We sort our waste to help the climate – but what about AU’s digital waste?
AU’s new climate action plan sets out eight initiatives that will help shrink AU’s climate footprint in 2025. Some of them will affect staff and students across the university. We’re going to reuse more of our furniture. And we’re going to sort our waste – digital as well.
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2025 won’t be the last year that Aarhus University takes action in the fight for the climate, but it will be the last year under the current climate strategy. In 2025, the strategy will be translated into eight concrete initiatives that have been selected for this year’s climate action plan.
Both staff and students have been pushing for better waste-sorting facilities on campus for quite some time. And waste sorting is among the eight initiatives in this year’s action plan. In 2024, the university put the new waste-sorting system out to tender, a solution was chosen and AU began rolling it out. This year, it the roll-out will continue, so that even more employees will be able to sort their waste more easily.
But our apple cores, print-outs and plastic forks aren’t the only types of waste we need to sort. We also need to focus on the university’s digital waste. As University Director Kristian Thorn explains:
“We can see that up to 90% of the data stored at AU is never retrieved again. Data storage has high costs, both financial and environmental. That’s why we’ve put a digital clear-out on the agenda for 2025, to encourage both administrative and academic units to take a closer look at what’s at the back of the closet. This will hopefully result in us being able to delete a lot of data – without running the risk of deleting relevant research data,” says university director Kristian Thorn.
Plans to reuse university furniture
In addition to rolling out the new waste-sorting system, AU will also establish an online furniture and equipment bank. The furniture bank will take the form of a webshop-like platform, AU ReUse, where employees can register furniture that is still in good condition, but isn’t being used. So if you need an office chair or a conference table, somewhere at the university, you can check what is available on AU ReUse before buying something new.
Some of the other initiatives will focus on more sustainable laboratories at Health; if successful, this may be extended to the other laboratories at the university.
The 2025 climate action plan also includes an initiative that focuses on making AU Viborg a vibrant research laboratory that will test different mixes of energy sources, ultimately making AU Viborg self-sufficient and reducing CO2 emissions from AU’s agricultural activities.
"We are moving full steam ahead with our climate efforts in 2025, but we have also begun to focus on the initiatives lie ahead in the coming years. The initiatives at AU Viborg are particularly exciting in this connection, as they strengthen our research in the field and contribute to AU Viborg producing some of the energy it consumes,”says Kristian Thorn.
The university director also says that out that the university intends to dedicate even more resources to climate and sustainability towards 2030. The strategy that was recently sent out for consultation also proposes that climate and sustainability should be included as an integral part of the university’s goals for the coming years (the strategy is currently under consultation until 24 February).
Kristian Thorn expects to be able to publish the results of the university’s 2024 climate efforts later this spring.