Review: Opening of the Sustain Tour

Prof. Dr. Ute Clement, President of the University of Kassel, gave a welcoming address at the opening of the tour. Nadine Chrubasik then presented the idea for the Sustain Tour. It was developed two years ago during the first Green Office ideas workshop. A working group had thought about how the university's diverse sustainability activities and projects could be made better known and more visible. And how the amount of information can be prepared in such a way that it can be communicated at a low threshold and is easily accessible for interested parties, new students and employees.

In a participatory process involving the entire university, the idea for a sustainable campus tour has been developed over the past two years so that a finished tour could be presented on May 20, 2025, which not only presents the university's wide range of sustainability services in a creative way and makes them tangible in a playful way, but also shows how the university contributes to the SDGs.

Many students and employees of the university were involved in the development of the tour within the Sustain Group "Sustainability Communication", e.g. from the University Library, University Sports, the SDG+ Lab, the Department of Transport Planning and Transport Systems, the AStA, the Department of Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies, and many more.

The special thing about the development of the tour was, on the one hand, that the project was accompanied by a start-up kinferno (formerly historyHYPE), which further developed and elaborated the idea of a sustainability tour into a coherent overall concept. In addition, the Department of Building Materials and Construction Chemistry produced concrete seating cubes made of cement-free concrete (eco-concrete) especially for the project, which has a significantly lower carbon footprint than conventional concrete.

The content of the tour was developed in such a way that all university stakeholders were able to get involved in the process. As the tour is seen as a "work in progress" project, it can be expanded and changed at any time. We therefore welcome suggestions and new projects.