Omnia Group has a strong role as a significant pioneer both nationally and internationally. In addition to providing high-quality secondary education, the continuous learning, promoting inclusion and diversity, and developing the strengths of each customer that we do also lead to an awareness of conditions for the future.
Sustainable development themes in 2021–2024
Each year, we promote the following UN themes for sustainable development:
- Carbon-neutral Omnia, cross-cutting theme for 2021
- Omnia promoting human dignity, cross-cutting theme for 2022
- Omnia’s circular economy, cross-cutting theme for 2023
- Smart and resource-wise Omnia, cross-cutting theme for 2024
With good sustainable solutions and concrete action, we influence more than 35,000 Espoo residents and 3,000 companies directly and through our students and partners. In many networks and projects, we have an impact both internationally and nationally on achieving sustainable development goals.
Omnia’s sustainability indicators
The building of Omnia’s sustainable future is monitored with the help of roadmap indicators. The baseline will be defined in 2020 and progress monitored annually.
Carbon neutrality
One of Omnia’s key sustainability goals is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025. In order to achieve our goals, we need to be aware of the current situation. For this reason, we calculated our carbon footprint for 2020.
The calculation tells us the total amount of our emissions and gives us valuable information about our biggest sources of emissions. The results allow us to better assess the measures needed to achieve carbon neutrality.
EcoCompass
Omnia has been given the EcoCompass certificate in May 2021. The certificate ihas been given to Omnia's food and restaurant services and facility services. The EcoCompass environmental management system makes Omnia’s environmental work systematic and measurable. Through systematic environmental work, we can identify the most significant environmental impacts and strive to minimise them. The improvement of customer and staff satisfaction and the needs and demands of stakeholders are also taken into account in the implementation of the environmental programme.
Above all, the environmental programme implements Omnia’s strategic objectives and actively monitors their realisation. At the moment, EcoCompass is being used in Omnia’s food and restaurant services and facility services, for which targets and measures have been set for 2021.
OKKA Foundation’s sustainable development certificate
The OKKA Foundation for Teaching, Education and Personal Development grants certificates of sustainable development to educational institutes that are committed to sustainable development work in accordance with the certification criteria. Omnia has been granted the OKKA certificate, which will be renewed in 2021.
The renewal of the OKKA certificate certifies the baseline of Omnia’s sustainable development operations and highlights the development targets. The selection of development targets focuses on the annual cross-cutting themes defined in Omnia’s roadmap for a sustainable future.
Sustainable education
In all instruction, education and training, Omnia emphasises the internalisation and achievement of sustainable development goals. Sustainable development competence is an important key skill for lifelong learning.
Sustainable development competence means conceptualisation of ecological, economic, social and cultural perspectives and understanding how phenomena, issues and activities are linked.
The lessons of sustainable development can be seen in the sustainable working and living habits, choices, environmentally responsible activities, ability to evaluate own activities and sustainable future solutions and development proposals of students and future professionals.
At Omnia, education for sustainable development is included in the qualification requirements, the curricula and the key competences for lifelong learning.