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Sustainable Campuses

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About Sustainable Campuses

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

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

Read the Sustainable Campuses Annual Report 2008-2009.

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 four inter-woven areas: process, research, actions, and campaigns.

In addition, we work with partner organizations at the national and regional level to advance campus and societal sustainability. These are:

Multi-Stakeholder Process

The building of a multi-stakeholder 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 way. 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 greenhouse gas emission data.

Action Planning

Research is only able to bring about change if it is properly connected with recommendations or plans of action. SYC can help to turn research into action, by providing support in several areas:

  • Report writing and results communication strategies
  • Recommendations development and feasibility studies
  • Action plans
  • Greenhouse gas emission reduction plans
  • Environmental Management Systems
  • Sustainability Management Systems
Campaigns
Campaigns play an important role in promoting campus sustainability. A campaign can focus a campus community's attention on a particular area or issue with the goal of acheiving a specific demand or action. SYC runs campaigns that are proposed and developed by its members. We focus on connecting campuses together, sharing best practices and resources, providing training and support, and advancing national and regional efforts. 
Our current campaigns are: