Written by: S?ren N?rrek?r Mortensen, The Green Office
It has been two semesters and four seasons, it’s been so many weeks but feels like just a few days, like a yesterday: It has been a year since the Green Office opened at UiO – and what a year it has been! From just a plan to a physical space, from ten people to a team, from mere ideas to events. A lot has happened.
On the 22nd of March we invite you to join the one year birthday celebration! The main event will be from 9- 10 in the morning, and we will continue to serve coffee and cake during our opening hours, from 10- 14. There will also be a little birthday surprise!
In addition to being a time of celebration, an anniversary is due time for reflection. What is the Green Office, who, and how has the year been?
Knitting students, staff and management together
The Green Office at UiO was created to help the university achieve its sustainability goals. Within the frame of the action plan and our mandate, we had free hands.
Additionally, it is a part of the Green Office Movement, a Dutch initiative that seeks to institutionalise sustainability in universities, knitting students, staff, and management together.
We started off as nine students and our UiO coordinator, and we are so glad to be part of the Green Office movement with more than 100 offices globally, engaging over 2000 students and staff!
Thus, we are both within and outside of the institution, engaged as volunteers and activists, as students of sustainability, and as employees of a university that seeks to change. From the get-go it was clear that becoming a part of the institution was a monumental change. Doors were opened to rooms we didn’t know existed. The University of Oslo is the same size and population as a lesser town, and from having been long-time visitors, we became citizens.
After two intense weeks of team-building and brainstorming, we opened. Filled with vision and clarity, purpose and proportion, we were exuberant to begin working. But how to do what had to be done?
Establishing the Green Network at UiO
The first thing to do was not reinventing the wheel. We all had the sense that so much was already happening, and that we were here to support and empower what was already ongoing – linking it to the institution as well, connecting the spokes to a hub.
And concurrently, it was necessary for the Green Office to establish itself, to create an identity and visibility. Therefore, we have hosted fifty events and are working on six projects. The events span from seed-bombing workshops to repair-workshops to academic panel discussions about ocean sustainability and the future of food security.
Through establishing a Green Network, we coordinated and cooperated with all the green student organisations at the university. It was a lovely monthly gathering that was supposed to find common ground for making the university more sustainable.
The Green Network is in the process of being restructured, as we want it to be a space for collaboration that is of use to student organisations, supporting their existing work. It is necessary to coordinate between all the different groups and people that make UiO.
Consequently, The Green Office works both with the Landscape Services, as to increase biodiversity on campus; with the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, co-hosting the equipment- and seed library; with the Student Parliament, as to make sustainable policy for management.
In the year 2023, we established as many contacts as possible and hosted as many events as we could. It was great fun, it was so energising, and it was a lot of work. We were filled with purpose, but sometimes it felt like the vision became opaque. Were we actually working towards what had to be done?
Circular economy and repairs
For 2024, we are working towards it becoming a year filled with strategic intent. Our work towards making UiO as sustainable as possible is rooted in UiO’s strategy and action plan for the climate and environment, focusing on campus and area (with regards to energy and biodiversity), education (focusing on the integration of sustainability into courses) and on consumption (facilitating for students to repair and reuse).
Circular economy is the economy of the future if we wish to have one. The university needs to facilitate that everything that can be reused, is reused.
In the Green Office we have a shop where people can get things for free. It is not a thrift-shop, there is no transaction, nothing needs to be given in return: It is free. To consume less is to share more. The Equipment Library at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library is evident of this. Everything can be borrowed.
Through 2024, we will work with every part of the university, from student politicians to faculties to the Estate Department, to embolden and empower their sustainable initiatives. We will push for sustainability measures to be implemented.
The University of Oslo needs to incorporate sustainability in everything it does, from buildings to education to consumption. UiO has the potential to be an agent of change, and we will help it.