Within the higher education sector, a number of tools exist to measure sustainability. There are international rankings, such as Green Metric, STARS and the Green League, and institutions can apply for AISHE certification. What was missing, however, was an overview of which higher education institutions are more and less sustainable in the Netherlands at the moment.
In 2012, the SustainaBul was initiated to provide that summary. This was done in collaboration with Rank a Brand. In the first year, only universities took part, and the focus was primarily on transparency. A team of volunteer rankers looked for sustainability policy on the websites of education institutions. The final ranking, which was won by Maastricht University, was based on these findings.
In 2013, also universities of applied science were approached to participate, of which thirteen decided to do so. In this year Morgen took the entire organisation into its own hands. Institutions completed a questionnaire, in which every answer had to be supported by a policy document in order to secure validity. On June 18th, Wageningen University and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences were crowned to be the most sustainable university and respectively university of applied science.
In 2014 the questionnaire was strongly renewed. The theme integral approach was put into the questionaire, and more focus was given to education and research. The relative focus on operations decreased.