The emergence of the Green Office

We remember the global climate strike at the end of 2019, when pupils, students and many other people around the world appealed to decision-makers to give climate protection more priority. The TU Dresden also went on strike to attract the attention of the university management and to demand more commitment to climate and environmental protection.

Against the background of these turbulent times, members of the TU Environmental Initiative and the Students for Future group founded the Green Office Initiative in early 2020. Their goal was to support the TU Dresden in living up to its social role model function in the area of climate and environmental protection and to be able to act as a multiplier.

For this purpose, a highly visible & central contact point was to be created, which collects, processes, and communicates knowledge and information on ecological sustainability at the TUD as a permanent part of the university. In addition, this contact point should offer the diverse actors already active at the TUD in the field of ecological sustainability the opportunity to network and strengthen the exchange of knowledge between all university members. 

The basic idea of the Green Office movement served as a model. A Green Office is a sustainability office set up jointly by students and university staff, which, in contrast to purely voluntary initiatives, has secure funding and legitimacy on the part of the university. The declared aim of the Green Office Initiative was to establish such an institutionally firmly anchored office at the TU Dresden in order to be able to have a positive effect on the university as well as on society in the area of climate and environmental protection. The initiative developed an initial draft concept for TU Dresden and approached the Environmental Protection Group of the Building Management Department. This group supported the further development of the idea within the framework of the "Sustainable Campus" project from April 2020 onwards.

In the course of the conceptual work, extensive research was carried out into possible ways of implementation, good practice examples, and the existing commitment at the TUD. The group exchanged information with other initiatives and sustainability offices and networked with actors in the field of ecological sustainability. The first project pitch in September 2020 was used to further improve the concept in a workshop with students, employees, and alumni of TU Dresden. As a result, the Green Office Initiative team also received support from the TU Dresden's Environmental Coordinator and the Chair of the Environmental Commission. The GOI then presented its draft to the new Prorector for University Culture and the Commission for the Environment and subsequently fleshed out its draft. In this way, the existing structures in the area of environmental and climate protection could ultimately be merged with the Green Office within the new "Team for Ecological Sustainability". This idea finally also convinced the Extended Rectorate and so the establishment of the Green Office was officially announced by the rector Staudinger in February 2021.