"Sustainability is more than a trend - it is our shared responsibility": Under this motto, students at TU Ilmenau have been organizing Sustainability Days at the university once a semester since 2023. For the start of the 2025 summer semester, they have put together an extensive and interactive program of events together with external stakeholders that will last an entire week. It starts on April 22, the international Earth Day, which is celebrated once a year in more than 150 countries around the world. Young people in particular are to be involved in creative environmental projects and made aware of the need to critically reflect on their own use of resources and consumer behavior.
Green electricity and hydrogen as an opportunity for the economy and climate
On April 22 at 10 a.m., members of TU Ilmenau will first meet with students from Erfurt University of Applied Sciences in the Kirchhoffbau, KG 2039. Together they will discuss the idea of a campus garden. Members of the university’s campus garden community, which has been running a campus garden project for several years, will report on their experiences as part of the joint project "Climate Network for More Sustainability in Thuringia" (Klima-N ).The event will continue in the Ernst Abbe Center, room 1320, with an interactive lecture by Tobias Wätzel from BOREAS GmbH on the topic of "Green electricity and hydrogen as an opportunity for the economy and climate". He will show how renewable energies and hydrogen technologies are driving sustainable developments and creating new economic opportunities. The event is being organized jointly with the VDI Regional Group Ilmenau.
Market of opportunities
The Market of Opportunities on April 23 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. offers a platform for exchanging ideas and getting to know sustainable projects and initiatives at TU Ilmenau. In the Mensa foyer, students, teaching staff and external stakeholders can exchange ideas and network in a relaxed atmosphere and find out about initiatives at TU Ilmenau at information stands. There will also be a second-hand fashion corner and a mobile bicycle repair stand again this year. A lecture on the ecological consequences of our diet will take place immediately afterwards at 2 pm. The speaker will be Chris Rombeck from the Umweltbildungswerk.Education for sustainable development
April 24 is dedicated to education for sustainable development (ESD ). "ESD in university teaching: important - but how?", asks apl. Bettina Hollstein from the Max Weber College at the University of Erfurt in her keynote speech at the opening and presents the concept of experimental teaching-learning arrangements (LLA), in which students can develop and test real solutions for sustainable development. Prof. Stephan Husung, Head of the Product and Systems Engineering Group at TU Ilmenau, will then present an example of the application of LLA in an interdisciplinary teaching project.As part of the international Fashion Revolution campaign , which commemorates the collapse of the Rana Plaza textile factory on April 24, 2013, there will also be a film screening in the Helmholtz lecture hall at 7 pm. The screening will feature the documentary "The True Cost" by director Andrew Morgan from 2015, which deals with the topic of "fast fashion" and the negative consequences of the global textile industry in order to initiate a change towards fair, ethical fashion productionand consumption.
Recycling, species protection and repair meeting
Anyone interested can find out how to breathe new life into old jeans at a recycling workshop in the Makerspace of the University Library on April 25. Starting at 6 p.m., participants will learn the basics of sewing and can put their ideas into practice on the sewing machine with three creative sewing projects. There will also be an event on species conservation in buildings at the Ernst Abbe Center at 1 pm. In a lecture followed by an excursion, biologist Christoph Arnold, a member of NABU Ilm-Kreis , will discuss the topic of bird strike risks and nesting aids on campus.At the end of the Sustainability Days, members of the repair meeting of the Ilmenau regional group of Ingenieure ohne Grenzen e.V. (Engineers without Borders) will help anyone interested to repair defective electrical appliances and answer questions about the use of smartphones and computers at the Technology and Start-up Center from 1 pm.
"Regardless of whether someone is already involved or would like to gain their first insights into sustainable topics: the Sustainability Days offer the opportunity to discover new perspectives, network with experts and like-minded people and actively help shape TU Ilmenau’s path to becoming a sustainable community," says Dr Mira-Rochyadi-Reetz, Sustainability Communication Office, who is organizing the event together with the Sustainability Working Group in the Student Council.
An insight into the work and commitment of the Ilmenau Engineers without Borders and the Repair Meeting Point can be found in the video from the "We are Ilmenau" series.
