The Russell Group unis which care the least about the environment in 2025, revealed

You’d think that unis would be fairly eco-conscious entities in 2025, since Gen Z’s whole personality shopping on Depop and drinking oat milk and making Instagram stories about the environment. Apparently not. The organisation People & Planet has researched how bad UK unis are for the environment, and ranked them all. Lots of Russell Group unis do not come off well.

People & Planet rated 25 UK unis “first class” for their approach to sustainability. Only five of these are Russell Group unis. At the other end, three Russell group unis were ranked “third class” for how little they help the environment.

Even though the University of Cambridge is theoretically one of the best two unis in the UK, People & Planet gave it a really low sustainability score.  Cambridge scored particularly low because they didn’t get an external organisation to audit the uni’s environmental management this year. Cambridge also scored a measly 62 per cent for education. Apparently the 1,000 essays Cambridge students get each week aren’t on the environment.

Cambridge Uni has lots of green spaces but not so many green initiatives

The University of Glasgow is officially the Russell Group uni which cares the least about the environment. Glasgow scored zero for “waste and recycling” and “carbon management”. People & Planet were unimpressed that the Uni of Glasgow wasn’t recycling very much and hadn’t reduced its carbon emissions since last year.

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On a happier note, the University of Exeter is the most sustainable Russell Group uni. Exetaaaah is officially in its green goddess era. Apparently Exeter did a good job at educating its students about environmental issues, and is on track to meet their targets of reducing their net carbon emissions by 80 per cent before 2050. Yay for Exeter.

So, here are all the Russell Group unis ranked by how little they care about the environment. Number 24 is the most eco-conscious, and number 1 is the least bothered about the planet.

24. University of Exeter – 70.9 per cent

23. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 68.1 per cent

22. University College London (UCL) – 67.2 per cent

21. King’s College London – 66.4 per cent

20. University of Bristol – 60.8 per cent

Bristol is living up to its reputation of being full of liberal hippies and we love to see it

19. Queen’s University Belfast – 60.1 per cent

18. Newcastle University – 59.3 per cent

17. University of Liverpool – 58.7 per cent

16. Durham University – 55.6 per cent

15. University of Leeds – 54.7 per cent

14. Cardiff University – 53.8 per cent

13. University of Oxford – 51.5 per cent

12. University of Birmingham – 50.7 per cent

11. Queen Mary University of London – 49.9 per cent

10. University of Manchester – 49.3 per cent

I don’t think these Manchester students are smiling because of their uni’s carbon emissions

9. Imperial College London – 49.1 per cent

8. University of Southampton – 47.6 per cent

7. University of Warwick – 47.5 per cent

6. University of York – 46.3 per cent

5. University of Sheffield – 46.1 per cent

4. University of Nottingham – 44.6 per cent

3. University of Edinburgh – 37.7 per cent

2. University of Cambridge – 37.2 per cent

1. University of Glasgow – 32.3 per cent

Featured image of the University of Sheffield by BCDS via Creative Commons