Policies and strategies relating to sustainability

Our sustainability strategy is led by the Sustainable Advisory Group who meet on a quarterly basis and are a subcommittee of the University Executive Group and review all sustainability policies. The chair of this board is Professor Christopher Fogwill who is joined by other senior colleagues across our departments including, but not limited to, Estates and Facilities, Finance, and the Sustainable Earth Institute.

Students can get involved with this group via their elected UPSU President or Student Voice.

In 2022 there was the addition of sub-groups to focus on specific topics, such as: academia, biodiversity, carbon, food, procurement and waste.

The links below take you to the relevant policies and strategies for sustainability at the University.

We release annual sustainable reports, with a biennial report meeting the GRI Framework standard. This covers our progress and achievements within sustainability.

In 2009, we successfully gained ISO 14001:2015 accreditation – one of very few higher education institutions to do so at the time. This accreditation is an international standard providing a framework – for organisations of any size – to control and improve environmental performance via an Environmental Management System (EMS). It provides practical tools for us to identify and control environmental impacts and it recognises that we have a systematic approach to environmental management – one that is externally audited. We are externally accredited to ISO 14001:2015 for our Environmental Management System, for the activities on our main campus site, including Cookworthy building, as well as Derriford Research Facility and John Bull building.

Carbon neutrality for all Scope 1, 2 and selected Scope 3 (Water, Waste, Business Travel) will be achieved by University of Plymouth in accordance with PAS 2060 on 9 February 2024, with commitment to maintain to 31 July 2024 for the period commencing 1 August 2022, NQA verified. Below is a link to our Qualifying Explanatory Statement explaining how, with statements from previous years.