DCU Sustainability Charter

To guide, inspire and empower us on our path to zero carbon, the DCU Sustainability Council set out our pledge in this charter in 2021. It is the bedrock for everything we do across our academic work and operations. 

• We will embed sustainability at the core of our university, in its teaching and learning, research, development and innovation, its operations and promoting it thought its national and international engagements, 
• We will communicate and promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and will encourage all staff and students to engage in the delivery of these goals,
• We will actively advocate for climate action through all our circles of power and influence, encouraging and supporting our staff and students in their actions,
• We will demonstrate our commitment through our own actions,
• We will measure our environmental impact and publish an annual carbon footprint,
• We will establish and work to achieve them science based targets to meet the 1.5 degree scenario requirements as per the Paris Climate Change agreement,
• We will identify and implement, in so far as possible, all measures to reduce our carbon footprint,
• We will share knowledge and best practice with national and international partners and communities and work together to reduce all our impacts,
• We will encourage and promote progressive actions undertaken elsewhere and where possible emulate these,
• We will identify the carbon footprint of goods and services consumed by our university and work with our suppliers to reduce these,
• We will include sustainability on our risk register and examine all our policies, practices and major decisions on a systematic basis to ensure that they do not lock us into future high carbon pathways but identify a pathway to a zero carbon organisation.
• We will support our staff and students in the identification of their personal carbon footprints and identify and support measure to reduce our impacts.

We will actively communicate both internally and externally about climate change and our actions to mitigate our impact and adaptation measures needed for a sustainable future for all.