Environmental Review 2025

Mid Sweden University has a solid foundation for its environmental and sustainability work, with a clear connection to both strategy and vision. However, additional efforts are needed to ensure that sustainable development is systematically integrated into all parts of the organization, particularly in the areas of responsibility, structure, resources, and follow-up. The Environmental Review provides an important basis for taking the next step toward developing a more sustainable university.

Key Findings

The review identified the following significant environmental aspects.

Significant environmental aspects with negative impact:

• Carbon dioxide emissions from business travel
• Water consumption
• Generation of regular and hazardous waste

Significant environmental aspects with potential positive impact:

• Education
• Research
• Collaboration with the surrounding community

Overall Strengths

Mid Sweden University has established environmental work linked to its overarching strategy and goals. Some key strengths include:

• Sustainability efforts are integrated into the university’s vision, strategy, and educational mission.
• Reduced climate impact from business travel since 2019 (29%), primarily due to a substantial reduction in air travel and increased digitalization.
• High proportion of environmental requirements in procurement (91% of a total of 16,676 procurements in 2024).

Challenges and Areas for Improvement

Environmental efforts are not yet fully integrated across all areas of the organization, limiting impact and complicating follow-up and governance. In some areas, it has also been difficult to report complete data, highlighting the need for better structures and routines for data collection. Key areas for improvement identified in the review include:

• Gaps in structure, accountability, and systematic environmental management.
• Unclear implementation and follow-up of sustainable development in programs where it is not a formal degree objective.
• The digital sustainability training for staff has not yet been implemented.
• The climate strategy needs full adoption throughout the organization.

Recommendations

The Environmental Review points to a number of concrete improvements that should be prioritized in the ongoing work. The most important include:

• Strengthen operational environmental management with goal-oriented steering, clearer responsibilities, and consistent follow-up.
• Introduce a structured process to monitor sustainability across all educational programs.
• Implement and integrate the completed digital sustainability training for all employees.
• Improve data collection and analysis to reduce negative environmental impact in the long term.

Environmental Review – Mid Sweden University 2025 - read the report in Swedish