Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Unimore maps its environmental impact

The University of Modena and Reggio Emilia pursues the principle of Sustainable Development and Sustainability in all its multiple aspects: from Environmental Sustainability to Economic and Social Sustainability. This commitment is reflected in the promotion and implementation of actions aimed at sustainability firstly within the university and secondly in the promotion and enhancement of external initiatives (research projects, public involvement activities).

The promotion and implementation of practices aimed at contributing to the achievement of the goals of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is part of Unimore's 2020- 2025 strategic plan, which, being an educational service involving students, faculty and staff, inevitably produces environmental damage.

So Unimore has committed itself to this approach and has begun to monitor and quantify its environmental impact.

In charge of following the “mapping” of Unimore educational services is the LCA Working Group for research - which develops the LCA - Life Cycle Assessment technology - of the Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, which includes, in addition to Professors Anna Maria Ferrari and Roberto Rosa, Engineers Paolo Neri and Lucrezia Volpi.

The first facility to be monitored is the Reggio Emilia structure itself in which aspects that are objectively common to all Unimore structures were examined. The working group developed for the first time the PCR (Product Category Rules), i.e. the rules and guidelines that must necessarily be followed to obtain EPD ( Environmental Product Declaration) environmental certification of any educational service.

In particular, PCRs were developed for the CPC (Central Product Classification) codes provided by the United Nations Statistics Division and related to Education services and First stage tertiary education services.

In the definition of the environmental assessment criteria, the teachers who transfer knowledge, the necessary tools that foster learning, the users who benefit from these services were considered, as well as the location where the service is provided, the energy required to light, heat and cool the rooms. The educational service also includes sanitary facilities and related water consumption. Buildings must be subject to periodic maintenance and cleaning, and the surrounding area must be maintained and cleaned to preserve its characteristics. Buildings required for the provision of the service include the library and teaching laboratories. The provision of the service requires operators who follow the administrative aspects. Teachers, students and administrative staff must reach the workplace by private or collective means. The service must also include the catering for students, teachers and staff; therefore if the canteen is located within the same place where teaching is provided, it is considered part of the service. If not present, the consumption of vending machine products and meals brought from home should be considered.

'The inclusion of these latter aspects in the PCRs and consequently in the LCA study', says Prof. Anna Maria Ferrari of the Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, 'also stems from the results recently published in international scientific journals on an LCA study reported by the University of the Basque Country, which showed that the contribution of meals and waste is significant for certain impact categories and therefore not negligible. For both PCRs developed, it was assumed that the service is provided during a school or academic year, while the functional unit chosen is the product of the total number of students to whom the service under study is provided and the total number of annual hours characterising that particular educational service'.

'The results must necessarily refer to an individual student receiving a single hour of teaching. This way,' explains Prof. Roberto Rosa of the Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, 'a fair comparison will also be made between different educational services (with the same level of education) and characterised by different numbers. We hope that the proposed PCRs will be widely followed, so that all educational institutions can adopt this protocol to objectively quantify their environmental impacts in a way that effectively contributes to the sustainable development of our country's primary, secondary and tertiary education system'.

Categorie: International - english