On July 8, 2024, the Vice Dean's Office for Sustainability and Scientific Infrastructure in the Medical Dean's Office was elected by the Faculty Council. As Germany's first and so far only Vice Dean's Office in the field of sustainability, this is a major step - both for the university and UKB and also for a more sustainable future.
What effect does a vegan/vegetarian month have on a canteen? For this experiment, the Studierendenwerk Bonn sought scientific support from researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Kassel. They found that the impact could still be felt up to eight weeks after the campaign month had ended: as a result of the vegan/vegetarian month, the amount of meat consumed in the canteen fell by 7 to 12 percent compared to the level recorded beforehand. In addition, around half of the people surveyed agreed with the idea of one meat-free month a year, while over 80 percent said that canteens should offer more vegetarian options. The findings have been published in a working paper prepared by the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn.
During the Mighty May campaign month, 20 keen bee lovers took part in a workshop on designing bug hotels for wild bees and made numerous new nesting sites out of empty jam jars and reeds to put in their own gardens. The informative and fun event was led by Assistant Professor Antonia Mayr, who is researching the effects of climate change and land usage on wild bees at the Bonn Institute for Organismic Biology.
Hosted on May 15, the Green Travel awards ceremony honored Erasmus+ students who traveled to and from their destination using sustainable forms of transport.
The University of Bonn came top in this year’s “Best Team” category, clocking up a total of 58,512 kilometers.
Nachhaltiger November, the fourth and final campaign month of 2023, once again saw many members of the University having a go at the various activities and chatting about sustainability.
The University of Bonn has achieved very good results in the latest QS Sustainability Rankings, coming an excellent sixth in Germany in the overall scoring and 138th among the 1,400 or so global universities that were evaluated. Compiled by analysts at Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the rankings assess the work that universities are doing to tackle the most urgent environmental and social problems facing the world.
On November 15 and 16, the Universitätsclub Bonn hosted talks, debates and networking all about people’s wants and needs in the context of finite resources.