Green & Sustainable
Canadian International School of Hong Kong
A related measure is the En-trak Energy Monitoring system being considered. The system, designed here in Hong Kong, and being used by several schools already, allows the tracking and display of energy usage through an online portal. Areas such as classrooms can be tracked separately from common facilities, displaying all the data in charts or graphs for students and staff to use. Usage can be displayed as energy units, expenses, carbon dioxide emission amounts, even pineapple buns, a snack close to the hearts of Hong Kongers. Lower School teachers see its application to math and science units. Upper School teachers see its application in the IB Extended Essay, geography, math and sciences. The school’s food service provider has also played an important part in the movement. Compass-Chartwells (Compass) continues with Meatless Mondays once a month, uses corn starch-based biodegradable containers for some products, doesn’t sell drinks in plastic bottles and introduced a small composter in October to compost some kitchen waste. They have extended these measures to most of the schools they work with in Hong Kong particularly because they worked well at CDNIS. They are now looking into working with NGOs named Feeding Hong Kong and Foodlinks that collect and redistribute food to organizations that feed the less fortunate.
The Canadian International School of Hong Kong (CDNIS) is now in the third year of its EcoSmart movement, an effort to improve the school’s environmental efficiency and to raise awareness of environmental issues. We are proud to say that in June 2012, CDNIS was designated an official green school, receiving the Hong Kong Green School Award accorded by the Environmental Campaign Committee of the Hong Kong government. As a result of this designation, CDNIS became a candidate in the schools section of the 2012 Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence, to be announced in December this year. These achievements have resulted from the work of students, staff, parents and school partners. It by no means indicates that we are the “greenest” we could be, nor that we are the most environmentally friendly school in Hong Kong. It does mean that we have achieved a specified standard from which we now need to work and improve, cementing the changes made so far as part of our school character and reputation. So what now? What do we do next and how do we maintain momentum? One ongoing contribution to the movement is the upgrading of air conditioning and lighting facilities. systems. Over the next year, energy efficient split-type and central air conditioning units using earth-friendly coolants will be installed throughout the campus. T8 fluorescent light tubes have already been changed to T5 tubes. Though renovations are still in progress, electricity usage for the mid-August to mid-September period decreased 12% compared to the previous year. We continue to have our Friday Lights Out, at which non-emergency and non-essential lights are turned off from 10:55am-1:05pm
Perhaps the most far-reaching result was the establishment of the Hong Kong EcoSchools Network, an association of 14 international and local schools working together to give youth a voice in government and business policy. CDNIS worked with Chinese International School (CIS) and Hong Kong Academy to form the network. It meets only a few times per year but thus far has had a strong and measurable impact, most notably on CompassChartwells. The schools in the network that also use Compass requested the same measures used at CDNIS, with CIS switching to Compass because of their adaptability. It thus became viable and practical for Compass to implement similar measures in their other schools, compounding the positive effects the network is meant to create. This year we will work on waste reduction and better recycling with them. The above scenario illustrates the key to schools having a positive impact on environmental and sustainable development issues—cooperation and community. Schools are tremendous users of resources. Working together, we can produce a sizeable influence on our community and region, both through exchanging ideas for what we can initiate in our schools and by influencing the suppliers of the resources we use. The more suppliers see schools changing their operations, the more they will change their own operations, which results in a larger impact on the environment and sustainability. Can schools in your area start doing the same? Sustainable Development Coordinator Nasci Lobo is looking to share information and ideas with schools that have similar positions and initiatives. He can be contacted at nascilobo@cdnis.edu.hk
Special Education Network in Asia SENIA 11 will be at Jakarta International School on February 22-23rd, 2013 with a preconference on the 21st. http://www.senia.asia/
36 EARCOS Triannual Journal
