Environment and Sustainable Development at CNS

What can we as employees do?

Energy saving

Everyone can contribute to using less energy by an energy-conscious behavior and by choosing energy-saving equipment when procuring and purchasing. 

• Activate the saving features of your equipment
• Turn off lights and unnecessary equipment when possible
• Print only when necessary
• have vetetarian / plant-based as a norm when ordering food at the department
• Limit the use of non-reusable and polluting consumables
• Recycle all waste whenever possible

Business travel

When you plan a meeting, conference or seminar think of these things:

1. Do we need a meeting/conference/seminar etc.?
2. If we need a it, can it be "digital"?
3. If we need to travel, can it be by train?
4. If we need to fly can we: book the most direct trip, and do NOT upgrade to business.
5. When flying is necessary, climate compensation can be an alternative. Whether this cost can been seen as a valid part of the travel cost or not is at present unclear but KI is looking into it. 

According to KIs travel regulations, we who work at KI shall:

• Always consider using the phone, video or webb conferencing instead of travelling
• Use the train instead of flying when travelling to Göteborg and other nearby domestic destinations and remember to always book your travel through our procured travel agent
• Choose eco-taxi and rent eco-cars
• Take the KI bus between Campus Huddinge and Campus Solna
• Use public transport
• Choose hotels that are eco-labelled, environmentally certified or that can prove in any other way that they conduct active environmental work

Good examples from CNS

Our initial goal at CNS is to decrease the CO₂e emission from business travels with more than the KI goal, 5%.

Tove Wahlund, PhD Student at CPF, has arranged a workshop about klimate change and climate psychology that has resulted in an action plan for the research groups environmental work. Issues raised in the action plan include - how can we, as a research group at CNS, contribute to new knowledge about how climate change affect the mental health in children and adolecens? What measures can we take to reduce climate emissions and convert to a more sustainable working life?

Tove's climate work has, among other things, meant that the research group this summer jointly takes the train to the World Congress for CBT in Berlin while having planned meetings on the way.

Shervin Shahnavaz, who now has his research activities at CNS, participated in two scientific conferences in September 2018, one in Ljubljana and one in Vienna. To reduce his and KI's negative environmental impact, he chose to take the train instead of flying during his business trips. To use the time he wrote a scientific article and prepare his presentations during the train journeys. Once on site, he took the opportunity to network, hold a seminar at a sister department for children's and young people's healthcare and to make study visits to colleagues. The trips to Ljubljana and Vienna took just over two weeks in total, of which about two days were used for traveling. Read more about Shervin's trip here

Katarina Tengvall and Maria Needhamsen arranged a web-seminar in September 2019 with Nobel Laureate Prof Barry Marshall as a remote speaker at CMM, Karolinska Institutet. Prof Barry Marshall joined from Perth, Australia via Zoom Webinar software and broadcasted to the main hub at CMM.

The seminar/webinar is part of a bigger initiative to reduce aviation-related CO₂ emission from academia in the interest of climate change. Remote seminars/webinars open opportunities for speakers and audience to join remotely, which apart from helping the environment also saves time, money and jetlag to mention a few. Here is a link to the introduction (8 min.) Please contact Katarina and Maria for questions and "support" or if you whish to see the full presentation with Barry Marshall.

Katarina and Maria also visited the KIB staff meeting in Huddinge where Katarina talked about how they work to drive sustainability issues at CNS and CMM and also the start of the KI Climate Network, which now has 47 members from all over KI.

If you have any good examples of climate friendly travels, meetings or other actions that you have taken, please send Ann Hagerborn an e-mail and we will post it here.

Lecture on climate change

Watch professor Alasdair Skelton's lecture on climate change from the CNS Department Day 2019: