A Culture of Sustainability
At ZIS we are committed to educating our students and community for a sustainable future.
Academically, sustainability is integrated into our curriculum allowing us to deepen and broaden students’ skill sets.
That includes designing additional course offerings that focus on sustainability issues and redesigning existing courses that allows us to understand topics from a more diverse, thoughtful perspective.
Operationally, it means assessing our current practices from where we source the energy to cool and heat our buildings, transportation systems, how we purchase and consume resources, and our relationship to our local community.
That allows us to re-think traditional approaches to improve our impact on the world.
At Zurich International School, sustainability is the practice of meeting the needs of the present generation while assuring the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
It considers environmental, social, and economic factors to ensure our students, our communities, and our school can thrive now and in the future.
Our Vision for 2030
![ZIS Lower School students getting onto the ZIS Village Liner bus service.]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1686224010/zurich/bvsusdp2yuha4pcuxxck/village-liner-sustain.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1686224010/zurich/bvsusdp2yuha4pcuxxck/village-liner-sustain.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1686224010/zurich/bvsusdp2yuha4pcuxxck/village-liner-sustain.jpg","width":600}])
Shaking up transport – both to and from ZIS and for school activities and trips – is a big part of ZIS’s journey to sustainability. By 2030, ZIS plans to reduce carbon emitted on the school commute by 66 per cent. This will be achieved with a raft of new measures, including a carpooling system, charging points at school, incentivising public transport for the school’s employees, and, crucially, increasing the number of students who travel by public and school transport. And that’s happening right now with the Village Liner service.
![Two Lower School students holding a bucket together whilst working in the Edible Food Forest]([{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_1/v1686223538/zurich/cmuqvu4mklwolz8ekpty/food-forest.jpg","width":256},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image_size_2/v1686223538/zurich/cmuqvu4mklwolz8ekpty/food-forest.jpg","width":512},{"url":"https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto/v1686223538/zurich/cmuqvu4mklwolz8ekpty/food-forest.jpg","width":600}])
The Lower School food forest – Switzerland’s first – opened in October 2021, funded entirely by donations to the Annual Fund. It’s a beautiful, largely self-sustaining garden with more than 100 different, mostly edible, trees, bushes, ground cover plants and vines, many of which are wild varieties of familiar foods such as kale, garlic, onion and mint. And it’s a far cry from its humble origins.
