Sierra Magazine Ranks Greenest Colleges and Universities

The University of Missouri-Kansas City is proud to have landed in Sierra Magazine’s top 100 Cool Schools of 2017. For the last 11 years, Sierra Magazine – the national magazine of the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest grassroots environmental group – has published a ranking of the greenest colleges and universities, as measured by campus sustainability programs and curricula.

UMKC ranked 93 out of more than 200 participating institutions. In 2016 we ranked 108 out nearly 200 institutions.

Participation in Sierra magazine’s Cool Schools ranking is open to all four-year, degree-granting undergraduate colleges and universities in the United States. Schools that submitted complete, updated sustainability data were eligible to be ranked. 229 colleges and universities are included in the 2017 ranking.

That said, our rankings can serve as a guide for prospective students, current students, administrators, and alumni to compare colleges’ commitments to environmentalism. It also serves to spur healthy competition among schools, raise environmental standards on campus, and publicly reward the institutions that work hard to protect the planet.

UMKC is no stranger to receiving national recognition for its sustainability efforts. The university has continually ranked in the top three RecycleMania final results. UMKC had an 82 percent recycling rate during ReycleMania 2017, receiving a third place ranking out of 190 competing colleges and universities within its division. In fiscal year 2016, UMKC generated nearly $1.4 million in energy savings resulting from a long list of ongoing sustainability efforts initiated over the last eight years.