Examining Sustainability in Universities: An Analysis of Green Universities with LOPCOW and MEREC Based CoCoSo Methods

Abstract

The concept of a green university has emerged due to concerns about sustainable development and the use of natural resources. Various institutions and organizations make it possible to compare their sustainability performance by ranking universities as green or non-green. Reports published by UI GreenMetric are also one of the most widely adopted systems today to be able to compare the sustainability performance of universities worldwide. In this context, the aim of the study is to evaluate the sustainability performances of 8 universities selected by UI GreenMetric as environmentalist universities in Turkey in 2022 between 2018-2022. Within the scope of the study, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation, education and research criteria were used. LOPCOW and MEREC methods, which are among the MCDM methods, were used and the importance levels of the criteria were determined by the common weighting method formed by integrating these two methods and the sustainability performances of the relevant universities were listed with the CoCoSo method. As a result of the LOPCOW method, it was concluded that the most important criterion was waste and the most important criterion as a result of the MEREC method was energy and climate change. According to the results of the CoCoSo method, it was determined that METU was the university with the highest sustainability performance between 2018-2022.