School Sustainability Planning

Despite all the talk of sustainability and environmental action, our eco-footprints continue to grow in North America. Without a strategy in place to address this, it is likely to continue. Sustainability planning is become increasingly common in organizations looking to minimize their environmental footprint. They take stock of where they are, set targets, implement solutions and track their performance against their targets.

We want to apply this process to schools, with K-12 students being the ones who lead the charge. We’ve developed this project to be offered at all grade levels, and to last anywhere from one full day to the entire semester. A sustainability plan is a huge project, so we have broken the project into four discrete parts (and subdivided one of those even further) – these are Energy, Transport, Waste, Water and Food.

This document acts as your overall roadmap for the sustainability plan. No matter which areas you choose to tackle, you should start here first

Analyzing and reducing energy use in your school. This is further subdivided into three main areas - heating, lighting and plug-in loads.

Looking at ways to track and manage the way that people get to and from your school

By tracking the waste we produce we can find better ways to reduce consumption, reuse some items, and recycle what is left

Our attitude towards water in Canada is that there is plenty to go around. This is certainly not the case globally. We can become more aware of how much water we actually use and what we require by effectively studying the way we use it.

Examining where our food comes, identifying the resources that go into its production and examining disposal will help you redesign food to be more sustainable.