Review: 1st Green Office Ideas Workshop in Witzenhausen & invitation to the new Sustain Group "Witzenhausen"

On February 5, 2025, the 1st Green Office Ideas Workshop took place in Witzenhausen in cooperation with FB11. A diverse group of students and employees gathered a variety of ideas on how to make the Witzenhausen campus greener and more sustainable. The committed participants focused on three central topics and discussed innovative ideas for making studying, working and living on campus more sustainable as part of a "World Café".

On April 04, 2025 from 11:00-12:00, the collected ideas will be used as the basis for the 1st online meeting of the "Sustain Group Witzenhausen"will take place. The Sustain Group "Witzenhausen" is a new participation format of FB11 and Green Office, which will be dedicated to a cross-section of sustainability topics relevant to the Witzenhausen campus. We invite all employees and students to join us to develop ideas! In the following, we would like to give a brief insight into the topics that were collected during the 1st Green Office Ideas Workshop in Witzenhausen:

Sustainable procurement and events

In the topic block "Sustainable procurement and events", the participants focused on how procurement processes and the organization of events could be made more sustainable. They developed suggestions for sustainable materials and local products, as well as the goal of giving greater consideration to relevant suppliers in procurement. This could be achieved, for example, by including criteria such as environmental, social or regional value creation as standard. To this end, a catalog of criteria with a regional reference could be developed, which could be used as a guide for fair and sustainable procurement. The reuse of used IT equipment or furniture, either within the faculty or by third parties, was also named as an important field of action.

Green and sustainable Campus Witzenhausen

The second thematic block, "A green and sustainable Campus Witzenhausen", focused on the design of the campus grounds as a "role model for sustainability in practice". This could be achieved, for example, through information boards to impart knowledge to guests of the university campus. The participants also developed ideas for active green and outdoor space design. The focus was particularly on topics aimed at making greater use of the already green campus grounds and geared towards the needs of users. These included calls for more and better bicycle parking facilities, covered seating, additional water dispensers inside the buildings and better use of the inner courtyard at the Nordbahnhofstraße campus.

Mobility and sharing platforms

In the last thematic block, "Mobility and exchange platforms", ideas were collected on how traditional infrastructure could be replaced by more sustainable alternatives in Witzenhausen. Even if the responsibility for this often does not lie solely with the university, it was agreed that the following aspects, among others, should be influenced: Deutschland-Ticket instead of Hessen Ticket; bike-sharing stations, uni-owned cargo bikes to borrow, charging stations for e-cars, sharing platforms for university and lab materials and active promotion of food-sharing initiatives.

Digital project factory

The ideas collected will also be incorporated into the Green Office's digital project factory. Students and employees can use the platform to submit ideas for more sustainability at the University of Kassel and develop them into concrete projects in teams. Students can also apply with their project ideas for funding of up to €1000 for project implementation. On May 07, 2025 from 14.00-15.30 there will be an online seminar for an introduction to the project factory.

The Green Office team and the Dean's Office of FB11 would like to thank all participants for their active involvement in the 1st Green Office Ideas Workshop in Witzenhausen.

Lukas Flinzberger is available to answer any questions about the previous event and the following online event on April 4(flinzberger[at]uni-kassel[dot]de). Valentina Binder from the Green Office can be contacted at valentina.binder@uni-kassel.de if you have any questions about the project factory or the topic of "Participation in the sustainability process at the University of Kassel".