European Green Office Summit Ghent (EUGOS 2018)

In November of this year, the yearly summit for EU Green Offices took place in Ghent! The Green Office principle is international, with the founding year of Groningen dating back to 2014. From that moment on, more and more Green Offices were installed across other universities in the Netherlands. The European Green Office Summit (EUGOS) of this year was organised by the Green Office of the University of Ghent. We got together with 23 other offices from 8 different countries.

We went to Ghent as student team of the Green Office Groningen, of course by train! When we arrived in Ghent, an extensive program was waiting for us in a beautiful city.

On Thursday, the traditional fair took place at which each Green Office presented various projects. We got a lot of questions regarding our ambassadorsprogram, the summer school and our promotion material. We also got a lot of inspiration for new projects. For example from a Green Office that visualized all the different trees on their campus, or another Green Office that set up fun activities concerning waste.

Friday and Saturday were dedicated to several workshops. You can see a short overview of some of the workshops below.

Friday:

• Sustainable Development Goals: how to incorporate the social-economical goals in your Green Office? We discussed the role of the Green Offices, what the role of the university should be, and how this will turn out with the different offices.
• Mobility: how can you stimulate sustainable mobility? How can you ensure that staff members of the University will fly less and will travel more by train.
• Circular Economy: this workshop gave an overview of what circular economy entails. How can we implement this as a Green Office? We discussed about food and had a brainstorm session on how to supply as much sustainable food at the University as possible.
• Education for sustainable development: what can a Green Office do to stimulate education for sustainable development?

Saturday:

• Coaching volunteers: this workshop focused on how a Green Office can find volunteers, how we can support, enthuse and motivate them, and how to give them a sense of ownership of their projects.
• Reusable cups: the TU Eindhoven gave this workshop about their best practices. They talked about reducing the plastic waste during festivals and student parties by use of reusable cups.
• Intrapreneurship: how to change/influence the complex structure of the University by means of projects? It is important to take into account the needs and want of your target audience.
• Transitioning: case from Ghent. In this masterclass the University of Ghent spoke about how they achieved their transition towards a sustainable university. We learned how to involve as much stakeholders with this transition as possible, especially if they have nothing to do with sustainability.

Gloria: "I really enjoyed the session about social sustainability. We reflected upon the role of a university within the field of sustainability and came to the conclusion that institutions such as the UG should be used as a medium to spread the message about sustainability."

Svea: "I personally liked the project management workshop the best. We discussed challenges that we faced in our Green Offices and found solutions to those problems. Learning new approaches of how to deal with these was really helpful and I hope to use some of those strategies."