The process of assessing and reporting sustainability at universities: preparing the report of the University of Leeds

Abstract

An increasing number of higher educational institutions have engaged in assessing and reporting their sustainability efforts. This paper presents the process undertaken to prepare the first draft of the University of Leeds sustainability report. The objective of the exercise was to provide a base and complement other sustainability initiatives taken at the University of Leeds. The process of developing the report was done in three stages: (1) collecting data; (2) populating the indicators; and (3) assessing the performance values from the information collected using the Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU) tool. Although there were limited time and resources for the process, the results in indicator coverage and performance were higher than other the analysis of other HEIs that have published Global Reporting Initiative based reports. When preparing a sustainability report it is important to have a holistic perspective, addressing the different inter-relations between indicators, categories, and dimensions, as well as stakeholders throughout the university system.