Tampere University’s Sustainability Report describes the community’s multiple actions to build a more sustainable world

Read the report and find out more about the reporting principle

The 2021–2022 Sustainable Development Report of Tampere University has now been published. The second Sustainable Development Report of Tampere University brings together sustainability and responsibility from recent years: members of our community have announced, for example, projects, changes in operating practices, and other sustainability measures for the report. We received over hundred responses to our calls and 150 actions were reported.

“The breadth and diversity of the report is an expression of our community’s joint capacity to change the world. The discouraging nature of the climate crisis often gives rise to a feeling of inadequacy, but these actions are flickers of light. In addition, the development of our report is just beginning, and we know that it covers only part of all the work done for responsibility;” says Senior Specialist on Sustainability and Innovation Culture Matias Nurminen, who has been responsible for the preparation of the report.

 

Pursuit of sustainability, and positive problems

Participants in the report have been able to define the impact of the action on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an internationally known framework for sustainability, a kind of global common language for sustainable development. The sustainable development reporting supports the University’s success in sustainability rankings, but primarily the goal is to gather information in one place and make known the diverse work and impact that our community actors, research, and teaching have. In fact, the SDGs are one way to verify which sustainability and responsibility challenges our operations target.

With the published report, one can view not only how our actions are categorised into different goals, but also how the actions are divided between different faculties, student associations, and support services. The team preparing the report was positively surprised by the actions of the support services, which were a pleasant exception in the SDG distribution:

“Here we were faced with a positive problem: at the final phase, we asked support services for examples of sustainability actions in recent years, waiting for a few highlights, but dozens of actions were received. This is why we chose to present many of the actions as lists, as many of them have already been reported to our community. We are continuing to follow the path set by the Tampere Universities Sustainable Development Roadmap,” Nurminen says.

Sustainability reporting as part of responsibility reporting in the upcoming years

In the future, sustainable development reporting will be incorporated into broader responsibility reporting framework, which is currently developed at Tampere Universities community. Such clarifications as sustainability reporting are one way to verify, document, and make visible the carbon footprint of the Universities community in addition to the measured responsibility figures. Lessons in sustainability and responsibility reporting are sought nationally and internationally in higher education, and opportunities for cooperation are also examined with our strategic partners.
 

The published report is intended to be a living document to be updated with feedback and data completion.

Read the report and find out more about the reporting principles

Read about our sustainable development and responsibility actions