News archive

On this website, you find an overview of the news related to sustainability at ETH Zurich and ETH Sustainability.

 

Event: Socially and ecologically sustainable procurement

05.12.2012 - A socially and ecologically sustainable procurement system can help to protect limited natural goods and to guarantee a socially acceptable production in the countries of origin. But what are the requirements? And what do voluntary commitments?bring? One event of the series "Sustainability Dialogue with Leaders and Pioneers" was dedicated to discussing these questions. More information on the series "Sustainability Dialogue with Leaders and Pioneers"

 

 

ISCN-Award: ETH Zurich honored for its underground storage system

21.06.2012 - Over the past five years, ETH Zurich has been developing a dynamic underground storage system at ETH Hönggerberg with the aim to make the campus as CO2-free as possible until 2025. Until today, 230 of the around 800 downhole heat exchangers have been installed and two underground stations have been constructed to control the temperature of individual building complexes. Since April 2012, the first three buildings have gone on line.

For this pioneering project, ETH Zurich was awarded by the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN). For more information, please read the related article in ETH-Life "Erdspeicher in Betrieb genommen (21. Juni 2012)". The article is available in German only.

 

 

Summer School 2012: «Eating tomorrow - Rethinking the World Food System»

Call for applicants open - Food is one of the most basic human needs, but famine is still not a thing of the past. Having said that, we?re also at a point were more than 1.1 billion people worldwide are overweight. With the summer school 2012, the ETH Zurich wants to introduce innovative and sustainable approaches to secure our global food supply and find new ways of confronting the mayor challenges associated with food security. For three weeks, the ETH Zurich will create an environment in which interdisciplinary and international teams can work together with industry partners to create solutions for concrete case studies. The Summer School takes place at ETH Zurich statt, from 1 July - 20 July 2012.

Further information >here.
Download information >here (PDF 2.8 MB)
Deadline for application: April 22, 2012

 

 

Responsible Career Day – linking students and sustainable business

Announcement - The Responsible Career Day taking place at ETH on April 4th 2012 provides a relaxed professional space and atmosphere to establish a profitable connection between responsible companies and young people who care about their impact on society and on the environment. Be it direct job links, internships, voluntary services, research ties or just general information about sustainable business and role-model companies, the Responsible Career Day creates an event dedicated to business responsibility.

The event is organized by the student-run association «dare2care» and supported by ETH Sustainability as partner.

More information www.responsiblecareerday.ch

 

 

New video about 2011's summer school «All just rubbish?»

31.01.2012 - There is a new video available about the summer school 2011 «All just rubbish?». Within 15 minutes we show you what 30 students experienced spending time with the following issues: sustainable ressource and waste management, cycles of materials and green product design. The young scientists developed their own ecological products and product designs.

The video is available >here

 

 

Watch the ETH Energy Talks on video

27.06.2011 - Did you miss the ETH Energy Talks? Or would you like to view again the lectures given by the ETH energy experts, the synthesis by Prof. Renate Schubert or the speech given by Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard? For those interested, ETH Zurich has made the Energy Talks available on video.>here After the start of the video you can select each individual talk under the image in the scroll bar.

Link to the presentations (pdfs), impressions of the event, theses and background information >here

 

 

ETH Zurich publishes first combined ISCN-GULF and GRI Sustainability report

27.06.2011 - With reference to 2009 - 2010, ETH Zurich published its first comprehensive sustainability report in May 2011. The report covered both environmental topics and energy figures and also included social and financial aspects and governance issues too. With this new sustainability reporting, ETH Zurich has assumed a pioneering role in the academic environment and hopes other universities will follow its example.

More information >here
>Sustainability report 2009-2010 (in English)

 

 

Summer School 2011: «All just rubbish?»

05.05.2011 - In spite of the central position of litter in our daily lives, we produce an irresponsibly large and unnecessary amount of it – with horrendous global consequences. As a result, one of the biggest challenges for sustainable development is to close materials cycles in order to reduce our waste. In the Summer School for Sustainability 2011, ETH Zurich will demonstrate new ways of dealing with our rubbish. Over a period of three weeks, ETH Zurich will create an environment in which interdisciplinary and international teams will be working together with industry partners to find solutions for specific case studies. The Summer School 2011 takes place at ETH Zurich from Sunday 26 June to Friday 15 July 2011.

More information and an application form >here

 

 

seed sustainability: new Project Head

27.04.2011 - In April 2011, the ETH Sustainability team was pleased to welcome Michael Bürgi a Science and Economic Historian, who earned his Doctoral degree at the University of Basel in 2010. Michael Bürgi has taken over the leadership of the seed sustainability project, a platform which ETH Zurich created to promote sustainable development, collaboration between society, industry and science and student research.

Profile (in German) of Michael Bürgi >here
Information on seed sustainability >here

 

 

ETH Zurich opens the forum for a critical dialogue

27.04.2011 - As one of the leading countries in the field of innovation and technology, Switzerland is playing a pioneering role in creating a sustainable future for energy sources. With its wide interdisciplinary base, ETH Zurich is qualified to present a well-founded and holistic perspective on this subject – which is why ETH Zurich has organised the ETH Energy Talks to enable a critical dialogue between researchers and representatives from politics, industry and society. The ETH Energy Talks will take place on Friday 2 September in the ETH Zurich main building.

More information can be found here
Flyer on the Energy Talks 2011 >Flyer_Energiegespräch2011.pdf (1.8MB)