DCU and UCC ranked in top 15 sustainable universities

Trinity is not present in the rankings of the sustainability of the world’s universities

  Dublin City University (DCU) and  University College Cork (UCC) have been ranked in the top 15 most sustainable universities in the world by UI Green Metric, an initiative started by the Universitas Indonesia (UI) in 2010.

DCU has been placed 9th in the rankings of 619 universities, while UCC is ranked in 15th place for the sustainability of their university. Also featured on the list are University of Limerick (UL) and Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). Trinity is not present in the rankings, however, the college may not have submitted itself for evaluation by UI Green Metric. College did not respond to a request for clarification.

The rankings are based on the independent rankings of several bodies, including Webometric, the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), QS and the College Sustainability Report Card. Each university that wishes to be ranked must fill out a questionnaire and provide numeric data on a number of criteria that provide information on how committed the institution is to making their campus environmentally friendly.

The information gathered was collected between July and October. According to UI Green Metric, universities are ranked based their approach to energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation and education, as well as their setting and infrastructure. Each of these indicators are given a numerical value based on a points system to give a total value upon which the universities are ranked.

These sustainability rankings, according to UI, were established to acknowledge the efforts taken by universities to reduce their carbon footprint and have a uniform ranking system on this issue across the world. UI aims to draw attention to part that universities can play in combating global climate change by simple changes in behaviour and paying more attention to sustainability.