King’s has once again received a first class award in the People & Planet University League, ranking 12th out of 153 UK universities. This league ranks UK universities for their environmental and ethical performance. The ranking reflects King’s continued commitment to embedding social and environmental sustainability across the university.
Across the 13 scoring areas, which include topics such as sustainable food, workers’ rights and ethical investment, King’s achieved an overall score of 69.5%. We achieved 100% for engaging students and staff on sustainability, sustainable food, and for our environmental management system.
Students and staff are actively engaged in sustainability initiatives at King’s, embedding sustainability into their departments through the Sustainability Champions programme, contributing to climate initiatives through the King’s Climate Action Network, and getting creative through the Culture Climate Collective. Sustainability Month is the highlight of student and staff engagement at King’s and takes place each year in February. King’s Food have continuously improved the sustainability of menus and achieved three stars in the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s ‘Food Made Good’ ranking in 2022.
In addition, King’s scored highly for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The Sustainability and Climate KEATS module has been co-created with students and gives all students and staff the opportunity to gain a meaningful understanding of sustainability, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they can take action on sustainability. We also received high scores for being an accredited Living Wage employer, and for monitoring our ICT supply chain through our Electronics Watch affiliation as part of our London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) membership.
The main areas to improve are Ethical Careers & Recruitment, Water Reduction, Carbon Reduction, Energy Sources, and Managing Carbon. Despite our progress, we acknowledge that there is much more to do.
