The Business Schools Making Their Campuses More Sustainable

Charging stations for electrical vehicles have been operational on campus at Poland’s Kozminski University since 2018

While roofs appear to be a popular choice for implementing sustainability-focused projects, they’re not the only part of architecture that can be used in such a way. Ireland’s Trinity Business School, a state-of-the-art development located in Dublin, has the largest living wall in the city. The 70m living wall is covered in seven different species carefully selected to suit its northeastern location. It holds 96 plants per square meter, contributing to a greater level of biodiversity.

Creating the living wall has positively changed the urban landscape, soften the hard angular environment, and add a stunning visual effect. However, living walls are mainly recognized for their potential in adding a valuable habitat for nature; flowering plants, providing pollen and attracting a range of pollinators including bees and hoverflies and other insects which are important to urban surroundings. Such plantings also help reduce pollution and cool the environment.

The school’s new building is designed to ensure it will operate on low energy and low maintenance principles. Professor Andrew Burke, Dean of the Business School, says, “Trinity Business School is now a major force in the international management education market. We need a world-class building commensurate with these ambitions. This iconic new building is purpose built to cater for the School’s focus on real business learning and exploration in a diverse facility that enables entrepreneurship, creativity, ethical reflection, and cutting-edge business analysis.”

ENERGY SOLUTIONS BENEATH OUR FEET

While Trinity Business School is incorporating the world above ground to support sustainability and the environment, some are even going below ground. The Global Hub that Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management opened four years ago in Evanston is designed to be highly energy efficient through the use of a geothermal energy field. This field is located under the adjacent football practice field and taps the Earth’s constant temperature to provide highly efficient heating and cooling for the building.

Installation of this system involved drilling 48 double wells, 430 feet deep into the ground. The geothermal system provides 50% of the building’s heating and cooling requirements with the other half provided by a central utility plant if necessary.

AN ELECTROMOBILITY SYSTEM TO PROMOTE BETTER WAYS TO TRAVEL

Another institution leading the way in sustainability is Kozminski University, a business school in Warsaw, Poland. They were the first business school in the country to start paying attention to socially responsible companies and have been co-organizing competitions that identify leaders in this area for over a decade. Although located in the capital, the campus is situated on the Vistula River in the Natura 2000; a network of nature protection areas throughout the European Union.

Charging stations for electrical vehicles have been operational on campus since 2018 as part of their Uni2Charge project which is focused on supporting better ways to travel. However, their initiative’s scope not only covers the installation of charging stations, but the building of an entire electromobility ecosystem.

Ewa Barlik, a spokesperson from Kozminski University, says, “The key is education and raising awareness among both students and administration staff to modern trends in transport. We have also started to encourage students and employees to use public transport. For this, we installed electronic boards at the university with the current schedule of buses and streetcars from the stop next to the university.”

Kozminski University conducted a series of webinars hosted by national and international experts, addressing legal regulations, new business models, and the development of charging station infrastructure. In this regard, they cooperated with organizers of some of the world’s largest conferences on electromobility – Global e-Mobility Forum, the Polish Alternative Fuels Association, and the National Centre for Climate Change. The school has also organized postgraduate studies in electromobility to offer an education that meets current business needs.

A CAMPUS GARDEN TO PROMOTE ORGANIC FARMING

While solar panels, geothermal energy fields, and electric vehicle charging stations are very future-forward and technologically-advanced, some initiatives simply involve going back to our roots, such as the campus garden at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) in the Netherlands. They grow their own vegetables, potatoes, herbs and, in the future, fruit, and the garden is managed by a student-led initiative called EdibleEUR, which organizes multiple gardening workshops to all students and staff members interested in learning more about organic, natural farming techniques.

Similar to BI, EUR also houses a large beehive in their campus garden to promote a fertile living environment for all the vegetation on campus and to protect and house endangered bee species.

Whether installing solar panels on your roof, looking after colonies of bees, or tending to a campus garden, there are numerous sustainable initiatives that can be implemented by a business school or other educational institution to help the campus operate in a more environmentally-friendly way, to inspire students and faculty, and practice what they preach when it comes to sustainability.

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