A sustainable campus

Advancing accountability and sustainability on our Paris campus

At CRI, we are committed to building a better future, working with the members of our community to ensure a positive social, economic, technological, and environmental impact in everything we do. Our vision is rooted in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and we foster sustainable development and social responsibility through four tenets:

Limiting our campus’s environmental impact by scrutinizing every aspect of our operations and activities and implementing the solutions necessary for continued responsible development.
Helping all learners in the CRI community to explore their role in a sustainable and inclusive future and working with the CRI’s pedagogical teams to foster agility in responsible education.
Driving research approaches ever forward and adding to scientific knowledge. Research carried out at the CRI seeks to effect real change in our society that benefits everyone.
Respecting the workplace principles of well-being, diversity, personal development, work-life balance, and meaningful work, all of which contribute to the further development of our organization.

Our ambitions

What we want to accomplish

Measure and reduce the environmental impact of our campus and operations by:

Disclosing our yearly CO2-emissions levels
Adopting a sustainable-technology charter
Committing to a sustainable-purchasing policy
Monitoring and setting goals to reduce energy consumption

Raise awareness and provide sustainability resources for faculty and students by:

Organizing conferences and sustainability workshops open to the public
Adopting a sustainable-travel charter
Rolling out our sustainable-events guide
Fostering debate on such societal issues such as equality, gender, and health and well-being.

Share best practices via the website https://www.esresponsable.org where we can post about our green-campus projects .

Our actions

What we’re doing to reduce our ecological footprint

The CRI campus building was constructed in accordance with the Paris Climat de Paris, which lays out construction and design standards for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the city. Our campus site meets the High-Quality Environment (HQE) standard with several features at its disposal for improving energy performance:

Low-energy lighting fittings coupled with KNX presence detectors in all rooms
Heating provided by the CPCU district-heating network
A system for monitoring the energy consumption of all our facilities
All campus furniture comes from suppliers with environmental certification (Cradletocradle, FSC, PEFC).
Much of our IT equipment is second-hand—provided by ECODAIR, a socially responsible company—significantly reducing the environmental impact of our operations compared to purchasing new equipment.
Waste sorting and recycling. Of the little waste our campus generates, we encourage waste sorting in order to 1) minimize as much waste as possible and 2) recover waste that can be recycled. We partner with the company Cèdre to manage our waste collection and recovery.
For campus maintenance, we partner with ISOR and APAIS, which excel at hiring disabled workers, and we expressly request that maintenance staff work on the same shift as the rest of our faculty. All cleaning products used have a low environmental impact.

Our projects

What we’re doing to raise awareness and help faculty and students make sustainability an integral part of their lives

Creating a living campus and making our ecological ambitions a reality through events focused on sustainable development. We put CRI student-interns at the helm of developing our broader community:
- Creating a digital space for campus initiatives
- Organizing climate-change workshops
- Creating podcast series
- Setting up a display space for campus-related information (activities, eco-friendly practices, conferences, etc.)
- Increasing knowledge through quizzes and related events.
Workshopping with La Fresque du climat (“climate overview”) during student orientation to learn about climate change
Building a collaborative sustainable-development database (books, courses, media, articles, studies, ...).
Joining organizations Pour un réveil écologique (“toward ecological awareness”) and Enseignants de la transition (“teachers for transition”).
Creating onboarding materials that detail CRI eco-friendly practices
Providing two welcome days for new students focused on sustainable development, social responsibility and health and well-being