Sustainable Operations
The University As a Living Lab
For more than twenty years, the University of Freiburg has repeatedly broken new ground with new ideas on how to expand operational sustainability and fulfill its function of setting an example in society.
The University as a Sustainable Place to Study and Work
The university should provide students and staff an environment that is attractive and participative in the long term. What this involves above all is an inclusive university culture that fosters diversity and creativity. Safe and healthy workplaces belong to a sustainable university, as do gender equality, family friendliness, and respect.
Maintaining and continuously developing a sustainable place to study and work involves a large variety of large and small measures, from low-threshold offerings like workplace exercise during lunch break to institutional measures like the Family Service and Gender and Diversity Monitoring, with which university makes its own efforts in this area transparent.
Numerous members of the university regularly make an active contribution, for example on the Day of Diversity or on Mental Health Day.
The Goal: A Climate-Neutral University
The university is currently pursuing the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 at the latest. The Climate Protection Plan recently passed by the Rectorate contains clear and concrete measures with which the goals laid out in the Climate Change Act of the German federal government can be reached. The university’s Climate Protection Plan outlines both individual large-scale flagship projects, such as a new climate-neutral building for the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, and the improvement of energy efficiency in the university’s existing building stock
The University of Freiburg has been measuring and documenting energy balances annually since 2009, retroactively from 2004 on.
The university has also published an annual environmental report since 2018.
Sustainable University of Freiburg Work Group
From environmental reports to the climate protection plan, from sustainable procurement to a mobility survey among employees:
Many threads of operational sustainability converge in the Sustainable University Work Group. The members include employees from various relevant administrative departments and offices, staff councils, student representatives, and members of student sustainability initiatives.
The University of Freiburg has received numerous distinctions for its sustainability efforts since the founding of the work group in 2005, such as the Öko-Verkehrs-Siegel, the Environmental Award of the City of Freiburg, and the MobilSiegel.
Sustainability management
The Sustainability Manager’s tasks include the implementation of climate protection and mobility concepts as well as the realisation of various sustainability activities and projects, particularly in the areas of operations and governance. The Sustainability Manager regularly prepares carbon footprints and environmental and sustainability reports in order to measure progress and define new targets. By managing the student sustainability office and the ‘Sustainable University’ working group, he also actively promotes the participation of all university members.
Spotlight: Hazardous Waste
The University of Freiburg’s reusable hazardous waste management system was introduced in 2001 and has led to major environmental and economic benefits as well as significantly fewer occupational accidents in this area. This system saves a considerable amount of material and reduces carbon emissions through the use of reusable canisters and reusable barrels. The university saved 78 tons of CO2 in this way in 2020. The University of Freiburg’s environmentally friendly hazardous waste management system has already been described in an article in the Journal of Environmental Safety.