“We want to gain insight into the sustainability culture within and outside the university, create more awareness, and place the issue on the political agenda. We want to bring various parties together so that it will result in a collaboration.” That is what Vincent Nieuwenhuis hopes to achieve with the new network, which will be ‘officially’ launched by the summer during a sustainability day.

About five months ago, a few members of GO Green Office, TGD and Team Energy got together, says Nieuwenhuis, who himself was an active member of the latter team for a long period of time. “GO Green office mostly focuses on sustainability within TU/e, Team Energy’s expands its focus to outside of the university, and TGD is committed to global environmental issues. But we found out that we do in fact share common goals and organize similar events.”

And there is another reason for facilitating the cross-fertilization, Nieuwenhuis says: “Under the previous chairman of the Executive Board, Jan Mengelers, there was a steering group sustainability that had the overview. We hope that it will be brought back to life. We want to present the University Council with several suggestions for improvement. Your position is stronger when you have a large group of supporters. It’s true that the plans for Campus2030 refer to the Sustainable Development Goals, but they don’t say how you can promote them in education.”

In their search for existing TU/e projects, the initiators found out that our university has no fewer than 26 teams that focus on sustainability in one way or another. Think of Solar Team Eindhoven, for example, but also of Enactus, team VIRTUe and team FoodRoots. It’s not yet known whether all of these teams will join the network.

Delegates of nineteen teams, associations and official bodies met for a brainstorm session last week to discuss the action points for the network, and its future. The session resulted in several ideas to make the collaboration concrete. “In any event, we’re going to set up a website, and one of the suggestions was that we could link it to a forum where people can share information and ideas. We will look into that.”

Playing ground for innovations

The brainstorm session was also attended by a project leader representing the municipality. Because the initiators not only want to put sustainability on the map at TU/e, but outside the university as well. Nieuwenhuis: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could use Eindhoven as a playing ground for innovations, and create a link between theory and practice? We could, for example, look into ways how to make the ice rink more sustainable. And I can image that we also establish contacts with the industry, within Brainport. Could that in some way create enthusiasm in the field of sustainability?”

The Sustainability Network Eindhoven wants to schedule a follow-up meeting in the near future, during which the action points need to become a bit more concrete.