Environmentally conscious students now have a new reason to be proud of UNC: the University jumped from rank 39 to 28 on the Sierra Club's rankings of sustainable universities.
The Sierra Club's Cool Schools rankings consist of 200 American universities that the club views as the most environmentally conscious and progressive.
The process for determining recipients is extensive, with the Sierra Club collaborating with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education to compile the rankings. Universities self-report data, which is then processed through an algorithm scoring the universities across 62 categories, like campus transportation, energy use and investments in fossil fuel.
Once the data is compiled, it is sent to a third party to double check the numbers. Then, the list is made.
UNC stood out in a few areas, getting a perfect score in the co-curricular category, which relates to academic and club opportunities related to sustainability. Katie O’Reilly, an editor at the Sierra Magazine, said UNC also performed well in innovation and planning.
“You guys scored really well in planning because we see that you’ve got some goals laid out on your website," O'Reilly said. "It looks like you guys are trying to reach carbon neutrality and trying to divert your waste stream from landfills and start working on water management issues as well.”
UNC’s Three Zeros Environmental Initiative played a major role in these improvements. Established in fall 2016, the initiative aimed to help UNC achieve greenhouse gas neutrality, zero waste and carbon neutrality.
Brad Ives, UNC's chief sustainability officer, said the University has had a goal of being greenhouse gas neutral since they signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Change Commitment in 2007. This commitment required the University to be greenhouse gas neutral by 2050.
“What we’re hoping to do under the Three Zeros Initiative is reach that goal much sooner," Ives said.
