Wartburg College - Corporate Sustainability Programme

Key to this programme was the idea of moving beyond the instrumental logic underpinning initiatives and building on the triple bottom-line to embrace a strong sustainability and ecocentric logic. The relationship between business, people and the planet was explored through different frameworks and lenses, including Doughnut Economics, Planetary Boundaries and the Sustainable Development Goals. The college, based in Iowa, USA, encourages its students to engage in off-campus travel and study and Executive Education were approached by Dr Amy Pilcher to develop a programme as part of a trip to Europe to explore sustainable business practices.

Our Jubilee campus provided the perfect setting for delivery of this programme with its lake, green spaces and environmentally-friendly buildings showing what is possible when sustainability is planned into how we work. We also invited the social eating enterprise, The Secret Kitchen, to cater for one of the evening meals and raise awareness of food sustainability and waste. The programme included a visit to Warhammer World to meet with the Head of Social Responsibility and Sustainability to understand more about the social value of their products.

The three-day residential programme included a diverse schedule of interactive workshops (some delivered outdoors around the Jubilee campus lake) and presentations by local sustainable businesses. The students also experienced the creative problem-solving methodology ‘Ingenuity Process’, an exercise where problems or root cause is considered, generating a diverse range of potential solutions.