The Sustainability Workshop of ACCIONA, a program implemented by the company in Mexico, sets out to foster awareness among schoolchildren around the need to behave responsibly towards the environment. From 2017 to 2019 around 6,700 pupils and teachers took part in the program from communities located in and around the company’s renewable energy facilities in the country.

Through this experience, which will be extended to more beneficiaries this year in digital format, ACCIONA helps to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations. Among these are: driving quality education, fostering inclusive societies for sustainable development and protecting, restoring and promoting the sustainable use of natural resources.

ACCIONA has taught the program in Mexico since 2011 in primary and high schools in the States of Oaxaca, Sonora and Tamaulipas, where the company’s renewable plants are located. These currently total 1,144 MW in operation: five wind farms and one photovoltaic solar plant.

The subjects in the Workshop focus on issues such renewable energies, the care and conservation of water resources, sustainable cities, waste management and sustainability.

The main collaborators in the project are schools through their teachers, who give the classes based on materials published by ACCIONA and adapted to the local culture, school principals (the first contact with the school) and the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN), and the Universidad Interamericana para el Desarrollo (UNID)  through social service providers and students doing work experience. The program also includes support from students who are doing work experience in local universities.

The program also includes activities such as guided visits to the renewable energy plants of ACCIONA, talks in schools, reforestation projects and programs for the separation and disposal of waste materials, among others.

Waste management

As a result of the Sustainability Workshop, other environmental projects have emerged, mainly focused on waste management and the placing of garbage containers in school and the community in general, as well as the collection, selection and recycling of plastics (PET) jointly with civil society organizations.

ACCIONA’s Sustainability Workshop program is one of several community promotion initiatives that come within its Social Impact Management methodology, which aims to give back to the communities part of the value created through the renewable energy facilities operated by the company.