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12/21/19

France: 'Not climate-friendly? We won't work for your company' French students say in manifesto - by Koert Debeuf

I meet them in a coffee bar in Brussels. Five students from the so-called 'grandes écoles', the French elite institutions for higher education.

They have started a remarkable initiative to push companies to become more climate-friendly.

In September 2018 they wrote a manifesto for climate awakening in which they commit to use their power as future employees to change the companies that will want to hire them.

"We have two goals," Inès Malot, a student engineering at Mines ParisTech, says. "Changing the way our economy works and changing the courses at our schools."

"It is unacceptable to see how ecology and climate change are not part of our curriculum. This needs to change if we want to be prepared for the future," she continues.

More revolutionary, however, is how these students want to use their power as much wanted employees.

"We know that the big and small French companies need us", Benoît Galand, another student engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique explains.

"We ask them to answer our questions about their ecological footprint. If their answers are not convincing, I am not going to work for them."

Read more at: 'Not climate-friendly? We won't work for your company'

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