Green and Thriving!! Salford Ranks 5th Most Sustainable Uni in the UK ♻️🏆

The University of Salford and Salford SU have ranked as the 5th most sustainable university in in the 2025 People and Planet University League. (The only independent UK ranking focused on environmental and ethical performance) 

This is a massive win for us!! As it means that we have been able to do our part in creating a sustainable culture to help the environment.

And not only that we managed to move up from our 8th spot last year to be 5th out of 149 UK institutions!

What does this actually mean tho?

This ranking was determined by a lot of different factors, the People and Planet University league score universities on evidence across different areas such as, carbon reduction plans, sustainability in teaching, environmental policies and student and staff engagement.

But basically, we were 5th because we achieved:

• 100% in Environmental Management and Sustainability engagement —> we have proper systems in lace to manage our environmental impact
• 90% in Carbon and Management Reduction —> we have effective channels to track, measure and cut our carbon emissions, reducing our scopes by 78% in the last 10 years.
• 94% in Education for sustainable Development —> our policies are embedded in our teaching and courses
• Set a net zero target by 2038 —> we are committed to cutting out carbon impact as close to 0 as possible in te next decade.

So yeah, this placing reflects all the hard work by our community in all of these areas.

If you want to know more about what each of these scores entail, check out the full rundown here. 

How exact did we achieve this then?

Being able to do this, isn’t just about making policies and writing it on a piece of paper, we had student auditors come and evaluate how all of this was integrated into our community and teaching areas across university.

Alongside the University we, (the SU) achieved a Responsible Futures accreditation. And delivered with Students Oranising for Sustainability, an organisation that aims to put sustainability at the heart of education, across different areas of the curricula. With the particular focus to incorporate education for sustainable development across all courses, for students to leave education with the skills to be a sustainable society.

These student auditors reviewed the evidence that we provided as an entity through out programmes and scored us above the required threshold. And they not only found that sustainability is embeded into out curriculum, teaching and wider university system, but also that there is a strong student engagement and cross university collaboration.

If you want to understand more about how we did this, check this article out.

And the green keeps on coming!

To keep this momentum going and continuing to encourage sustainability, the University and SU are bringing back Go Green Salford from the 9th to the 22nd of March! A festival full of sustainability for everyone around campus.

There will be lots of activities to participate in from bike repair drop-ins and green careers sessions, to workshops, wellbeing activities and nature based events!

So whether you want to know how to help us out in continuing our sustainability practice, or just want to enjoy some chill activities, there is something for you.

Check out more event details here.

We’re so proud to have achieved this prestigious recognition as a student union and university. It reflects our hard work on taking, action, changes and YOUR involvement across campus.

Every little thing, from using the proper recycling bin to joining a green initiative helps. Placing top 5 is not the end, it is proof that all of our efforts work, and we’re only getting started.

Keep tuned to see what else we have in store to keep us sustainable!