Green Campus

The University of Copenhagen has set out ambitious new targets for sustainability designed to make UCPH one of the world’s most sustainable universities.

With “Green Campus 2020: A Strategy for Resource Efficiency and Sustainability” the University has taken a big step towards meeting new environmental goals, including specific targets for energy and CO2 reductions.

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Oxford Green Impact Awards

Green Impact is an Oxford University environmental accreditation scheme that brings together staff and students across the University to play an active role in improving the sustainable practices of their office, building or department.

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PKU - The Inverse Growth of Weiming Lake

The water in Weiming Lake comes mainly from the Wanquan River. The increase of population and development caused pollution of the river. In 2000, Peking University started it's water saving movement, and worked with the government to launch sewage treatment projects.

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ETH Zurich - There is no Planet B

"Climate change interacts with the big sustainability topics such as natural resources, food, energy, water, poverty, urbanization... And it raises long and short term challenges, affecting the next generations." This short video on sustainability research at ETH Zurich, features Reto Knutti, Professor for Climate Science, as well as Associate Vice President for Sustainability at ETH Zurich. Research, education, and campus sustainability efforts are touched upon as the three-pronged approach that ETH Zurich uses to confront climate change and issues related to it.

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Sustainability Solutions at Yale

Members of Yale's Sustainability strategic planning process discuss the many ways in which Yale is both addressing sustainability and climate change as an institution, and integrating sustainability study and research into the academic mission of the university.

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UTokyo - In Pursuit of Sustainability

The University of Tokyo initiated the Todai Sustainable Campus Project (TSCP) in 2008 to reduce carbon emissions. In this video the members of the TSCP Student Committee will guide you through the measures in place and the new zero energy building "21 KOMCEE".

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Sustainability at the National University of Singapore

A summary of how sustainability is incorporated into the teaching, research and campus operations of the National University of Singapore. It includes a special mention of University Town, where sustainability-centric masterplanning and operations principles are demonstrated in a tangible and impactful way.

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Sustainability at the Australian National University

The Australian National University campus has more than 10,000 trees and over 100 native animals, its working environment is defined by nature. ANU established an environmental policy over fifteen years ago. Since then the university has implemented three environmental management plans obtaining major results in significantly reducing wastes, water use and fuel consumption.

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