Independent University Newspaper
Copenhagen Business School
CBS’ 16-year-old cbsCSR center has changed its name to CBS Sustainability and was launched on December 3. CSR is still relevant, but CBS needs to engage in broader collaboration with universities and companies to push the sustainable development of society in the right direction, argues the center's academic director.
The framework has been laid out for CBS’ sustainability strategy, with the first initiatives covering the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability starting up in spring. “Becoming sustainable is a common effort,” says the project manager.
No food waste, no paper waste, and no meat on the menu. These are some of the initiatives that can make events at CBS much more sustainable, and they have just been launched in a guide on how to make an event sustainable.
CBS students, Lena Tünkers and Niklas Sihan, have developed a circular deposit system that introduces reusable plastic nets made out of beached fishing nets to supermarket chains. They want to confront the perception of plastic being a bad material, as they think it is a valuable resource.
If CBS students are to become the ‘leaders of tomorrow’, they need to understand the potential of creating social and sustainable companies, argues Marine von Renteln, first year-student at CBS. Together with the social enterprise YES CPH and the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship, she is hosting a seminar about this topic on May 3 at Porcelænshaven.
If we do not meet the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, it is not the problem of the next generations, but the current students’ at CBS, pointed out the former chairman of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, in a debate about the SDGs at CBS. Also, read about what kind of greenwashing traps companies risk falling into, and why the students should care about SDGs at all.
The future of CBS is about to look greener. The Green Network, consisting of professionals, experts, and students from CBS, has received a green light from the senior management to draft a sustainability strategy for CBS. The first initiatives will be ready in 2019, and you can participate by sharing ideas that would make CBS more sustainable.
Teaching material on sustainable business models is a scarcity. But CBS wants to change that together with the Norwegian School of Economics and the Spanish ESADE Business & Law School, as they are planning to launch an open source and online educational material about sustainable business models in 2019.
Sustainability isn’t just a trend that’s about to pass. Teachers are experiencing that students demand to be taught more about sustainability. Two students from OIKOS think that CBS needs to introduce more mandatory courses in sustainability if it wants to be in tune with the future of businesses and consumer behavior.
Instead of letting the food from the five canteens at CBS go to waste, you can fill a box for DKK 15. Although the new initiative is facing some challenges, it’s “here to stay,” says the Director of Spisestuerne.
Lectures in sustainability and CSR are not worth much if CBS itself does not set a good example, argues Maribel Blasco, Associate Professor at CBS. According to her, students will only take responsibility and sustainability seriously if CBS shows that it does so itself as well. “Students spot hypocrisy right away,” she says.
Imagine a point system in which you could earn points each time you did a sustainable deed; such as, biking to CBS. This sums up an idea conceived three students from CBS and the University of Copenhagen at last weekend’s Sustainable Campus Hackathon. The idea was brilliant enough to earn the group a trip to PRME’s office in New York in order to present it next year. Furthermore, a task force is working on getting the idea implemented at CBS.
The new Department of Management, Society and Communication wanted to be more sustainable. In order to become so, they came up with a competition among staff members. This has resulted in a vegetarian default food policy. The first of its kind at CBS.
Three different colored sorting bins, situated throughout the Solbjerg Plads, have been part of an experiment running for more than six years. But the trash never got sorted. Now, the bins have been removed, the day after CBS WIRE asked what happens to the waste.
CBS has a copious amount of researchers that are specialists in CSR and sustainable management, and the students are, from day one, told and taught to act responsibly. But CBS does not have an overall strategy about how to be a sustainable university. We asked the University Director why. Staff members working with sustainability and CSR argue that CBS can do much more, and should if they do not want to be blamed for greenwashing.