Sustainability is a way of life – it features in the decisions that each of us makes every day about everything we do. To be a sustainable institution means that our approach to decision making must have social responsibility at its core, and doing this means embedding sustainability at all levels. Net positive impact is a measurable goal that we can achieve together.
Harriet Waters,
Sustainability Manager
Our vision
Brookes will make an explicit and verifiable contribution to staff students, society and the environment by recognising, managing and being accountable for its positive and negative impacts to ensure a net positive result.
Net Positive Impact
An institution achieves this by recognising, managing and being accountable for its positive and negative impacts to ensure a net positive result.
Through its research, knowledge transfer, teaching and learning an institution will have a beneficial impact on its community, environment, its staff, students and suppliers.
Sustainability is a defining issue of our generation. Responding to it means going beyond reducing negative environmental, social and economic impacts. It means creating and applying new knowledge. It means equipping people with real skills to create the important changes we need. This is the job of any educational institution. At Oxford Brookes, we take a holistic approach. We’re aiming to have a net positive impact across everything we do.
We take the same innovative and enthusiastic approach that typifies our university. We seek out radical steps forward, as our growing reputation for producing ground-breaking research proves.
Our students are taught by people at the forefront of their subjects who are adept at passing on knowledge and academic abilities. We push beyond this because we know that change isn’t driven by academia alone. We foster strong connections with industry and business to give students skills to create significant positive change. We go beyond reducing the impact of our own environmental footprint. We educate people for lives of consequence.
NPI, or Net Positive Impact, is how we measure sustainability. Oxford Brookes’ overarching Strategy 2010 helps to outline how we get there.
How we're doing it
The route to NPI is actually very simple: increase our positive impact and decrease our negative impact. Of course, the tricky part is actually making this happen. Click here to learn more about how we are measuring our impact. (Link to ‘why’ document with targets under three headings).
Our first step is to understand and measure both the positive and negative impacts our university is already having on the world. This is no small task (Oxford Brookes is a huge and complex entity), but we’re well on the way. You can read all the latest documentation on our achievements so far in our latest sustainability report.
Our second step is to focus on our four sustainability priorities. Identified using a custom built methodology, they are:
- Infrastructure and services
- Research and knowledge transfer
- Student experience
- External
We’re busy creating action plans for all of these. You’ll be able to learn more when we publish our updated sustainability report in November 2011.
Our environmental management system
Our ISO14001 certified environmental management system helps students to:
- Travel sustainably
- Recycle waste on campus
- Eat locally-sourced food
- Support Fairtrade
- Save energy
- Conserve water
Our strategy 2020
Our Strategy 2020 outlines our commitment to student experience, to intellectual accomplishment and creativity, and to improving our infrastructure and services. The Strategy is ambitious and all-encompassing; it’s something everyone at Oxford Brookes can be proud of. And sustainability lies right at its heart.
Sustainability is one of the biggest issues facing the world today – from how we treat the environment to how we help our economy thrive. In order to maintain our reputation for educating citizens for lives of consequence, sustainability has to be considered at every step of our Strategy 2020.
From the intellectual creativity that we nurture right down to the waste we create as an institution, it’s vital that we make sustainable decisions every step of the way.
A sustainable strategy 2020 will ensure...
...that Oxford Brookes leaves a positive mark on the world.
...that our staff and students have a zeal for change, demonstrating and advocating sustainability in everything they do – academically, economically, environmentally and socially.
...that our sustainability practices and academic excellence are symbiotic: students and staff choose Oxford Brookes because they want to be somewhere that’s dedicated to improving the human condition.
