Brunel University London Ranks 57 In Sustainability

Brunel has made a big leap up a league table ranking UK universities’ efforts to be ethical and environmentally friendly, climbing an incredible 57 places from last year.

People & Planet University League 2022-2023 puts Brunel University London in joint 37th place alongside Edinburgh Napier University out of 153 UK universities.

People & Planet is an independent national student network aiming to keep global warming below 2°C. Its sustainability league for UK Universities assesses progress towards overall carbon reduction targets and awards degree-style classifications for their overall performance.

Brunel scored 56.1% which gives us a 2:1. Our emissions reduction of 50% meets the sector-wide 43% target (2005-20) and we are up from 94th position with 36.7% in 2020-2021. On a local level Brunel notched up 9th place among the 35 London universities.

“We are delighted with our dramatically improved performance in the table this year,” said Professor Trevor Hoey.

“This shows the extra hard work that many colleagues have put into considering the environmental impact of everything that we do across the university,” said the Pro Vice-Chancellor for International & Sustainability. “We have updated policies and have collated information to make it easier for staff and students to engage with our sustainability activities and look forward to continued improvement next year.”

Started in 2007, People & Planet base their league on what universities publish on their websites and data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency. They judge environmental, sustainable and ethical performance across 13 different categories which range from carbon reduction and reducing water use to ethical investments and workers’ rights.

Brunel this year got top marks for environmental auditing with100% and scored highly in several categories. We scored less well in some areas, such as water reduction at 11%, and will work to improve these scores next year.