EcoSchools Canada: Creating a path to further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
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earning about the importance of environmental protection and stewardship has become a pressing issue for school communities in Alberta and across Canada. Thanks to the EcoSchools certification program, measuring and understanding a school’s environmental impacts is more accessible than ever before.
student-led initiatives such as walking to
features is its Impact section, where
school, bringing a waste-free lunch, and
schools can view the differences
conserving water. By completing these
their actions are having on their
actions, schools earn points towards
environmental footprints through
a certification level from Bronze to
nine key metrics like energy and water
Platinum. Certifications are guided by
use, waste diversion rates, hours of
a standard used by 77 countries in the
outdoor learning achieved, student
global EcoSchools network.
leaders engaged, and measuring carbon
In the 2020-21 school year, EcoSchools Canada rolled out the EcoSchools
The EcoSchools program is a bilingual environmental education certification framework for K-12 schools in Canada, and is available free of charge to publicly funded schools. Each year, schools create environmental action plans made up of curriculum-linked, 26 Alberta School Counsellor / Spring 2022
Certification Application (ECA), a new online platform in which schools register, build their action plan from a library of 45-plus actions, and track their progress toward certification. One of the ECA’s most powerful
pollution. A comprehensive overview of how these metrics were selected and calculated is available in the report Connecting EcoSchools Actions to Greenhouse Gas Emissions (available at ecoschools.ca). Available to schools year over year, these metrics enable them to track and monitor their progress over time.
