Sustainable Campuses

Sustainable Campuses is a national initiative that inspires, informs, trains, and supports Canadian students working toward social equity, ecological integrity and economic prosperity on their campuses. These changes are achieved through addressing institutional operations, improving curricula and mobilizing campus community members’ support.

Since 1998, the Sustainable Campuses project has worked with thousands of students from across Canada in order to:

• Change environmental and social practices on Canadian campuses
• Empower youth to influence decision makers

Learn more about the Sustainable Campuses of your region!

Atlantic – BC and the North – Prairies – Ontario – Quebec

Read the Sustainable Campuses Annual Report 08-09.

To achieve our goal of making campuses more sustainable we build national and regional networks, host annual conferences, and support work to institutionalise sustainability on campuses by focusing on three inter-woven areas: process, research, and actions.

Multi-stakeholder Process

The building of a Multistakeholder process often distinguishes a successful initiative from a failure. The multi-stakeholder process engages diverse campus members (students, faculty, staff, and administrators), to address campus sustainability as a community in a collaborative fashion. Effective communication with all campus community members ensures the most meaningful and effective results.

Research Tools & Resources

SYC offers two research tools to measure and manage campus sustainability:

• Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework (CSAF): A comprehensive and holistic indicator tool to measure campus sustainability.
• GHG Emissions Inventory Calculator: This tool facilitates the collection, analysis and presentation of all campus GHG emission data.

Action Planning

Research will only remain good information in a document unless its contents are integrated into recommendations and action plans to effectuate change. SYC offers support in a variety of areas to turn research into action. These areas include:

• Report writing and results communication strategies
• Recommendations development and feasibility studies
• Action plans
• Greenhouse gas emission reductions plans
• Environmental Management Systems
• Sustainability Management Systems