New Initiative Launches to Help Colleges and Universities Meet UK's Sustainability Targets

A radical new system designed to help universities and colleges across the UK improve their social responsibility and sustainability credentials, while making significant savings to their budgets, is set to be unveiled across the UK.

The Learning in Future Environments (LiFE) Index was unveiled on 1 November, to provide support for learning institutes across UK to survive the ongoing, tumultuous changes in the sector. The project has generated such excitement that there were already institutions signing up to participate before this launch.

The LiFE Index has been developed by the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) with the support of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and the Department for Employment and Learning of Northern Ireland (DELNI).

The initiative has been specifically created with the direct input of sector leaders and support from all the funding councils to help universities and colleges manage, measure, improve and promote their social responsibility and sustainability performance.

Unlike other such accreditation systems – LiFE gives institutions an instinctive and easy to use performance management system that helps them directly improve and promote their activities – and allows universities and colleges to learn from, and share, best practice with one another.

Iain Patton, Chief Executive of the EAUC, said they recognised a need for LiFE after discovering universities and colleges were crying out for a proper programme that provides guidance on improvement as well as a means to benchmark and promote their performance.

He said: "The sector has had to face - and will continue to face - some tough challenges."

"LiFE has been created with the direct involvement from across the sector to help and support universities and colleges through this period of tumultuous transition – and will help participating institutions better position themselves in the future."

"At their core universities and colleges are fundamentally exist for wider societal benefit and have a duty to demonstrate to the students, staff and wider communities the meaning and value of social and sustainable responsibility.

“What is unique about LiFE is that it not only focuses institutions on being leaner and greener, but it encourages institutions as a whole to be more socially responsible. Institutions who can take on both the social responsibility and sustainability challenge, will ultimately be better placed to realise financial savings and new income opportunities they so crucially need as we move through these uncertain times."

The LiFE Index focuses on four key areas - Leadership; Learning, Teaching and Research; Estates and Operations; and Partnership and Engagement. Institutions will seek to achieve accreditation in each of the categories, although crucially the accreditation is independently verified.

Amongst a wide range of benefits, EAUC estimates that by using the LiFE Index, higher and further education institutions could achieve reductions in overall operating costs of around 10%.

Already signed up to LiFE are The University of Edinburgh, University of Nottingham and the University of Westminster. David Somervell, Sustainability Adviser at the University of Edinburgh, highlighted the system’s simplicity and ease of use as a key factor in choosing to implement the index.

"The social responsibility and sustainability agenda is hugely important to us. We have been supportive of the development process for LiFE and look forward to an improved benchmarking system. We hope others within the sector will participate."

More information about the LiFE Index and how it will benefit universities and colleges can be viewed on the website www.thelifeindex.org.uk.