51Âþ»­

Staff and students at 51Âþ»­, Leicester (51Âþ»­) are celebrating after receiving first-class honours status as one the most environmentally-friendly universities in the country for the 12^th year in a row.

Announced today in the Guardian, 51Âþ»­ was awarded a first-class degree in the annual in recognition of its environmental and ethical performance.

51Âþ»­ has been awarded the first-class status since 2011 and this time around the university was ranked 7th overall out of the 151 institutions rated, while claiming the top spot in the East Midlands.

 The People & Planet’s University League is the largest student environmental campaign group in the UK and the only comprehensive independent league table to rank universities according to their environmental and ethical work.

Universities were judged against 14 different categories which are in two main areas ‘performance and policy’ which covers everything from education and environmental policy to recycling waste and carbon management.

They were then ranked according to their scores in each area and classified using degree-style awards.

Karl Letten, Sustainability Manager at 51Âþ»­ said: “The University League assesses institution across the whole spectrum of environmental and ethical issues and to be placed so highly is a fantastic result.

 “The result in this years’ league is a clear demonstration of the great work that 51Âþ»­ staff and students are doing across the whole university and a great demonstration of the University’s commitment to sustainability.”

51Âþ»­ has a long list of measures in place to make the university more sustainable, some of the most recent achievements include:

• Achieving bronze and silver in the Hedgehog Friendly Campus initiative
• Achieving the Responsible Futures award for embedding sustainability into our teaching and learning
• Ranked as the best performing university in the SDG Teach In 2023
• The only UK university to be a global hub for an SDG- (SDG16)
• Reduced our carbon emissions from energy use by 60%
• Achieved recycling rates of over 90%
• Launched the Daria Project to help staff and student learn how to ride a bike

Key areas the university scored highly in include; Carbon Management (100%), Education for Sustainable Development (99%) and Staff and Student Engagement (100%).