Deputy Principal of BCIS Elementary ECC Alan Cox Photo: Courtesy of BCIS
 

An aerial view of the BCIS Early Childhood Center Photo: Courtesy of BCIS

The idea of "living green" has been gaining increasing currency over the past few years, especially in China, where air pollution has become a hot topic of conversation. While most people in Beijing are looking to big players like the government and major corporations to take charge of clearing up the skies, positive change has already taken root on a smaller scale: in one of Beijing's first eco-friendly schools, the Beijing City International School (BCIS) Early Childhood Center (ECC).

Opened in August 2014, the school, which caters to kids aged two to six, is located in a busy commercial area in Baiziwan, Chaoyang district. According to Deputy Principal of BCIS Elementary ECC Alan Cox, the school's green focus was present from the very beginning, when the idea of building an eco-friendly campus was first floated at a meeting in 2009. "Our school's mission is about making kids think about sustainable development, so we decided then that we had to do something to live our mission," he said.

The planners decided on a school that would be eco-friendly not only in design and construction, but also in the education it provided its students.

The results are obvious from simply walking through the school. Boasting plentiful windows, the building is filled with natural light, negating the need for electric lighting in every room. Meanwhile, its filtration system is able to block out 80 percent of outside pollutants.

This past August, their efforts paid off when BCIS became one of the few international schools in China to be officially certified by the US Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program, which recognizes best-in-class green building strategies and practices.

Extending that philosophy to education requires a little more work. The school does this by embedding eco-friendly concepts into its daily practices and habits. "A lot of our curriculum talks about being empathetic and aware of how humans impact not only each other but their environments," Cox said, adding that the concepts need to be presented in an interactive way that children can understand.

The classrooms contain three kinds of containers for trash, plastic and paper. During lunch, they separate food waste from other waste, some of which goes up to the roof garden where they use it as fertilizer. "They are seeing the whole process at a foundational level," Cox said.

The decision to build an eco-friendly campus was based not on the desires of parents but of the institution itself. Still, the LEED certification demonstrates something that parents do care about - that the school their children attend is safe and healthy.

"When I first came to Beijing 14 years ago, people never talked about pollution," Cox said. "But since then, it's become something that everyone is conscious of."

In Cox's view, improving the environment depends not only on measures like closing factories and putting restrictions on driving, but on changing people's behavior and mindset. "We're starting with the youngest kids, and looking toward the future," he said.