Environmental Awareness

At PEAS we pride ourselves in our sustainable approach to charitable aid and our SmartAid model. However sustainability goes deeper than this, and we can only claim to be truly sustainable if we can say the same about our effect on the environment.

Schools

When applying a model like ours across a vast region, special care needs to be given to ensure that each application suits the local area. Each of our schools is carefully designed to suit the local area. Building materials are locally sourced to remove the need for materials to be transported over long distances. This also gives a short-term boost to the local economy through the hiring of local craftsmen.

In Onwards & Upwards Secondary School, we ran a program during the 2008 school holiday where pupils were given the opportunity to learn a new and environmentally friendly skill: creating ‘Interlocking Stabilised Soil Bricks’ (ISSBs). Traditional fired bricks require a great deal of firewood and are very inefficient, making them a cause of grave environmental degradation through deforestation, air pollution and soil erosion. ISSBs involve a different process and are cured in the sun, rather than being fired, and so have a much smaller impact on the environment. ISSBs are stronger, more weatherproof and cost 20-30% less to produce.

Offices

Our offices are rented to us at a heavily discounted rate by the education charity ‘Teach First’, and are located in a futuristic office development called ‘More London Riverside’. These offices are ideal because of the environmentally friendly principles they share with us.

The building has been designed to remove many of the common sources of waste in office blocks, in line with the ISO 14001, and includes the following schemes:

  • Movement detection lighting control, vastly cutting energy wastage.
  • Full recycling programme, including disposal for white paper, plastic cups, aluminium cans, glass bottles, kitchen waste and hazardous waste.
  • Thermostatic air conditioning controls in all offices as a carbon-friendly approach to temperature control.
  • Regular carbon emissions assessments to ensure the building is meeting targets.