7th Build It Green Lebanon

On Wednesday March 16, 2016 and during the 7th Build It Green - Lebanon Annual Sustainability Solutions Conference at the Monroe Hotel in Beirut, Lebanon has witnessed for the first time the honoring of 100 schools from both the private and the public sector for achieving the Green Schools® Certification, through the proven to be the most currently used Green Certification in Lebanon and the biggest in the Middle East, implemented by e-EcoSolutions environmental consultancy firm, under the patronage of the Ministry of Education in Lebanon and with the support of the Ministry of Environment in Lebanon and of the dedicated partners Grohe, BankMed and Tinol.



"As front-runners in the sustainability field in Lebanon, we have decided to raise the awareness on the mass community level through targeting the most influential community group: schools and students." said Mr. Gilbert Tegho, CEO of e-EcoSolutions "We believe that the new generations arethe ones who can actually drive a change in the environmental conditions in Lebanon and share a new sustainable mindset that embraces the eco-attitudes as part of the everyday life."


The Green Schools Certification Program® was launched for the first time in March 2015 during the 6th Build It Green - Lebanon and following to the assignment of e-EcoSolutions by the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) as the Leader of the Lebanon Chapter of the Global Coalition for GreenSchools. It was then when e-EcoSolutions has decided to espouse the mission of "putting every student in Lebanon within a Green School within this generation".

This national program was offered completely free of charge to the first 100 schools participating from both the private and the public sector, and it included their online registrations on the program's multilingual website www.greenschools.me, the submissions of their schools' self assessmentforms and the schools sustainability audits and reports issuing by e-EcoSolutions' team.


The "Green" or sustainability solutions were distributed over the 6 main program categories: Recycling, Green Spaces, Water, Energy, Health & Safety and Sustainability Education & Innovation. And remarkably, e-EcoSolutions did not only provide its free consultancy to the participating schools, but has also put all the possible efforts to gather an exhaustive list of like-minded greenorganizations to provide their various sustainability services and products on a free basis or on special discounted rates to the participating schools.


All these organizations were considered as the program's supporters, and shared e-EcoSolutions' goals to excitingly make Green Schools a reality in Lebanon.


Through this participation, the top schools will also receive the opportunity to be nominated by e- EcoSolutions to join the Greenest School on Earth competition by the Center of Green Schools at the USGBC, one the main supporters of the program.

It was a major pleasant surprise and a stunning experience for e-EcoSolutions' team to witness the schools' appetite to become more environmentally responsible in Lebanon and to observe the levels of innovation in pulling in sustainability practices and their wealth of environmental activities,noting that the participation came from all across the country. 100 schools from different regions (Beirut, Mount Lebanon, North, South, Bekaa etc.), different sectors, different backgrounds, different budgets and different potentials shared all the unique goal of becoming more sustainable,and succeeded in implementing a positive Green change at both their premises, and their educational systems. e-EcoSolutions has also taken a step further to implement this program sustainably, and has calculated the GHG emissions resulting from the yearly work on this project with the special support of V4 Advisors, with the objective of offsetting the project's footprint!The community has been launched and honored on the stage of the Build It Green - Lebanon Annual Sustainability Solutions Conference, and on the same stage, the schools of this Green community have been offered their Green Schools certificates and flags that they will proudly raise on the GreenSchools National Days: March 22nd (World Water Day), April 22nd (Mother Earth Day) and June 5th (World Environment Day).


Out of the 100 participating schools whom are now considered the Country leaders in sustainability, 33 have reached the necessary levels for certification as the following: 25 schools reached the bronze level, 5 reached the silver level, and 3 reached the Gold level!


"This event was a true example of how we can turn a drowning environmental situation into a rising one in Lebanon through the sufficient will and enthusiasm, factual planning and smart implementation", added Mr. Gilbert Tegho, "We now have a wealth of data that we believe is very important to continuously drive our mission for availing more Green Schools in Lebanon."If you belong to an organization that would like to join the community of the Green Schools Certification Program and support the participating schools in acquiring more Green solutions, please do not hesitate to contact e EcoSolutions to learn more about the next edition!