Chiba University students publish rebranded Sustainability Report

Since 2004, Chiba University, a public university, has been creating its Environmental Report every year. The environmental student committee oversees the composing of the report, designing, interviewing for, and writing it in line with the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) environmental standards. On August 31 of this year, they published the Chiba University Sustainability Report 2019, with a new altered name to emphasize a focus on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Chiba University has adopted and now adheres to both ISO 14001 Environmental management system and 50001 Energy management, which are a framework of requirements for organizations. Students take a large, active part in the process and use this framework to integrate related activities into the curriculum. Because the sustainability report is an educational opportunity, students from the committee take every role from writer and proofreader through to editor-in-chief in drafting the report.

The whole process takes about one year, with the student committee scheduling the proofreading by university staff and subsequent design work from students majoring in that field. This year, a total of 71 students were on the team: 16 editorial members, 52 writers and three designers. The university has won Environmental Communication Awards—in the category of Environmental Consideration Law for specific business operators—in both 2015 and 2018.

The report is divided into five sections. The first section explains the university’s leading-edge environmental education and research. In the second section, it highlights four initiatives to achieve a sustainable campus. The third section focuses on their student-led activities to reach nearby communities and the ways to communicate their efforts globally. This is followed by a discussion emphasizing the importance of including all persons with differences when working towards the SDGs in the fourth section. The last section reports the operational status of their Energy Management System and the progress and evaluation of the initiatives.

This year’s report highlights not only environmentally conscious activities but also more specific efforts to achieve the SDGs. The editorial team tried to make the report visibly easier for readers to understand the university’s initiatives to achieve the SDGs by printing the original icons for the SDGs on each page.

Hinata Koide, a member of the environmental ISO student committee and  editor-in-chief of the Sustainability Report 2019, says, “My hope is that this report would become an influential tool to promote the understanding of our university’s environmentally-conscious activities to nearby communities and other local citizens who are involved in similar environmental initiatives. Ideally, this report contributes to Japanese society in a way that will make the SDGs increasingly attainable.”

Chiba University gives academic credits and certification for ISO student committee activities, and even offers opportunities for internships extending these efforts into work experience. It seems clear that the university is harnessing the enormous potential for education to lead the way towards growing environmental action in Japan.