De Montfort University, Leicester (DMU), is celebrating after being ranked one of the UK’s top ten eco leading universities for the third year running.
Published today in The Guardian, DMU has been awarded a first-class degree for the 12th time in the annual People and Planet University League, in recognition of its environmental and ethical performance.
The university has been repeatedly awarded the first-class status since 2011 and this year the university was ranked eighth overall out of the 147 institutions rated, while also once again claiming the top spot in the East Midlands.
Karl Letten, Head of Sustainability at DMU, said: "To be ranked in the top ten for sustainability in the UK is amazing.
“The University League measures sustainability across such a wide range of activities and issues within universities its fantastic for the hard work of our academics, professional services and students to be acknowledged in this way.
“Sustainability is really core to what we do at DMU, and we’ve made a real commitment to embed this important topic into our teaching and learning, how we manage our campuses and how we engage our staff and students.”
The People and Planet’s University League is the largest student environmental campaign group in the UK and the only comprehensive independent league table to rank universities according to their environmental and ethical work.
Universities were judged against 14 different categories which are in two main areas ‘performance and policy’ which covers everything from education and environmental policy to recycling waste and carbon management.
They were then ranked according to their scores in each area and classified using degree-style awards.
Key areas the university scored highly in include; Staff and Student Engagement (100%), Carbon Management (100%), Sustainable Food (95%) , Education (92%), and Environmental Policy (90%).
DMU’s commitment to embedding sustainability into the heart of the university was further recognised earlier this year after winning the Sustainability Institution of the Year award at this year’s prestigious Green Gown Awards.
The university has a long list of measures in place to make the university more sustainable, some of the other recent achievements, which have led to this result include:
- Carbon Literacy Educator organisation
- Leadership team completing Carbon Literacy training
- Achieving Hedgehog Friendly Campus status
- Achieving the Responsible Futures award for embedding sustainability into our teaching and learning
- Winning Green Gown Awards for our approach to sustainable fashion and our approach to climate change
- The only UK university to be a global hub for one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals- SDG11
- Reduced our carbon emissions from energy use by over 60%
- Achieved recycling rates of over 90%
- Ran the Daria Project with Leicester City Council to help staff and students learn how to ride a bike
- Provide support to staff and students who choose low carbon forms of travel
- Provide free travel for students and staff on Hospital Hopper bus service
- Introduced a carbon levy for individuals who take an overseas flight as part of DMU Global
- Provided staff and students with space to grow their own fruit and vegetables on campus
- Created a wildflower area on campus.
- Provided sustainability training for new teachers
Posted on Friday 12 December 2025