OBUKs Agenda für das “Wasser und Nachhaltigkeit”-Projekt (in Englisch)

We want to find better solutions/practices for a sustainable use of water in our organization in the following topics:

• Office and moderation materials. That means the paper, pencils, poster, computer, etc. we use in our office and in our seminars. What and where we buy it, how much or how long we use it, in what way we use it, etc.
• Housewares. This means duvet and covers, where we do a research at the moment with the question if there are duvets and pillows that are produced in the best water-sustainable way that is affordable for us.
• Food consumption. This concerns the Food and Drinks that are consumed during our workshops and seminars. We have already a policy of organic vegan-vegetarian food but we focus on ways of improvement, e.g. when we think of regionality. In the section of drinks we haven’t done much yet but are about to install a home carbonation system. And it’s very reasonable to think as well in other dimensions of sustainablity in that topic, like the climate-impact etc. We like to collaborate with the agricultural expert partners from Turkey for example on some foods that we fequently consume from Turkey.
• Direct use of water. This concerns the direct use of water we use in the kitchen, the shower, for cleaning etc. We like to collaborate with the partner Università Verde di Bologna in this aspect.
• Travelling. Travelling has a big ecological impact. But we are mostly focusing on the energy-part op the footprint. But how is the water footprint of our travelling? We have to travel a lot and people are travelling a lot when they visit our courses. So it’s good to know what footprint we produce in the different ways of travelling. But it’s hard to get informations about that… We`ll have to look if it’s possible to deal with this topic in future.
• Training Workshop. We want to design a training in future, which deals with the topic “water and sustainability in pedagogical work”.

On a general level the following aspects are important for us:

• We want to implement the results also in our educational work.
• We would like to “publish” our results. This means for example, not only serving ecological food, but also showing the advantages of this (in forms of posters, etc.) for our learners in the guest house.
• We want to think in all the three fields of sustainability (ecological, social, economical)
• We want to create sustainable offerings for those who visit our seminars/book our guest house
• We want to find clear solutions on how to deal with our new and upcoming awarenesses on our seminars (connection between practice and pedagogy)