UCL passes first surveillance audit for ISO 14001 / 50001

Importance of ISO

ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 are international standards for environmental and energy management. They constitute a globally recognised benchmark in good environmental practice. The principles behind the standard test of whether an organisation is compliant with environmental regulations seek to continuously improve and identify areas of risk associated with a full range of environmental impacts they may have. By following the standards for environment and energy, we maintain robust processes to ensure compliance against the standard, which helps us to prioritise, adapt to global change and be ready for the unexpected, of which we have seen plenty in recent years.

This was our first post-pandemic audit where we took the auditor back onto a site full of staff and students once more. The audit required collaboration between dozens of colleagues across different departments and the auditor was continually impressed by how various departments and divisions were working together to help meet our sustainability commitments.

The certification is important to the university, helping to gain scoring in some academic grant applications and is one measure in many of our own metrics e.g. People and Planet University League. But most fundamentally, it is a powerful tool which helps us to ensure we keep continuously improving, sharing good practices, and seeking feedback from the auditor to make us more sustainable, university-wide.

Strong sustainability foundations

All the effort that goes into meeting the required standard, from thousands of UCL employees to hundreds of contract staff, is essentially the backbone behind UCL’s Sustainability Commitments. Whilst more tangible projects, such as the student-led Medawar Gardens initiative, vegetarian-focused catering, or plastic reduction in our cafes, lead the way aesthetically, the management system is the crucial framework sitting behind those more glamorous aspects of sustainability. It provides a structure, which helps to improve our way of being sustainable, from aligning roles and responsibilities, reporting on our performance, and keeping up to date with the latest industry legislation and trends.

What next?

At UCL, we want to go far and beyond the requirements of ISO standards and we are doing so through cutting-edge research and teaching, and Sustainable UCL-led projects such as the LEAF sustainable labs programme.

Sustainable UCL will take away the opportunities for improvement noted in the audit. The main areas to progress are around better reporting of sustainability performance data throughout UCL faculties and divisions and reviewing accountabilities and responsibilities as UCL continues to grow, for example, ensuring sustainability is embedded in the operational activities at UCL East. We will push on over the next year, working with more staff and students and trying to capture the best pockets of sustainability practice and sharing those more widely. We will also spend a day being audited at UCL East next year to showcase the integration of sustainability on our new campus.