Climate protection at the UNIVERSITY
BUND starts watersaving campaign
Water is precious! Even in our latitudes, the increasing shortage of water is starting to become a serious problem, as recent reports in the media show.
BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany), in cooperation with the university's environmental management, has now launched a large-scale water saving campaign. Together with the Building Services Department (GBT), taps throughout the university are being fitted with water-saving flow limiters (known as 'percolators'). BUND is providing these unimpressive but very effective components to the university free of charge!
The percolator is simply screwed onto the drain of the tap. A small sieve enriches the water jet with air as it flows through. Thanks to this simple technique, the amount of water used is reduced without affecting comfort. The water jet even feels pleasantly soft. Depending on the design, the water saving is 50% - 80% - so the saving effect is really enormous!
An impressive result that can be realized inexpensively in any household without any prior technical knowledge.
World Toilet Day on Nov. 19
World Toilet Day! Sounds amusing - but there is far more on it than that!
A significant part of the world's population has no access to sanitary facilities and clean water. The missing facilities are one of the reasons why sanitary conditions are often catastrophic and basic hygiene and the prevention of infectious diseases becomes almost impossible.
But openly lying waste and defecation poses not only a high risk of infection. They are a major problem for groundwater and drinking water supplies.
To make this problem clear to the public, the United Nations officially proclaimed the first World Toilet Day on Nov. 19, 2003.
In addition to the development of local sanitary supply and disposal systems, there are also unusual approaches to solving the problem.
"Peepoos," for example, are compostable bag toilets invented by a Swedish urban planner in 2009. A worth reading report on this project can be found on the pages of Deutschlandfunk.de.
Protecting campus biodiversity
The University of Bremen is more than a place of encounter for research and teaching. Numerous animals and plants live on the university campus and create a special quality of staying that must be preserved.
The university is active in climate and environmental protection with a wide variety of projects. For example, university employees founded a solar cooperative back in 2011. Students are involved in a nature conservation group for biodiversity on campus and there are more and more lectures and events on issues of ecology, environmental protection techniques and sustainable development.
Due to its special commitment, the climate and environmental management of the University of Bremen was nominated for the prestigious European environmental management award 'EMAS Award 2019'. "The responsibility for the campus habitat is high," says Dr. Doris Sövegjarto-Wigbers, the environmental manager at Bremen University. Only by consistently thinking and acting sustainably can we ensure the preservation of the natural diversity of fauna and flora for future generations.
Creating knowledge together
Discover animals and plants on campus with 'iNaturalist' and create knowledge all together: Under the motto "Campus Goes Biodiverse", biodiversity is promoted sustainably at the University of Bremen.
Everyone can become part of the project: Have you discovered an animal or plant on your way to lecture or on the meadow during your lunch break? Simply photograph the observation and share it with the community. To do so, install the app 'iNaturalist', join the project "Campus Goes Biodiverse" and determine the species based on suggestions and in discussion with the community. We look forward to working together to track the evolution of biodiversity on our campus!
www.inaturalist.org/projects/campusgoesbiodiverse-unibremen
More Information at: blogs.uni-bremen.de/campusgoesbiodiverse/
Universities team up for climate protection
The University of Bremen is the only German university to be a founding member of the International Universities Climate Alliance (IUCA) network. The alliance was founded by 35 universities that are global leaders in climate research. These universities, which also include King's College London and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), are particularly committed to research on climate change and its global consequences.
One of the network's main concerns is to make the results of research on climate change and on strategies for reducing CO2 emissions easily understandable and to make them visible to the public.
The International Universities Climate Alliance was initiated by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. In Australia, the consequences of climate change have been felt particularly dramatically in recent years due to the devastating bush fires. But extreme heat, storms and floods are also clearly visible effects of global warming in many other parts of the world.
Saving energy in the workplace
Closing time! Quickly pack up your personal stuff and then finally close the office door behind you. I'm sure we've all experienced something similar. Everyone remembers to turn off the lights - but what about the computer, the printer and the monitor? In many offices, computers run day and night, even when people are not working with them.
With little effort, a lot of energy can be saved in everyday office life. Shut down your work computer at the end of the day and really turn off all devices that are not needed!
By the way, most devices consume electricity even in stand-by mode - often many kWh over the course of a year. The only thing that really helps is to make a "click"! With a power strip that can be switched off, this can even be done with a flick of the wrist.
You can pick up your personal free copy at the university's environmental management office.
Another tip: Storing electronic data also consumes energy. Some old data backups certainly don't have to be stored on the server, but are better and more energy-efficient on an external data medium.
Saving paper is an active way of protecting the environment
Did you know that the University of Bremen alone used around 19 million sheets of paper in 2017? 13 million sheets were used exclusively for administration. This amount corresponds to a stack of 26000 packages of 500 sheets each. At least about 80% of the paper was purchased as energy- and water-saving recycled paper. Compared to virgin fiber paper, this saved around 2.5 million liters of water and 500,000 kWh of electricity in production.
The statistics also show that we are obviously still a long way from the vision of a paperless administration.
Help us to reduce paper consumption at the university! Paper can often be printed on both sides. Envelopes and file folders can be used multiple times. Do e-mails really have to be printed out as well? Paper can be saved in many places!
By the way: Waste paper belongs in the paper container and not in the residual waste!
More about paper recycling can be found on the page "Papiernetz". How the University of Bremen performed in a nationwide comparison of universities can be read here.
Your Ideas for climate protection and sustainability
How can everyday office life at the university be made more environmentally friendly? What can we do to save energy and raw materials at the workplaces? How can we ensure that the university is a sustainable and livable institution?
Often it's just little things that can be implemented quickly and inexpensively. Please share YOUR ideas and suggestions with us!
The University's Environmental Management System (UMS) will set up a suggestion portal at this point. Employees and students are welcomed to use this portal to communicate suggestions on the topic of climate and environmental protection. At the same time, an idea competition is planned in which the best suggestions will be awarded. We look forward to your contributions!
If you notice defective equipment in the buildings, such as running faucets or flushes, permanent lights in the rooms, heaters that cannot be regulated, etc., please inform the building services department. Employees can still use the ticket systeme on the intranet for this purpose. You can also find the e-mail addresses and areas of responsibility of the building services department here.