Citation:
Abstract:
While municipal and corporate sectors benefit from step-by-step guidance on the process of developing a sustainability report from scratch, such guidance is lacking for higher education institutions. In this chapter, select municipal and corporate sustainability reporting processes and existing sustainable campus literature are examined alongside empirical evidence from the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Canada) to arrive at the seven-step process for developing a first-time sustainable development report for a higher education institution. The steps are: 1) review Higher Education (HE) sector sustainability reports; 2) review HE sector sustainability assessment tools; 3) develop guiding principles; 4) engage the stakeholders; 5) collect sustainability performance information; 6) verify report accuracy; and 7) publish the report and welcome feedback. This chapter is particularly relevant for higher education institutions that are considering preparing a sustainability report for the first time.