The latest news from the Responsible Campus program

• Green Campus: Voluntary recycling scheme for office waste – every little helps!

The scheme for voluntary recycling of office waste in the OMICS buildings (Alexandre Yersin and Simone Veil), launched on June 11, 2018 and initially greeted with some skepticism, has now been embraced as an effective way to help the environment.

 

• A shared recycling area

To reflect constantly changing attitudes and regulations, we have decided to give each team a role to play by introducing a new method for collecting and disposing of office waste.

All employees can now do their bit for the environment by disposing of waste in the containers that have been set up in communal areas (the social space and the area near the photocopier). This voluntary recycling scheme works just like the regular recycling system at home.

Paper, the main source of non-hazardous waste in the OMICS building, is recycled separately from other waste. The building has been equipped with dedicated containers – each floor has two bins, one for paper (printouts, newspapers, magazines, books, etc.) and the second for miscellaneous waste.

Recycling stations for glass bottles, plastic bottles and cans have also been set up in the social space, as well as specific waste containers (for toner, pens, electronic waste, etc.) in the ground floor hallway. There are 18 recycling containers for more than 120 people.

 

• First figures for the OMICS building

After six months, the volume of paper collected is a staggering 128.7kg, or the equivalent of 1,600,000 A4 pages!

Staff have been particularly diligent in sorting their waste, with hardly any unwanted materials in the paper stream, meaning that the company in charge of recycling at the Institut Pasteur has been able to recover the material effectively.

To find out about other ways you can help the environment at work, see the guide "An environmentally friendly office", published by the French Environment & Energy Management Agency (ADEME):.

Find out more: campus-vert@pasteur.fr

 

 

 

• Responsible Campus: the Institut Pasteur's Sustainable Development Report – well worth a read!

The "Green Campus" project was launched in 2010 to promote and consolidate the Institut Pasteur’s action in favor of the environment. It is based around three areas for action:
• preserving resources,
• preventing pollution,
• sharing ideas and best practices.
 
The teams in charge of the project regularly receive ideas and suggestions from the Institut Pasteur community. Since 2014, Green Campus has become the environmental part of a broader project to encourage sustainable development, known as "Responsible Campus".

These two projects are led by the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit in the Quality, Environment and Sustainable Development Department.

To review the action taken since 2010, a report has been drawn up based around the three key dimensions of sustainable development:
• social commitments,
• economic commitments.

The report is available in French.

For more information, and if you would like your project to be included in the next report: campus-responsable@pasteur.fr