Kent has moved up 12 places in the 2022 People and Planet University League – a comprehensive and independent league table of UK universities ranked by environmental and ethical performance.
Despite the significant challenges faced over the last few years both from the covid-19 pandemic and from economic pressures and resulting changes within the University we have seen some significant score increases in many areas of the league this year, resulting in Kent climbing to 29th place overall out of 153, up from 41st in 2021.
This rise was helped by significant improvements in Carbon Management Plans, Sustainable Food and Staff & Student Engagement. The University placed 13th in the UK for its carbon management plans reflecting the hard work of the Estates department and sustainability team during the last few years in setting ambitious targets and developing the plans to achieve them.
Kent scored 100% for both the Environmental Policy and Environmental Auditing & Management sections which recognises the university’s ongoing demonstration of its commitments through the operation of an externally certified Environmental Management System.
Based on a campaign to call university careers services to end promotion or information related to careers in the oil, gas and mining industries, the Ethical Careers and recruitment was a new addition to the table this year. Kent performed better that its peers here, coming 10th overall.
Catherine Morris, Sustainability Manager at Kent says: ‘Our performance in this table reflects our continued commitment to sustainability. I am especially pleased to see that the hard work of all of our staff and students who contribute to our sustainability work is being recognised in the People and Planet league table.
While our improvement in the table is fantastic news, we are aware that there is still more that we would like to achieve. We will continue working hard across the University to address any areas where we could be doing more to ensure we fulfil the commitments set out in our Sustainability Strategy.’
Read more about sustainability at Kent: https://www.kent.ac.uk/sustainability