Sustainability
We participate in building a sustainable future through education, research and development, and everyday actions.
Our activities are guided by the following values: a sense of community, responsibility, equality and humanity. We believe that our values are reflected in our everyday work in the way we teach, lead, cooperate and strive to develop society. In addition to our carbon footprint, we also monitor our handprints, i.e. the positive effects our activities have on society.
We aim for a bigger handprint then what would be expected from us, especially in the promotion of culture and social sustainability. In order to build a sustainable and responsible world, we strive to increase a sense of community, accessibility and well-being for both current and future generations.
Humak works to promote sustainability also in the field of universities of applied sciences. We are committed to the joint sustainable development and responsibility programme of the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences, Arene. Our president and CEO, Jukka Määttä, also chairs Arene’s Sustainable Development and Responsibility working group.
In 2026, we will develop comprehensive sustainability monitoring by piloting the UAS reference framework for sustainability reporting. We will also prepare the Sustainable Humak programme to reflect the current concept of sustainability and the sustainability program published by Arene in 2026. The current sustainability programme Kestävästi yhteisöllinen Humak was prepared in 2023 based on the UN Agenda 2030 agenda and Arene’s 2020 Sustainable Development and Responsibility Programme.
Sustainable Development Goals
We have identified four of the SDG goals that are especially connected to the core of Humak’s operations.
Sustainability as part of education
Humak has established itself as a university of applied sciences profiled in community development, cultural production and linguistic accessibility. At Humak, we strive to increase our effectiveness in our training, with the goal of training experts who defend human activity.
Sustainability aspects have been accounted for while designing studies and every student at Humak performs sustainability-related courses as part of their degree. With the help of the sustainability training we offer, we aim to encourage critical thinking, ethical action and to make sustainability a part of the professional identity of all students at Humak.
We also offer sustainability studies through an open university of applied sciences. We are also developing more sustainability studies to meet the demands of a changing world. Animal assistance studies are starting in 2026 in Humak, with the content of which we hope to be able to influence society by increasing diversity and reducing inequality.
Sustainability thinking is one of the cross-cutting themes of our new Wellbeing and the Futures of Youth and Community Work degree programme. In their studies students learn to foster resilient, inclusive and sustainable communities. Developing sustainability skills and environmental awareness are also an integral part of studies for our Outdoor and Adventure education students.
In the Ecosocial culture and accessibility (5 credits) course, students will explore the foundations of sustainable development and learn to identify key social and cultural sustainability challenges. The course also strengthens participants’ understanding of accessible and responsible practices, offering tools to recognise and promote sustainability in diverse contexts.
In the Towards a sustainable world (5 credits) course, students will learn to apply their field‑specific knowledge to identify, implement, and establish sustainable solutions. The course deepens participants’ ability to analyse and create sustainable practices and policies, with a focus on values, ethics, and practical actions that promote sustainable development.
Research, development and innovation
Sustainable RDI activities
The purpose of RDI activities of universities of applied sciences is to produce solutions to society’s sustainability and inclusiveness challenges. All projects must contribute to the realisation of at least one SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) and report on the progress of the goals. In project activities, we consider the principles of sustainability and ethics from planning to implementation and reporting. With our RDI activities, we especially strengthen communities, cultural sustainability and human competence – locally and internationally. We also offer companies a sustainably responsible partner.
Sustainable work and community
We want to act as a working community where our values – sense of community, responsibility, equality and humanity – are visible in everyday work. We want to support all members of our work community to improve and develop their sustainability.
We have tried to develop practices by which every Humak employee would be in an equal position, regardless of geographical or social circumstances. To serve this need, we have developed an initiative and quality channel that serves as a tool for everyone at Humak to express their opinion, present their development proposal or report deviations, also anonymously. Every report received on the quality channel is processed and provided with a response. In this way, every student at Humak who makes contact through a channel can be sure that they have been heard and receive a response on how the contact has been handled and what actions it will possibly produce.
In accordance with the current sustainable development and responsibility programme, we always strive to act as economically, ecologically and socially responsible employers. In addition to sustainability studies aimed at students, Humak offers its personnel the opportunity to complete sustainability studies during their working hours. We strive to develop our staff’s sustainability expertise to meet the ever-growing understanding of sustainability and everyone’s personal opportunities to influence their footprint.
The well-being at work of everyone at Humak is of the utmost importance, both in terms of sustainability and our core values, and we aim to develop it even further with the help of low hierarchy, trust and open interaction.
Environmental responsibility and carbon footprint
According to the basic definition of sustainability, sustainable is an activity that, in order to benefit current generations, does not jeopardise the opportunities of future generations to meet their own needs.
Multi-site activities pose challenges to the accurate calculation of the environmental impacts we produce and indirectly also to the reduction of negative impacts. However, we try to take the sustainability aspect into account in all our current decisions. Our goal is to update our procurement and travel guidelines to define more precisely the sustainability criteria for future activities. Our current travel guidelines already account for the environmental effects caused by air travel, so that the necessity of each flight is assessed separately and, as a rule, public means of transport are used for travel.
However, we have monitored our carbon footprint since 2019, as part of the joint carbon footprint calculation of universities of applied sciences. The calculation brings together the emissions caused by properties, acquisitions and travel. In 2024, our carbon footprint was 682 tCO₂e.
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