More Worm Hotels to compost organic waste? Swapping clothes? Green Friday instead of Black Friday? Make your own deodorant or repair your own bike? The Green Office makes sustainable options accessible. Maria Stivala is manager of the Green Office and follows the Software Engineering & Green IT specialization of the Computer Science master's program. 'Our team consists of six students. Together we make the annual plan. Five of us deal with sustainability in a specific area (Campus, Education, Research, Community & Media, and Outreach) and I help them with that. I also organize meetings, trainings and team building outings, among other things, and make sure we document everything well. So that a new team can build on what we have established. After all, every academic year a new team starts; we started in August.’
‘One of our goals is to reduce food waste in the cafeteria and other places on campus. Together with the Dream Team 'Reduce Food Waste', we are exploring how we can help each other in this regard, for example by sharing resources. We are also organizing plenty of activities again this year. In cooperation with the Green Offices of Leiden University and Wageningen University, we are offering students the opportunity to publish their research on sustainability. The article is then accessible online for other researchers and you can share your knowledge with other students.’
Sustainable Campus
Maria: ‘We also want to expand and perhaps move the Worm Hotel on the roof of the Main Building; in the summer it is very bright and sunny there and that is not good for the worms. We are looking for a more accessible place for students and want to put more organic bins on campus so that we can compost more. And we will continue our movie nights, clothing swaps, and community lunches on Thursdays where anyone can join us. For questions or to chill out, please visit our office: Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Main Building HG KC-18.
On Sustainability Day, we are organizing a cleanup event to clean up cigarette butts. On the edges of campus, people often smoke, which is dramatic for the environment. From cigarette butts, toxic substances such as lead and nicotine end up in the soil and water. They are made of plastic that takes 10 years to degrade. So let’s do something about it.
From sewing workshop to collecting moving items
Diego Marek is in the second year of his master's program in Global Environmental Change & Policy. 'At the Green Office, I am mainly involved in the projects and events on campus, such as clothing swaps, sewing workshops to repair or pimp up your clothes and the Worm Hotel. I also help organize the Move-out Clean-out project, where we collect stuff from international students who are leaving Uilenstede. We distribute their stuff to new residents. It's a great success every semester. We enjoy working with various parties within VU Amsterdam that focus on sustainability, such as the Sustainability Office and people from the Facility Campus Organization (FCO). We share our ideas and get valuable feedback based on their knowledge and experience, so that we can make careful choices. And they, in turn, are open to our ideas; that's how we complement each other.’