Students To Turn CEIBS into The First Carbon-Neutral Business School

As part of its effort to produce the next generation of responsible business leaders, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) has successfully incorporated modules on corporate social responsibility and sustainability into its curriculum. MBA students Alex Song, Eric Seidner, and Robert Seiler noticed, however, that even though the curriculum was emphasizing sustainability, the 15 year old campus was not constructed in a way to minimize its environmental impact and was therefore contributing to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions. To reconcile this discrepancy, these three MBA students banded together and created a student initiative called the “CEIBS Carbon Neutral” project. The aim of this project is to turn CEIBS into the world’s first carbon neutral business school.

Their innovative approach to making CEIBS carbon neutral consists of three steps. First, they identified the school’s greenhouse gas emissions through a calculation of its carbon footprint. Next, they planned how to reduce a considerable amount of the school’s emissions through the concerted implementation of several on campus projects and behavioral campaigns. Their final step was to neutralize the remaining amount of the school’s emissions through offsetting.  As part of this offsetting, CEIBS has partnered with Roots and Shoots to plant a CEIBS Forest in Inner Mongolia.  Alex, Eric and Robert have begun raising donations from the CEIBS community of students, faculty, and alumni and have calculated that the trees planted through Roots and Shoots will offset a sizeable portion of their current emissions. The team hopes to make this a yearly tradition for their school and Eric and Robert will represent their school’s commitment to carbon neutrality by personally joining this year’s Roots and Shoots tree planting activity in April.