UNYP Turns Greener with a New Partnership

The University of New York in Prague has been contributing to the fight against climate change through various project for many years. This year, UNYP began a new partnership with the Perlego online library platform, which will provide UNYP students and staff unlimited access to digital textbooks and manuals. Furthermore, 800 trees will be planted on the university’s behalf.

By partnering with Perlego, UNYP will not only allow students to access digital books instead of purchasing paper textbooks but will also help to conserve the resources used in physical book production while reducing CO2 emissions. It is said that it takes up to 13 liters of water to produce a single A4 paper, so replacing paper textbooks with online textbooks significantly contributes to saving water.

The Perlego online library subscription also solves the problem of deterioration, as physical textbooks used by many students in traditional libraries inevitably suffer some sort of damage and must be replaced at one point. By offering our students free access to digital textbooks, the university wants to eliminate the necessity of storing additional hard copies in UNYP’s library.

According to the university, replacing some of the necessary printed study materials with a Perlego subscription will reduce the environmental impact of university education, as the energy needed to maintain an online library is less than the energy required to produce millions of hard copies of textbooks. Also, replacing paper textbooks with online texts contributes to reducing the emission of ozone-depleting substances and chemicals associated with ocean acidification throughout the life cycle of a textbook.

The University of New York in Prague has had a recycling policy in place since 2008, working with a recycling company and placing recycling bins for paper and plastics throughout the campus. In 2018, UNYP limited access to plastic cups on campus and gave out BPA-free reusable plastic cups to the UNYP community. The new partnership is supposed to be a next step to becoming greener as an institution.

Source: www.unyp.cz