Rodrigo Lozano

The State of Sustainability Reporting in Universities.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review and assess the state of sustainability reporting in universities.Design/methodology/approach – Analysis of the performance level of 12 universities sustainability reports using the Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities tool.Findings – The results show that sustainability reporting in universities is still in its early stages (both in numbers of institutions reporting and in level of reporting) when compared to sustainability reporting in corporations.Research limitations/implications – The research is limited by the limited number of universities that publish sustainability reports. However, the results show that universities could learn from the experiences of corporate sustainability reporting efforts, and incorporate them into their efforts as learning organisations to better align their systems with sustainability.Practical implications – University leaders and champions need to consider publishing more information on the social and edu...

Conceptual framework for the study of food waste generation and prevention in the hospitality sector.

Food waste has significant detrimental economic, environmental and social impacts. The magnitude and complexity of the global food waste problem has brought it to the forefront of the environmental agenda; however, there has been little research on the patterns and drivers of food waste generation, especially outside the household. This is partially due to weaknesses in the methodological approaches used to understand such a complex problem. This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework to identify and explain the patterns and drivers of food waste generation in the hospitality sector, with the aim of identifying food waste prevention measures. This conceptual framework integrates data collection and analysis methods from ethnography and grounded theory, complemented with concepts and tools from industrial ecology for the analysis of quantitative data. A case study of food waste generation at a hotel restaurant in Malaysia is used as an example to illustrate how this conceptual framework can be applied. The conceptual framework links the biophysical and economic flows of food provisioning and waste generation, with the social and cultural practices associated with food preparation and consumption. The case study demonstrates that food waste is intrinsically linked to the way we provision and consume food, the material and socio-cultural context of food consumption and food waste generation. Food provisioning, food consumption and food waste generation should be studied together in order to fully understand how, where and most importantly why food waste is generated. This understanding will then enable to draw detailed, case specific food waste prevention plans addressing the material and socio-economic aspects of food waste generation.

Sustainability reporting in public sector organisations: Exploring the relation between the reporting process and organisational change management for sustainability

Sustainability Reporting has become a key element in different organisations. Although there have been a number of academic publications discussing the adoption of sustainability reports in the public sector, their numbers have been quite low when compared to those focussing on corporate reports. Additionally, there has been little research on the link between sustainability reporting in Public Sector Organisations (PSOs) and Organisational Change Management for Sustainability (OCMS). This paper focuses on the contribution of sustainability reporting to OCMS. A survey was sent to all PSOs that have published at least one sustainability report based on the GRI guidelines. The study provides a critical analysis of the relation between sustainability reporting and OCMS in PSOs, including the drivers for reporting, the impacts on organisation change management, and the role of stakeholders in the process. Despite still lagging in sustainability reporting journey, PSOs are starting to use sustainability reporting as a communication tool, and this could drive organisational changes for sustainability.

Chemistry Education for Sustainability: Assessing the chemistry curricula at Cardiff University

As more universities become interested in, and engaged with, sustainability, there has been a growing need to assess how their curricula addresses sustainable development and its myriad issues. Different tools and assessment exercises have looked at course descriptors. This paper presents the Sustainability Tool for Assessing Sustainability in UNiversities’ Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH ® ) assessment of the School of Chemistry, Cardiff University. The results indicate that STAUNCH ® can be instrumental in identifying courses that more adequately capture the breadth and depth of sustainability and exhibit high contribution scores. The curricula assessment can help university leaders and directors of teaching and learning better understand where they should engage in changes to make chemistry education more sustainability-oriented, and, ultimately, to have the greatest impact in helping make societies more sustainable. Overall, STAUNCH ® can provide a systematic method for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the chemistry curriculum for the purpose of devising curriculum reform strategies to promote student sustainability learning.

Engineering education: environmental and chemical engineering or technology curricula – a European perspective

Over recent years, universities have been incorporating sustainable development (SD) into their systems, including their curricula. This article analyses the incorporation of SD into the curricula of chemical and environmental engineering or technology bachelor degrees at universities in the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states. Available textbooks of some courses were analysed regarding their content and pedagogical-didactical perspectives based on a revised Blooms taxonomy of cognitive domains. The research showed that both the universities and textbooks reviewed have room for improvement regarding SD incorporation into their curricula.

Developing a University Sustainability Report: Experiences from the University of Leeds

During the last decade, an increasing number of higher education institutions (HEIs) have engaged in incorporating and institutionalizing sustainability into the university system, which includes curricula, research, operations, outreach, and assessment and reporting. This paper focuses on the assessment and reporting element, where a number of tools and guidelines have been devised. One of the best options available is the global reporting initiative (GRI) sustainability guidelines. However, the GRI guidelines were not developed for universities. To address this, the Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU) tool was developed, which can also help to produce a more holistic report. This chapter presents the process undertaken to develop the first draft of the University of Leeds sustainability report. The purpose of this report was to: (1) to compile the required information, (2) to create the first draft of the sustainability report, and (3) to analyze the performance values from the information collected. The data was analyzed with an updated version of GASU. The results show that the University of Leeds out performs other universities that have published sustainability reports, in all of the dimensions and their averages. The report exercise revealed that when preparing a sustainability report it is important to have a holistic perspective, addressing the different interrelations between indicators, categories, and dimensions, as well as throughout the university system. In the process of preparing a report is it is important to have sufficient time and access for data collection, as well as engaging with stakeholders. A tool, such as GASU, allows the data collection and analysis to be more systematic. The results can be used to tackle those areas where the university could improve, with respect to sustainability, across its entire system, including curricular, research, operations, and outreach.

Assessing Sustainability in University curricula: Case Studies from the University of Leeds and the Georgia Institute of Technology

As more universities become interested in, and engaged with, sustainability, there has been a growing need to assess how their curricula addresses sustainable development and its myriad of issues. This book chapter presents an update of the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities’ Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH®), and its application in two universities: (1) the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech); and (2) the Bachelor and Master degrees from the Faculty of Business and the Faculty of Environment at the University of Leeds. The update includes the influence of the number of students enrolled in courses and the relative weight in credits of the courses in respect of the degrees. In addition, the tool provides graphs with information about which sustainability criteria are being most and least addressed. The curricula assessment can aid in better understanding the current status of a university’s courses and degrees and identifying how they could be changed to become more sustainability-oriented. While the curricula assessment at Georgia Tech and the University of Leeds show different approaches for curricula contribution to sustainability, the results indicate that STAUNCH® can be instrumental in identifying courses that more adequately cover the breadth and depth of sustainability issues and exhibit higher contributions to sustainability. Overall, STAUNCH® can provide a systematic method for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a curriculum for the purpose of devising curriculum reform strategies to promote student sustainability learning. This can then help universities in making societies more sustainable.

Securing a port's future through Circular Economy: Experiences from the Port of Gävle in contributing to sustainability

Ports are an important player in the world, due to their role in global production and distributions systems. They are major intermodal transport hubs, linking the sea to the land. For all ports, a key requirement for commercial and economic viability is to retain ships using them and to remain accessible to those ships. Ports need to find approaches to help them remain open. They must ensure their continued economic viability. At the same time, they face increasing pressure to become more environmentally and socially conscious. This paper examines the approach taken by the Port of Gävle, Sweden, which used contaminated dredged materials to create new land using principles of Circular Economy. The paper demonstrates that using Circular Economy principles can be a viable way of securing a ports future and contributing to its sustainability, and that of the city/region where it operates.