Presentation of Sustainable Campus projects

Origin of the projects

The "Sustainable Campus" projects respond to requests from our students to improve the sustainability of practices at the university. Indeed, these project ideas were chosen by the ULiège student community during a vote in February 2020. The Green Office of the University of Liege proposed 20 ideas that covered various themes of sustainable development: awareness of the World Agenda 2030, soft mobility, sustainable food, circular economy, ... The 5 favorite ideas of the students all concern responsible consumption.

The vision that accompanies the deployment of projects at the Green Office

• Accept that we are part of the problem and decide to be part of the solution! Through concrete field projects, we work to solve unsustainable problems and thus generate a positive impact towards more sustainability.
• Knowing that the transition to sustainability is a path, both internal and collective. The Green Office is aware that each of us has varying and constantly evolving levels of knowledge, skills and know-how on sustainable development. In the current context of urgency, it seems imperative to us to look in the same "sustainable" direction, to set concrete and measurable objectives to progress together towards the implementation of the most relevant solutions for our community (and its descendants), adapted to our local context.
• Building a culture of sustainability. Taken individually, our new practices have a negligible impact overall. However, at the scale of the 25,000-student community, the impact of small initiatives gains momentum and change becomes meaningful and exciting. Indeed, thanks to the power of imitation, the example of new good practices facilitates the change of habit in a majority. Moreover, when added together, these new practices build a positive cultural change that is necessary to support the implementation of ambitious political measures.
• Understanding the global and acting locally. We develop projects at the university by questioning their purpose on a global scale. The framework we have chosen is the United Nations 2030 Global Agenda.

Three challenges to take up, with the help of our experts

1. Understanding

For each project, an analysis is made to understand the links between the problems and their real causes. We want to treat the problem instead of the symptoms.

2. Design

The solution is designed at both the technical level (implementation of a new practice) and the awareness level (communication on the impacts). At the technical level, it is about finding effective ways to solve the problem at the university level. Sustainability issues are often complex, requiring discernment and tradeoffs based on prioritized impacts. In order to identify the "right solution" among different possible options, a rigorous approach is followed and a life cycle analysis is preferred, whenever possible.

3. Implement and monitor

The technical solution is deployed at the university with a critical follow-up on the generated impacts to progressively deepen the efforts. The pilot scale can be chosen in the case of experimentation of a more complex solution, costly or with uncertain results, ... In the case of a long implementation (administrative procedures, practical realization delays, ...), "quick win" type activities will be organized in order to achieve the awareness objectives related to the project.

To meet these three challenges, the Green Office is moving forward with the positive energy of the students and relies on the expertise of our professors, researchers and administrative staff.

The objectives

For each "Sustainable Campus" project, the Green Office sets the following objectives

1. Raise awareness of the underlying unsustainable issue: information on the causes of the problem;
2. Valorize existing good practices and our local expertise: information on positive solutions already implemented, for example on a pilot scale at the university, in and by innovative companies, ..
3. Develop a relevant solution, available to all students at the university;
4. Encourage and support students who wish to adopt more sustainable practices;
5. Measure and communicate the impacts generated for each project.