Greenmetric Journey of Izmir Institute of Technology: Agile Strategies Towards a Green Campus

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing attention towards sustainable approaches on university campuses through disseminating international evaluation systems, the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings (GM) attracting specific attention in particular. Türkiye is one of the countries where the number of participating universities in GM rises annually at a significant pace. Most of the large-scale university campuses in Türkiye were already built by the 1990s, which led these campuses to adapt themselves to higher standards for sustainability. In this context, Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), a 33-year-old university, has applied for the GM with its Gülbahçe Campus since 2020. This paper aims to reveal IZTECH’s institutional agile sustainability strategy, energetic and collective processes, and good practices in the last five years while examining the outcomes through the GM’s evaluation of six assessment criteria. In this regard, the sustainability practices of IZTECH have been monitored since 2019 and compared to how the developments have improved the GM scores for the past 3 years. This study, focusing on the IZTECH campus through historical, social, educational, and technological perspectives, unveils the barriers between developing and implementing sustainability practices and examines the cohesion between GM scores and annual reports of campus activities for further projections towards a greener campus. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.