The University of Florence’s Commitment to Sustainability: An Ongoing Challenge Proved by the UI Green Metric

Since 2015, the University of Florence (UNIFI) has set a series of medium- and long term goals related to sustainability development, in line with the UN 2030 Agenda. These objectives focus on specific areas such as the health and well-being of the academic community (i.e. students, teaching staff and technical-administrative personnel), gender equality, clean and accessible energy, water conservation and climate change responsibility. Moreover, as an Higher Education Institution, the UNIFI actively pursues SDG4: Quality Education, by engaging future generations of students and citizens through concrete initiatives (public engagement). In this context, UNIFI, together with other Italian universities, joined the Italian University Network for Sustainable Development (RUS), whose main objective is to share best practices in sustainable development. This network has enabled universities to evolve as green academies and to more effectively benchmark themselves in the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking (UIGWURN). Since 2018, UNIFI has reported all ongoing sustainability-related efforts through this annual survey. In this framework the systematic monitoring of sustainable initiatives has helped identify critical issues, allowing the adoption of new solutions for further improvement, all of which are described in detail in this paper.