Sustainability: fulfilling the good intentions
Anna Wieczorek is 果冻传媒's first Sustainability Ambassador, who will be helping the university live up to its good intentions in sustainability.
Going to conferences by train instead of flying, using 'tulips' to separate waste, installing smart lighting in Atlas; various experiments are underway at 果冻传媒 to help us achieve a sustainable campus. It's an incubator where students and researchers come up with ideas for the future-proof university. To coordinate all the initiatives, 果冻传媒 has appointed a Sustainability Ambassador. Anna Wieczorek, Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, is perfect for this role.
Problems like climate change cannot be solved by simply changing how we manufacture goods, as Anna Wieczorek (founding member of the worldwide ) now knows. The topic of her research at IE&IS is the transition to sustainability. 鈥淲e also have to come up with new ways that impacts the consumption of power, water and raw materials. In this endeavor, every person, company or institution has a role to play. What choices are we making?鈥�
During her lectures on Managing Sustainable Technologies she tells the second-year students that they will become the people who, on behalf of companies or government, will be making the decisions. And that these will have consequences. 鈥淚t is an elective where I often see students from Electrical Engineering and other departments. I ask them why they have chosen this course and unfailingly the answer is that they miss the presence of sustainability in their own degree program.鈥�
Dialogue
This approach - asking about motives and listening to the answers - is one Wieczorek is keen to apply in her new role as Sustainability Ambassador. 鈥淭he Executive Board has asked me to coordinate the transition to a sustainable university. I want to set up an organizational structure around sustainability and enter into dialogue with the 果冻传媒 community in order to develop a shared sustainability vision. This must be about what we do on the campus, but it must also be about our education and research.鈥�
Wieczorek disputes the notion that in the academic world a great deal of time is spent telling how a transformation like this should happen while few academics are ready to roll up their sleeves and put the theory into practice. 鈥淚 am most definitely someone who takes action. I want to make transitions happen by making science work for people. In one of my projects, for example, we have set up an ICT platform for . These are already running in the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium.鈥�
"I want to hear how employees and students would like to contribute"
- Anna Wieczorek, Sustainability Ambassador
A sustainable university does more than collect its coffee grounds and put solar panels on its roofs. 鈥淚t is important that we work bottom-up,鈥� says Wieczorek. 鈥淚 want to hear how employees and students would like to contribute. Bearing this in mind, I'm pleased with the questions that is asking of the Executive Board. I would like to involve these and other students in the transition. This is where has a very important role to play.鈥�
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Contact point for environmentally aware students
Quirine Verbeek is the chair of GO Green Office and a master's student of Innovation Sciences at 果冻传媒. She is 鈥渋ncredibly pleased鈥� that the Executive Board has now appointed an ambassador who will be writing a vision of sustainability at 果冻传媒, because 鈥渂ack in December this was requested by the on behalf of the student teams.鈥�
Together with Anna Wieczorek, GO Green Office will be looking at how students can give voice to their wishes and experiences related to making 果冻传媒 future-proof. Verbeek explains that GO Green Office is itself in transition, moving from project-based working to working strategically. 鈥淲e are keen to work towards becoming the student body's central point of contact for sustainability in the years ahead.鈥�
鈥淲e are already discussing with Dorine Peters, Director of Real Estate, how to involve students in deciding which choices must be made. And we are looking into whether appointing a at the associations is going to work. In any event, we've already had plenty of close contact with the study associations and we will soon be involving the sports and culture associations too. By bringing the tasks of the Sustainability Network Eindhoven into GO Green Office, we are also keen to get the student teams involved.鈥�
As well as swapping good ideas, GO Green Office will also start up another SUMAP Challenge, in which the associations compete with their sustainability initiatives. Other projects too would benefit from having the spotlight turned on them again. 鈥淭he Green Room in Atlas is the physical space where exhibitions can be held and it can also be booked by students and employees who want to come together to discuss plans related to sustainability.鈥� In summing up GO Green Office's various activities, Verbeek does not forget a great success: 鈥淭he are incredibly popular. We have 6000 hard plastic beakers we can loan out, and we give instructions for using them.鈥�
Separating waste
果冻传媒 has pledged to become a zero-waste university in 2030. As a first step, general waste must be reduced to 30% in 2022, and the 鈥楲et鈥檚 go zero鈥� campaign has been launched to help us achieve this. One of the campaign's projects involves initiating cooperation throughout the chain because in order to maximize waste prevention, reuse and recycling, the entire chain from design to waste processing must be studied.
鈥淭echnology never stands in isolation. The user of the technology determines how it is used,鈥� says Wieczorek. 鈥淚f waste-processor Renewi has a great system for reusing all the materials that leave the campus, it will only work if people pitch in when they eat lunch and separate their paper and plastic packaging before disposing of it.鈥�
This article has been made by and previously at Cursor.
In our strategy: sustainability
The world is facing multiple and severe challenges that require sustainable solutions. Our university wants to make a maximum effort to contribute to this in every possible way - through our education and research, but also in our own daily operations and surroundings. The (SDGs) of the United Nations from 2015 are an important guideline for us in this respect.
Sustainability is therefore an unmissable theme in our Strategy 2030 and runs like a thread through all our strategic themes and priorities for the short and longer term.
Read more about our Strategy 2030.
More on our strategy
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