The GreenMetric was established six years ago by Universitas Indonesia with the goal of promoting sustainability at educational institutions. In order to take part, universities must fill in an online questionnaire reporting how much energy the institution uses and how much carbon dioxide it emits.

The RUG scored well in terms of sustainable handling of waste and use of energy, but the university did not do as well when it came to water use and education.

The RUG has the highest score among Dutch universities, followed in 26^th place by the University of Eindhoven. Wageningen is at number 32, Delft at 34 and Nijmegen took 142^nd place. The universities of Utrecht, Leiden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Twente, Maastricht and Tilburg are missing from the list because they had not registered for it.

Worldwide, 407 universities take part in the sustainability ranking list. The University of Nottingham came in first place.