Arcada celebrates 10 years in Green Office  

Green Office is a concrete environmental programme with the goal of reducing companies’ and offices' ecological footprint and carbon dioxide emissions with improved eco-efficiency as a long-term goal. As a Green Office, Arcada strives to increase environmental awareness among students and staff by integrating principles of sustainable development into education, research and everyday life on campus. 

As part of this work, Arcada has actively invested in reducing the consumption of energy, water, electricity and paper. For example, Arcada’s paper consumption has decreased by almost 75 percent since 2015. In 2017, 476 solar panels were installed on the roof of the main building on campus, which account for one tenth of Arcada's annual energy consumption. 

– Green Office is only one part of Arcada’s work for sustainable development, but a good opportunity to make visible what we do concretely. These activities are part of our strategy for sustainability with the aim of being carbon neutral by 2030, says Ceti Hasselman, campus host at Arcada and chairperson of Arcada’s Green Office team. 

Over the past ten years, Arcada's Green Office team has conducted many campaigns and events for students and staff focusing on recycling, food waste and sustainable choices. The goals for this year include making the Green Office operations visible and to further develop waste sorting. 

– It is important that we involve the students in the Green Office activities and more important than ever that we invest in sustainable alternatives. The fact that sustainable development is now concretised in the degree programmes through Arcada's new study plans is also a major step in the right direction. Green Office is about both big and small actions in everyday life, says Hasselman.