Highlights

The Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative provides the opportunity for school districts and schools to successfully meet current needs while ensuring a thriving future by incorporating sustainable practices into their operations and classrooms. It creates a voluntary program that covers key topic areas.

The Initiative is a permanent, comprehensive, state-wide program to help interested K-12 schools integrate sustainability into their operations and classrooms. It will help prepare our children to be tomorrow’s leaders. It is guided by a Steering Committee with staff support from the Zero Waste Alliance, an organization dedicated to helping society follow Nature's 4-billion year-old sustainable model.

The Initiative is beginning with a multi-year multi-stakeholder effort which will inform them about sustainability, create a toolkit of tools and resources to help school districts and schools integrate sustainable practices and provide assistance in getting started. Much work will be done by Topic Teams, each focusing on one of approximately 15 topics of school sustainability such as food and wellness, transportation, buildings, resource use and education about sustainability.

Stakeholders include schools, school districts, educational service districts, school associations, non-profit organizations, businesses, government agencies and parents. Interested stakeholders can choose to be on one or more topic teams.

Features of the initiative include:

• Education about Sustainability: Opportunities will be identified and created for informing stakeholders about sustainability.
• Web site: A Sustainable Oregon Schools web site will provide a focal point for K-12 school sustainability. It will link the many issues of sustainability, discuss what sustainability is, and contain many tools and resources to assist schools. There will be a page for each topic area with case studies, criteria for sustainability and other resources
• School Sustainability Assessment Tool:
  An assessment tool will be created from the criteria and metrics developed by the topic teams. This tool will help educate schools about what sustainability means, assess what they have in place already and determine opportunities for improvements and savings.
• Outreach and Support: Outreach and support will be provided to schools and school districts to generate interest in the initiative and to identify those that would like to participate.
• Awards Program: A state-level sustainable K-12 schools award program will be created. These will provide recognition of successes while generating interest among schools.
• Conference: Eventually a state-wide, annual Sustainable Oregon Schools Conference will be created.

The Initiative offers multiple benefits.

Oregon will be a national leader in sustainability, providing a unique model for the nation.  Incorporating sustainability concepts into operations and classrooms will:

• Save money
• Protect student and staff health
• Support academic success
• Protect our ecosystems
• Prepare today’s students to be wise leaders tomorrow

Who Are Some of the Endorsers?

• See a list of the endorsers on the details page

Why Zero Waste Alliance (ZWA)?

ZWA’s mission is to support organizations in the creation of a more sustainable future. ZWA has a proven track record of working with broad stakeholder groups to accomplish innovative, far reaching goals as demonstrated by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool project. This multi-year EPA-funded national project to develop and implement an electronics assessment tool benefited from ZWA’s management of the collaborative process, ensuring a successful product outcome that all parties support.

The Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative is based on this type of broadly-inclusive, multi-stakeholder model. In addition, ZWA associates have many years of experience working on sustainability projects in schools and businesses. The Zero Waste Alliance is a program of the International Sustainable Development Foundation. (www.zerowaste.org)

For Additional Information...

See the details page, or simply contact us.