Turkish university among world’s top 100 green campuses

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s oldest technical university in the heart of Turkey’s largest metropolis was listed among the top 100 green academic campuses in the world.

Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) came 54th on the Green Metric list among 780 universities, according to the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings 2019.

İTÜ has been steadily rising on green rankings for three years, said Mehmet Karaca, the university’s rector.

Karaca emphasized that İTÜ would continue to strive for a higher place in the rankings, seeking to transform all its campuses into sustainable living spaces.

İTÜ was the only Turkish university to make the top 100 to become the 28th greenest campus in Europe.

Erciyes University in the central Anatolian province of Kayseri ranked 136th, the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) in the capital Ankara ranked 167th and Özyeğin University in Istanbul ranked 173rd.

A total of 43 Turkish higher education institutions and Cyprus International University based in Turkish Cyprus were included in the rankings.

Dutch university on top

The GreenMetric - launched in 2010 - is an initiative of the University of Indonesia. Its indicators include setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation and education.

Dutch University of Wageningen took first place in the list, followed by the University of Oxford and the University of California, Davis.
University of Nottingham (U.K.), Nottingham Trent University (U.K.), Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (Germany), Leiden University (The Netherlands), University of Groningen (The Netherlands), University College Cork (Ireland) and Bangor University (U.K.) also took places in the top 10.

“UI GreenMetric World University Rankings is the first and only university rankings in the world that measure each participating university’s commitment in developing an ‘environmentally friendly’ infrastructure,” said a press release by the University of Indonesia.

“This year, 780 universities from 85 countries took part, which is an increase from last year with 719 universities from 81 countries. Several new countries have just joined in this year, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Guatemala, Mauritius and Uzbekistan,” it added.