Monique Koelewijn, Inholland

Raising awareness

"We have been doing sustainability for years, we just hadn't written it down properly and made it clear. Within the university, we often received questions or initiatives we had been working on for a long time. This prompted us to look at: how can we bundle initiatives and make them communicable within the organisation? From the broader business perspective, we started working with SUB to link to a number of Sustainable Development Goals."

 

SustainaBul

"Working with the tools raised awareness among colleagues in various departments. This was because we were more engaged with the topic and struggled together to arrive at the KPIs and focus SDGs. The tools also helped us for the SustainaBul. We didn't participate in this before because we couldn't prove anything. This year, we actively participated in it and were, not entirely surprisingly of course, the fastest riser on the list. Our ambition for next year is to finish higher on the list, not so much for the sake of the list, but to maintain the feeling we have now. We can make a difference now by getting it right across the stage. The foundation has been laid."

 

Sustainable initiatives

"We are in the process of retrofitting our buildings. We are replacing all fluorescent lighting for LED lighting. We also have a large new construction project in Amsterdam where we are putting up (an almost) energy-neutral building. The building has thermal storage, green roofs and solar panels. Completely energy-neutral is not possible yet, because we have too little space. In catering, we have reduced meat consumption considerably: All lunches and events are vegetarian by default. We are also making our travel policy more sustainable: we have built in thresholds to steer people more towards alternative transport."