It all began with a simple piece of feedback: in 2019, more than a third of the students surveyed by the ZHAW School of Management and Law expressed a desire for more opportunities to engage with sustainable development and responsible business beyond the formal curriculum.
The Sustainability Day emerged from this demand. This event forms part of the PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) initiative run by the ZHAW School of Management and Law and is organised annually by students. They develop a programme, recruit partners, speakers and organisations, and design workshops, panel discussions and networking formats. The result is a space in which sustainable development becomes tangible. As the event is organised as part of a module, students receive ECTS credits for their work.
A different perspective every year
Each year, the Sustainability Day focuses on a different key question. The inaugural event in 2019, entitled Cash Cow Climate, explored whether economic and environmental objectives can be reconciled. In 2021, focus was shifted to the different dimensions of sustainability, while 2022 centred on the message “Change is in our hands.” In 2023, attention turned to the relationship between global challenges and local action.
With its rebranding as the ZHAW Sustainability Day in 2024, the event took on a stronger university-wide profile. Under the theme “Nourishing our World – Preserving our Future,” discussions focussed on nutrition, education, innovation and responsible consumption. In 2025, the theme “AI for Responsible Learning, Living and Leading” explored the intersection of sustainability and artificial intelligence. In 2026, the event coined “Net Zero, Fair Future?” placed the social dimension of the climate transition centre stage.
It is precisely these shifting focal points that keep the format fresh. The Sustainability Day is not a recurring event in the conventional sense. Instead, each year it offers a new opportunity to explore what sustainable development means in the realms of everyday life, business, technology and society.
Learning through real responsibility
The Sustainability Day is organised and delivered by ZHAW students. They work as a team, make decisions, reconcile different interests and experience what it means to put together a public programme. In doing so, they not only engage deeply with sustainability, but also put what they have learned about project management, communication and collaboration directly into practice.
The university also learns through this format. When responsibility is entrusted to students, spaces are created in which new perspectives become visible. These issues emerge not only from institutional strategies, but also from the questions raised by a generation growing up amid climate change, digitalisation, social inequality and new ways of working.
The ZHAW Sustainability Day thus serves as an example of how applied education can create impact: not in the abstract, but through a concrete project that connects knowledge, engagement and the public.
Impetus for the entire ZHAW
ZHAW sustainable supports the Sustainability Day because it embeds sustainability where it can make the greatest difference: in the exchanges between students, staff, researchers, practitioners and the public. The event demonstrates that sustainable development does not arise from strategies alone, but from people who ask questions, take responsibility and encourage others to contribute ideas.
The day is not driven by moral appeals. Instead, it offers workshops, discussions, practical examples and opportunities to meet others. Participants should not go home with a sense of guilt, but rather with new ideas, concrete starting points and the feeling that they themselves can be part of the change.
Emma Sonnier
Engagement Manager, ZHAW sustainable, President's Office
“The ZHAW Sustainability Day shows just how much impact can be created when students take responsibility. They spark important conversations, foster dialogue and help make sustainability meaningful and accessible to others.”
