In 2009, the
International School of Geneva (Ecolint) mandated
MANECO to complete a report analyzing its impact on the environment. As Ecolint was looking beyond this report and trying to find ways to undertake practical changes, they contacted WWF International for a presentation on WWF’s
One Planet Living (OPL) initiative. This OPL initiative is structured around ten principles of sustainability and aims at demonstrating that living sustainably is possible and can be affordable and desirable. After this first contact, WWF representatives presented in several occasions to the teachers, the students, the administrative staff of Ecolint their work on ecological footprint reduction.
Then Ecolint and WWF decided to develop jointly Sustainability Action Plans (SAPs) for Ecolint’s three campuses in the canton of Geneva and Vaud. SAPs set objectives, targets, and strategies for Ecolint to reduce its ecological footprint. They look at what can be done in terms of infrastructures and behavior highlighting in some occasions what could be done from a curriculum perspective. The SAPs were jointly developed through workshops with Campus Development Groups from each campus which were a good opportunity for all Ecolint’s stakeholders to participate in the process. The whole SAPs development process came to an end in June 2010 and it is now time for Ecolint to implement the recommended actions.
On the right is an example of a SAP for one of Ecolint’s campuses.
