The Role of the Office for the Environment at the University of a Coruña in Promoting Sustainability

By working on issues such as governance, education, research, outreach, and campus operations, higher education institutions play a critical role in achieving sustainability, through green and sustainability offices that coordinate those efforts. The Office for the Environment (OMA-UDC) of the University of A Coruña (UDC) was created in 2008 with the dual aim of taking responsibility for environmental management and promoting the awareness and participation of the university community in environmental issues. The actions of the OMA-UDC started with a first analysis of the environmental impact of the UDC, the calculation of the ecological footprint, the first sectoral plans for energy and mobility and various actions in energy saving and water use efficiency. At the same time, an environmental outreach program has been launched in which the network of environmental scholarship students is a key part. Later, the UDC joined the international program Eco Campus. These lines of action were accompanied by research-action and learning-by-doing methodologies, which showed greater potential for the implementation of sustainability goals. The current programs of the OMA-UDC are: education for sustainability, management of forest spaces on campus and biodiversity, urban vegetable gardens, on-site composting systems for organic waste from the canteens, selective collection and waste prevention, eco-audits for water saving, bicycle loan, ecological footprint calculation, and coordination of environmental volunteering, among others. This paper describes these programs, the sustainability management structure at UDC and the role played by OMA-UDC as a tool for promoting sustainability in a medium-sized university located on the periphery of Europe.