In the past few years there has been an increasing focus on sustainability worldwide. We find it important as a study association to contribute to a better climate and to be an example to our members. We want to achieve this by creating awareness among our members and by implementing sustainability in our daily operations. Every year a Sustainability Marketing Event is organised where we hope to enlighten our members with insight in the business world and how companies implement sustainability in their day-to-day work. The MARUG has two Sustainability Officers in its board and one in all of its committees, which allows us to continuously improve our contribution to a better, cleaner and more livable world.
For these efforts, the MARUG has received the Silver Label from the Green Office of the University of Groningen. The Green Office is part of the Program Sustainability of the University and measures how sustainable an association is. Participating associations can obtain a Gold Label, Silver Label, Bronze Label, but can also not be granted a Green Office Green Label at all. We achieved the Bronze Label in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. In 2021-2022 we achieved the Silver Label. This year we achieved the Gold Label!
Waste Management:
In the Netherlands we produce almost 500 kilos of waste per person every year. This makes waste one of the most important contributors to environmental degradation. Therefore, the MARUG aims to make its waste management more sustainable through separation, recycling, reuse and reduction of paper use.
Waste is separated at the MARUG offices at all times. Furthermore, the MARUG recycles its waste, which not only saves resources but also saves energy consumption and greenhouse gases. Moreover, all leftover goodies and gadgets are inventoried and stored, to be reused in the future. All leftover food scraps are taken to the food bank, if possible, to avoid throwing them away. The MARUG has also been focusing on reducing paper use for several years. Operations are almost entirely paperless, saving thousands of pages. Also, during the (half yearly) General Member Meeting, policy documents are presented online by using a QR code, rather than being printed out for all attendees.
Sustainability Officers:
As previously mentioned, the MARUG has two sustainability officers in its board and one in every committee. This officer ensures that the choices the committee makes are as sustainable as possible. This bottom-up approach also gets active members more actively involved in improving sustainability. Furthermore we have a sustainability training with all these officers and we organise monthly meetings where all officers come together and exchange their views on what they did or what could be done to further improve our sutainability. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of sustainability issues and decrease our societal impact as much as possible.
Sustainability during our events:
As we organise a lot of events during the year it is key that sustainability is one of the key factors we focus on while organising the events. During the organisation of an event, we emphasize the importance of sustainability and try to minimize our societal impact. We do this by only offering vegetarian food at our events. We support everyone to come to the event with transportation that is as green as possible. Besides that we use qr-codes wherever possible to limit our paper use.
Sustainability by our partners:
Besides our own sustainability efforts, the MARUG also collaborates with several companies that are focussing a lot on sustainability. This can for example be by reducing waste during the production process or by making sure your employees can sustain a healthy lifestyle at work.