KAMLOOPS – Thompson Rivers University (TRU) has won international and national awards recognizing its commitment to sustainable practices.

The university is the 2023 bronze award recipient of the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics’ (WFCP) Sustainable Development Goals Award, tying with Weston College in the United Kingdom. TRU also took the 2023 bronze award of the Colleges and Institutes Canada’s (CICan) Excellence in Sustainable Development Award.

The awards were given out at World Congress 2023 in Montreal, Quebec. Co-hosted by CICan and the WFCP, the event brings together post-secondary leaders from around the world to create networks and develop and share their collective knowledge.

“This recognition verifies that we’re doing some good work,” says James Gordon, TRU manager of Sustainability Programs.

“TRU takes sustainability very seriously. We put a lot of financial and human resources towards it and focus on how we build up our campus, making it more sustainable.”

Sustainability has been a core value at TRU since 2013, when it was identified as a strategic priority. TRU achieved a platinum rating in 2018, the first Canadian institution to reach that level, and again in 2022, for its sustainability initiatives and achievements from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). The university is the first in Canada and one of six in the world to have achieved double platinum.

“These sorts of awards confirm we’re moving in the right direction,” says Gordon. “And yet there’s still so much work to do. Sustainability needs all hands on deck to make a real difference, so hopefully we act as a model for others. From TRU’s president all the way to a student on campus for the very first time, it takes everyone to consider doing something about sustainability and then putting that into action.”

Contact:
James Gordon, Manager, Sustainability Programs
Sustainability Office, Thompson Rivers University
250-572-2740 (cellphone)

For more information about CICan, visit collegesinstitutes.ca

For more information about WFCP, visit wfcp.org

For more information about AASHE, visit www.aashe.org