Furthering its reputation as a world-leading environmental university, Trent has been named among the top 100 most sustainable university campuses around the world in the recently released 2019 UI GreenMetric World University Rankings.

The findings of this report demonstrate Trent’s ongoing commitment to reducing the University’s environmental impact as we moved up 14 spots in the international ranking of 780 universities worldwide, 12 from Canada. Trent also moved up one spot to be a top-5 sustainable campus in Canada.

“Trent’s rising and competitive position in this global ranking since 2017 really shows our leadership when it comes to the environment,” says Kent Stringham, vice-president of Finance and Administration at Trent. “Academic programming, such as our prestigious School of the Environment, and the future site for Cleantech Commons are a couple of commonly cited examples, but Trent University also pushes the limits on how to lower the environmental impact of the day-to-day activity and operations of a campus. With 10,000 students and hundreds of faculty and staff, the impact can add up and the effort isn’t going unnoticed.”

Trent’s ranking as the 66^th greenest campus in the world and fifth in Canada is based on the University’s performance across six categories: education and research, setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, and transportation.

Trent ranked first in Canada and 10^th in the world for the waste category. The University diverts more than 80 per cent of its waste away from landfill, an extremely difficult achievement as an institution. Trent sent 30 tonnes less to landfills just last year, helped by the implementation of a $7 membership to use eco-trays, a reusable container, at food vendors on campus, plus a $1 charge on single-use meal containers. A semester after Food Services introduced these initiatives, campus restaurants served 90 percent of meals on reusable dishware.

Trent ranked second in Canada and 42^nd in the world for the education and research category, with phenomenal scores for the high percentage of courses that have a sustainability or environment focus, as well as the ratio of research projects focused on environmental topics. What helps Trent really shine is the number of environmental events and student organizations on campus, such as the Trent Outdoors Club, Trent Market Gardens and the Seasoned Spoon.

If you set foot on campus in Peterborough, you would instantly understand our ranking as second in Canada for setting and infrastructure. Trent’s naturalized campus emphasizes ecological land-use practices, including maintaining a high percentage of forested area, surface area for water absorption, and an outdoor environment for the community to enjoy.

Notably, Trent is also an entirely LED campus having installed 55,447 LED lightbulbs since 2016.

All of these efforts by Trent and more are factored into the GreenMetric rankings, the first and only university rankings in the world that measure each participating university’s commitment in developing an ‘environmentally friendly’ infrastructure. Trent submitted more than 250 pages of data as part of our evidence document along with a questionnaire to demonstrate our commitment.

“I am so impressed by Trent’s achievement moving up 14 spots in the global rankings in a single year,” said Shelley Strain, sustainability coordinator at Trent University. “Every year, it gets harder to score well as new metrics or subcategories are added each year, standards are raised, and scores for previous initiatives can expire. So, our 2019 ranking is a reflection of our continuous improvement.”