Sustaira Proudly Becomes Member of AASHE
Sustaira has recently become a member of The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, commonly known as AASHE. This new membership allows Sustaira to further their commitment to Sustainability and ESG through Higher Education while enabling others to do the same.
What is AASHE?
AASHE is focused on inspiring and catalyzing higher education to lead the global sustainability transformation. They do this through empowering and working with higher education to ensure that faculty, administrators, staff and students are effective change agents and drivers of sustainability and innovation. AASHE partners and offers memberships for a wide variety of institutions and organizations and allows for members and partners alike to collaborate and create a more sustainable future for all.
As a member of AASHE Sustaira becomes part of a growing community dedicated to higher education sustainability, can share thought leadership and help other organizations through their sustainability journeys, and has access to wonderful resources. With the work that Sustaira has already done with universities, it's clear there is a bigger need across the board for sustainability and ESG software in higher education.
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
Sustaira and Higher Education
At Sustaira, higher education is an extremely important part of ESG and Sustainability and a big focus for the organization. Many higher education organizations are paving the way for a more sustainable future and are looking for innovative and agile solutions to accelerate their sustainability journey. Already having worked with a handful of universities in the United States including Xavier University of Louisiana and California State University Northridge (CSUN), Sustaira is committed to enabling higher education as much as possible. This starts with first defining what challenges many universities are up against, and then delivering agile solutions.
ESG and Sustainability Challenges in Higher Education
High Carbon Footprint / Large GHG emitters: due to infrastructure, energy consumption, transportation needs.
Social justice: many higher education institutions experience systemic racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion issues with a need for transparency and social programs.
Governance: due to the complexity of organizations governance issues may arise due to a conflict of interest, lack of transparency or inadequate board oversight.
Incorporating sustainability principles: into all aspects of the institution’s operations, including curriculum, facilities management and research. Examples include waste reduction and recycling.
Green investments and transparency: education institutions have significant endowments being invested in assets. Ensuring investments are consistent with its ESG values demands transparency and oversight.
The solution to all these challenges translates to needing a flexible, open, customizable solution that can connect with a wide variety of data sources, goes beyond the “E” in ESG, and can be rapidly tailored or changed to fit each university or organization as well as any changing goals or policies.
Real Life Examples
Sustaira’s recent work with Xavier University and CSUN are wonderful examples of how Sustaira can be used in higher education and exemplifies why being a member of AASHE is furthering Sustaira’s commitment to Sustainability and ESG through Higher Education, while enabling others to do the same.
Xavier University needed a way to not only aggregate their sustainability data, but to be able to clearly track progress, goals and KPI, and share those results. The ultimate goal for Xavier is to build awareness across not only campus faculty and staff, but the student body as well. To do this, Xavier adopted the Sustaira Goals and KPI Tracker application.
“Right now, the Sustaira Goals and KPI Tracker app is making sustainability visible across Xavier. What people see on campus such as fliers about Sustainability, or even the occasional recycling bin, people just see that as a norm or just noise in the background. When we have data and reporting behind, it builds transparency and trust. This application gives us all of that, and it integrates with our existing systems, specifically the Energy Star Portfolio Manager and proves that what we're doing is working.” - Helena Robinson Director of Sustainability and Quality Control at Xavier
At CSUN the campus needed a way to not only aggregate their sustainability data, but to be able to clearly track progress, goals and KPI, as well as scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. The university had also started implementing some energy efficiency measures (EEM) to help reduce their carbon footprint. To track these measures CSUN began using manual processes with an excel spreadsheet paired with powerBI to track and visualize the data. However, while these systems worked, they were not secure, data quality was at risk, and as data sets grew larger, data management became difficult and less sustainable. To address all of these challenges, CSUN has adopted the Sustaira Goals and KPI Tracker application, Carbon Accounting, and a totally custom application dedicated to Energy Efficiency Measures and Scenario Analysis.
Next Steps
Being a member of AASHE is an exciting opportunity for Sustaira and one that will certainly bring value both to Sustaira and to higher education across the globe. To learn more about Sustaira’s solutions for Higher Education, head to this link: https://www.sustaira.com/education-and-government
For those interested in trying out the Sustaira Sustainability App Platform, organizations are invited to sign up for the free version through this link: https://www.sustaira.com/getstarted. With basic access to the platform users can explore and demo Sustaira solutions. As users explore, options to upgrade to the Basic, Standard or Premium version and activate more apps or co-create a completely new ESG and Sustainability app are available.
