New publication documents UCC's sustainability journey

9 Feb 2026

An interdisciplinary, campus-wide team has come together to document UCC's journey to becoming the second most sustainable university in the world. This work interrogates the success factors that transformed UCC into a global sustainability leader and has now been published in the Journal of Sustainability Perspectives. 

This new paper Student-Led, Research-Informed and Practice Focussed: University College Cork’s Journey to Sustainability, led by Professor John O'Halloran and co-authored with experts from across the university, outlines UCC's successful approach to sustainability research, education and practice. 

UCC’s sustainability journey began more than 25 years ago, and its engagement with the UN SDGs since their introduction 10 years ago has been transformational. Our success in embedding sustainability comes from people working together at every level of the university. It combines student energy and activist from the bottom up, clear commitment from university leadership from the top down, and strong collaboration across departments, teams and individuals from the middle out. Sustainability is embedded in everything we do, from strategy and leadership, to research, teaching, partnerships and campus operations. This whole-university approach has helped build a strong culture of sustainability and these efforts power UCC’s internationally recognised Green Campus which is now ranked as the second most sustainable university campus in the world.

Our experience at UCC shows that meaningful change happens when students are active partners in progress. By modelling sustainability in action, we ensure that our research drives real-world solutions - shaping how we teach, how we power our campus and how we engage with society. 

Professor John O'Halloran, MRIA

You can read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.14710/jsp.2025.29840