New Article Offers Strategies for Long-Term Sustainability
Sustainability initiatives in higher education settings are increasingly common. Yet those settings are uniquely complex when it comes to ensuring success, as discussed in a new Facilities Manager article by Maggie Walsh, UG2 vice president of strategic partnerships and solutions. In The Human Element: Driving Campus Sustainability Forward, Maggie lays out the challenges inherent to creating long-term sustainability programs at universities, and identifies best practices to overcome them.
The following are highlights from Maggie’s article, published in the magazine’s January/February 2025 issue.
Sustainability Challenges Inherent to Higher Education
- Ensuring participation of diverse stakeholders. While we all know that stakeholder buy-in is essential to successful sustainability efforts, higher education communities include different populations with a vested interest in outcomes. College presidents, business officers and board members may have priorities that differ from those of students, parents, faculty and staff. Also, with such a large and varied population, including many visitors attending events, you are certain to encounter differences in buy-in of day-to-day practices.
- Creating continuity amid constant change. Sustainability effectiveness programs’ long-term effectiveness relies on some degree of continuity. Campuses serve populations that are always in flux, with existing students graduating and new students, faculty and staff arriving. Leadership changes are not infrequent at many universities, compounding the problem.
- Changing ingrained behaviors. As with any population, changing behavior is hard—and the challenge is magnified when combined with differing levels of awareness and commitment in a community with a wide range of stakeholders. Maggie notes that building new habits like taking shorter showers or using bikes or shuttles to travel across large campuses might meet resistance.
- Coordinating across large campuses. Higher educational facilities typically have distributed campus operations. Different buildings with varying functions—from labs, classroom and dorms to dining halls, performance venues and office spaces—make for logistical challenges when it comes to coordinating sustainability efforts and maintaining best practices over the long term.
Best Practices to Build Engagement
- Develop tailored training and education. Much of UG2’s success with customers and employees alike relies on our success at creating customized services and tailored teams. Campus sustainability efforts must be personalized for different stakeholder populations.You might focus faculty and staff training on integrating sustainability into their professional roles, for example, while, with students, you hold interactive workshops and hands-on activities such as recycling relay races and energy-saving challenges.
- Encourage facilities management teams to lead by example. As with any effort to integrate best practices, consistently modeling good behavior is key. When expecting stakeholders to recycle, save energy, reduce trash or compost, change requires that every member of the FM team sets an example, perhaps even showcasing sustainability projects or improvements to demonstrate the impact and benefits of recommended practices.
- Involve the community and recognize success. Community engagement efforts could range from campus cleanups, Earth Day events and sustainability fairs to educational signage, well-designed posters and materials, and recognition programs that honor those who go the extra mile.
- Make sustainability easy. Adherence to sustainability efforts is much more likely when we make it easy for people to participate consistently. This means, for example, locating large and clearly labeled recycling bins in the right locations, installing water-filling locations to encourage the use of refillable water bottles, and adding bike racks and repair stations across campus.
- Prioritize data collection, reporting and feedback. Demonstrating the success of your programs can go a long way toward getting different communities to buy in. Consider introducing real-time dashboards that track key sustainability metrics, sharing sustainability data widely, and creating channels for students, faculty, and staff to provide real time feedback.
While the diversity of stakeholders and ever-changing environments of college campuses can pose difficulties, the prevalence of sustainability efforts among higher education campuses means the commitment cuts across different stakeholder groups. UG2 is proud of our success at supporting customers as they build and maintain truly impactful programs over the long term. Read Maggie’s full article here, and get in touch if you’re interested in learning more about our offerings.