Head of School's Blogs

30 Percent Greener

by Bill Gerritz 9 April, 2009

Many students, staff and parents have been working to make ISB a more environmentally friendly, greener school. Much of this work has been done by Green Panthers.  Recently, three additional efforts have achieved success.

 #1 --- This week we signed a contract to renew the air conditioning and lighting systems in the school.  The result will be a reduction in CO2 emissions of 850,000 Kg per year or about 30% of the total amount of CO2 produced at School. In a significant side benefit, the new air conditioners will be very quiet, a big deal for students and staff bothered by our noisy old ones.

The contract represents a four way partnership between ISB, Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Control and the Thai Ministry of Energy. The combination of low interest loans from the Ministry and energy savings will give us a pay back period of about 7.5 years. All work will be completely by the end of July.

#2  ---Construction of our new Cultural Center proceeds in accordance to plan and we are on course with our target of achieving the LEED Gold Certificate (from the US Green Building Council). Energy models of our building in comparison with standard US buildings confirm that our building is a minimum of 29% more energy efficient. Needless to say that if our new building was to be compared with standard buildings in Bangkok the saving percentage would be much higher

#3 --- Last year we added about 144 bike parking places as an extension to the main entrance parking. In an attempt to encourage more students, teachers and parents who live in the vicinity of the school to use their bike as means of transportation and in order to resolve the congestion in the Elementary bike parking area, we’ll extend during the summer the bike parking capacity with a construction similar to the one done last summer on the other side. So our total bike parking capacity will go from 427 places 2 years ago and 571 this year to 715 by the beginning of August 2009.

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Comment on this post

Comment 2: Cecile Lapiere

Thank you so much for making this possible.

Comment 1: Amelie Bouiller

I am currently in the International School of Basel of Switzerland and i am researching on the segregation that our school community has with the swiss local community because of the different languages spoken and culture. Our school community is in a "bubble" and seperated from the swiss community, very few interactions are made. I was wondering if the situation is the same in Bangkok, if not, how does the school and the international community interact with the local people?

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