Climate and sustainability

We are making specific efforts to reduce our climate footprint.

In recent years, we have implemented various climate-friendly initiatives, for example:

• Reducing energy consumption in our buildings
• Recycling and sorting waste
• Shared electric cars for staff, carpooling and more room for bike parking
• Vegetarian catering for all meetings and conferences
• Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) certification of selected laboratories
• Better facilities for virtual participation in meetings

Air travel

As air travel is part of our climate footprint, we as a faculty are introducing a number of principles for air travel to make it easier to make climate-conscious choices.

Fly less

• As far as possible, replace air travel with digital meetings and offer virtual participation when hosting meetings and conferences.
• Only attend conferences that require air travel if you have an active role in the conferences.
• Maybe attend one conference less per year – or let early career researchers who need to build networks go instead.

Choose alternatives to air travel

• Do not fly domestically.
• Do not fly to destinations where the journey is less than five hours by train each way.
• Take the train, car or bus whenever possible.

If you are going to fly

• Book flights through Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) – this allows the faculty to calculate our carbon emissions on an informed basis.
• Choose economy class. It takes up less space in the aircraft and therefore has the lowest carbon emissions per passenger.
• Prioritise direct flights whenever possible since carbon emissions are particularly high when a plane takes off and lands.