Our environmentally responsible approach
Our environmentally responsible approach is part of an action plan based on 2 strategic axes:
- Reduce the ecological footprint of our main activities: educational school trips and hosting in MIJE Marais associative hostels.
- Increase awareness among our teams of employees, the association’s volunteers and school audiences.
Greener, more open hostels
The MIJE Fauconnier hostel has been awarded the Clef Verte label (Green Key), which rewards establishments committed to sustainable practices. The Clef Verte label, created in 1998, is the first international environmental label for tourist establishments in France. It monitors the commitment of accommodation facilities to water, energy and waste management. The MIJE Fauconnier hostel strives to implement a socially responsible approach and also to increase young peoples’ awareness of environmental issues.
To go further, MIJE Fauconnier acts as a guide to help us extend best practices to our other hostels: waste sorting, energy management, insulation and water consumption, and a responsible purchasing approach by adapting to our obligations. Our hostels are also now genuine centres for raising environmental awareness among all our visitors, particularly schoolchildren in the central Paris district: exhibitions, film-debates, vegetable gardens in the heart of Paris…
Environmentally responsible school trips in France and Europe
As a non-profit association specialising in the organisation of educational trips for school groups, the association is committed, together with its service providers, to environmentally responsible programmes throughout Europe.
On the lookout for environmentally responsible hostels or those with the Clef Verte label, museums offering educational sensory exhibitions on these subjects, local players who champion respect for the environment, transport companies that commit at least to offsetting their carbon footprint; the teams have deployed original programmes that promote these commitments throughout Europe.
An in-house awareness raising process
Civic service volunteers have the task of accompanying us in these processes and providing us with new ideas and ways of doing things. For the most committed employees, we have learned to design our own laundry detergent and washing-up liquid, shampoo, etc. in “do-it-yourself” workshops.
We believe that environmental awareness and education come first and foremost from one’s own experiences. It is because we have learned and know how to do certain things that we will be able to pass them on.
A committed professional approach
For several years now, we have been taking a two-pronged approach: reducing paper and energy consumption.
A drastic reduction in our inhouse paper consumption and, for the remaining paper, implementing a collection circuit to recycle it.
- The quantity of professional brochures, printed on recycled paper for a number of years, has been divided by three in the last two years and will be stopped altogether next year.
- The overall move to a paperless system for our marketing materials, covering communication with teachers, quotes, options and contracts.
- The reduction of electricity consumption by using LED lighting in all our offices with automatic switch-off every 2 hours.