Sustainability at TU Dublin

Sustainability is a new service within TU Dublin and in 2021, TU Dublin appointed Jennifer Boyer as the inaugural Vice President for Sustainability to provide leadership, strategic direction and oversight for the coordination and management of the University’s activities in relation to sustainability, across both professional services and academic domains. The Vice President for Sustainability is TU Dublin’s Climate and Sustainability Champion and the nominated member of the University Executive Team (UET) responsible for implementing and reporting on the Public Sector Climate Action Mandate.

In October 2022, TU Dublin approved the formation of the Sustainability Team with dedicated roles and strategic projects to advance sustainability throughout the University. The function of this team is to provide support across the University for the transformative change required to develop our people to become responsible global citizens, the development of its campus environment to become carbon neutral by 2040, and the cultivation of a resilient and ethically conscious community to make a better world together.

The Sustainability Team is designed to bring expertise, build capacity, and advance impact across key areas, represented by the four service pillars, which work cross-functionally to embed TU Dublin’s sustainability priorities:

• Sustainability Education (capacity building)
• Decarbonisation (campus operations and planning)
• Sustainability Intelligence (performance reporting and technology infrastructures)
• Societal Engagement (shared activity with the Office of the Vice President for Partnership)

Students and staff are enthusiastic supporters of local initiatives that support sustainability, and the TU Dublin Green-Campus runs several environmental and biodiversity projects. These include rewilding of parts of the campus landscape, volunteer clean-ups in local areas and riverbanks, reducing use of plastic in cafeterias, and supporting plastic re-use projects. Climate Action Week in October, and National Green Week in March, both provide a particular focus for seminars, workshops, films, and talks exploring topics related to climate action, sustainability and protecting our environment.