Our progress
We’ve been making progress to embed sustainability into everything we do at the University.
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We’re committed to ensuring our sustainability progress is publicly available and transparent. Below are the highlights of our progress during the last academic year.
Key achievements in the 2023/24 academic year
- Reduced emissions by 40% since 2018
- Completed The Wave, our new Social Sciences building, which followed our Sustainable Buildings Standard, and has been awarded Social Infrastructure Project of the Year at the British Construction Industry Awards 2024 and given Outstanding BREEAM Accreditation
- Planted an additional 314 trees, bringing the total number of trees on campus to around 10,400
- Launched our next Biodiversity Action Plan
- Increased active users of the Betterpoints app to almost 2,000 staff and students, recording 1.4 million active and sustainable travel journeys during the last academic year, over 950,000 of which replaced a car journey
- Procured 100% renewable energy, maintaining our £0 invested in fossil fuels and increased percentage of positive investments
- Appointed a new Sustainable Labs Manager to help improve the sustainability of our research and teaching operations across the University's labs
- Reduced our use of plastic milk bottles by 25,000, thanks to our partnership with Our Cow Molly
- Reduced single-use cup waste in our cafes through our Vytal reusable packaging scheme
- Maintained a 93.84% recycling rate for non-residential waste
- Achieved Gold Standard Accreditation in the Hedgehog Friendly Campus Scheme
- Began developing our next Sustainability Strategy for 2026-2030
Track our progress
Our completed, ongoing and planned actions are tracked on our live sustainability action plan.
Achieving the SDGs
We’re working to have an impact against all of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).