CNB-CSIC Environmental Sustainability Committee
At 22nd April 2022 (“International Mother Earth Day”), the CNB-CSIC Environmental Sustainability Committee was created with the support of the CNB Board Committee.
This committee is composed by several CNB members, each one with different professional profile: from researchers to administration, instrumentation, technical and research support staff.
Current members (2024)
Rubén García, Enrique Rojo, Cristina Martínez, Santiago Michavila, María López Sanz, Silvia Ayora, Pilar Cutillas, Juan Nogales, Álvaro Gargantilla, Gabriel Sánchez, Esther Ortega, Raquel Tenorio, Pilar Corral, Barbara Pérez
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All these members have been working together on the analysis, documentation, suggestions and following up of several actions in order to get more environmental sustainable working areas.All these detailed actions are collected in our CNB Green Guide (link), approved by the CNB Board Committee on (que dia?). This document is updated and reviewed constantly to ensure the implementation of new actions.
OUR MISION
The main mission of the CNB-CSIC Environmental Sustainability Committee or Green Commission is to promote environmental consciousness and create a culture of environmental sustainability in our research institute, in which our CNB community can engage and commit to improve to advancing sustainability by the integration of sustainable practices and implementation of environmental measures.
Our main goal is to promote the ecological transition of our institute to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals in order to mitigate or reduce the effects of the climate change.
To perform that, we seek out proactive and integrated approaches to environmental sustainability - based on good practices - and support the achievement of our objectives. CNB-CSIC is fully committed to promote more sustainable practices in research and administration, to contribute, in our daily work, to fight climate change and pollution.
ACTION PLANS
The CNB Environmental Sustainable Committee has set up several action plans, with the aims of raising awareness, improve our surrounding environment, reduce the environmental impact derived from our daily working and research activities at the CNB and even when commuting to work. By the initial analysis of our surrounding working area, we have implemented several measures and performed good practices that allow us to tackle important issues related with climate change:
- Waste identification and management:
Our main policy in waste management is following up the “3Rs policies: Reduce, reuse and recycle”. Important actions have been already done in the identification of improvement points at the CNB to get more efficient waste management and waste treatment. This committee is promoting the awareness in the reduction of waste in the labs but also outside (as cafeterias and offices). Further actions are planned not only to reduce waste contamination but also to raise awareness in some daily actions to help out the planet.
Research in life sciences produce big amounts of plastic waste which is difficult to manage. From CNB environmental sustainable committee we want to encourage our researchers to reduce the environmental impact due to the waste production derived from our experiments and offer alternatives to reduce and reuse specific plasticware materials.
- Energy consumption:
From our committee, we all are committed to reduce the consumption of energy at the CNB in order to reduce our impact at the environment. To reach this goal, we have established a list of good practices that all CNB members can perform in an easy way and therefore, contribute actively to reduce energy consumption. Our committee accept and study suggestions from other CNB members that could be implemented as measures to reduce energy consumption.
- Travel and commuting to work
Due to the increase of pollution levels in big cities as Madrid, we are committed to follow up and encourage more sustainable mobility practices by the use of public transport and other sustainable means of travel such as bicycles. To promote that, we have created a useful map to get work by bike, create a car-sharing system to commute together or installation of electric car recharge points at the institute.
Our actions are not only limited to those, but also we have implemented other actions lead to other areas as: communication and training to the new coming researchers, follow up and updating of our actions plan, research on environmental sustainability, etc…
Initiatives
Podéis mandarnos vuestras iniciativas, incluyendo la idea y una breve descripción de la misma por correo. También habrá disponible a la entrada del CNB un buzón para que podáis incluir vuestras ideas, identificadas con nombre, apellidos, y localización en el centro.
Se premiará la participación con un obsequio de recuerdo, y se dará un premio a las tres mejores ideas. Los premios consistirán en:
- Termo.
- Botella de agua de acero.
- Libro sobre la vida del naturalista Alexander von Humboldt ("La invención de la naturaleza" de Andrea Wulf).
El plazo para enviar vuestras propuestas es de un mes. Venga, animaos a participar!!
El comité verde
