Green office in Academia. Interview with Tim Strasser.
This is a transcript of the podcast interview recorded for Sustainability Explored on 16 of October 2019.
This is Episode 11 Season 1, you can listen to it here.
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[00:00:00] Anna: Hello-hello and welcome to “Sustainability Explored”, a podcast where we make complicated concepts easy and understandable, where buzzwords like ‘sustainability’, ‘climate change’, ‘environment’, ‘green economy’, ‘circular economy’, ‘climate justice’ and so on start making sense! Where we approach the professional field with love, care, and most importantly — interest.
Last time, less than two weeks ago, I recorded my 10th episode…celebrating sort of a first milestone here…after more than two months break. And Gosh, it makes my heart sing to see the number of plays grow every day and to see the new listeners engaging and reaching out to me with questions and comments.
Thank you all SO much for your interest and for sharing this journey with me!
And today we’re in for a real treat — for the first time in the history of this podcast, we’re having a guest! Last week’s episode was about the model of the green office, I shared some ideas about the concept broadly and mentioned the NGO (a social business) called rootAbility, which helps spread the model of a green office in the universities across Europe.
[00:00:25] Our Guest today is Tim Strasser — social entrepreneur, workshop facilitator, network weaver at rootAbility. His work is to support student-led change for sustainability at universities across Europe. How are you today, Tom? Tim! Sorry :)
[00:00:43] Tim: Happens to me :) I’m doing great. How are you? Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:50] Anna: Thank you for coming! Since I get asked a lot the following question, I would like you also to start with it. Tell us a little bit about how you started your career in sustainability.
[00:01:04] Tim: Well it started for me during my time at University, which is also why I’m still so passionate about this topic.
[00:01:14] Basically, I was very disoriented when I started my studies in Maastricht in the Netherlands, the liberal arts degree, which means you can study anything you like and tailor your program according to your interests from all sorts of disciplines. And I felt quite lost as I didn’t really know what I wanted and just did the bits and pieces here and there of different courses that seemed interesting. I was very happy and lucky to end up as part of a very inspiring and active student group called ‘The Student Workforce for Sustainable Development’, it was a really-really cool group and we’d met every week.
[00:01:57] We were squatting in the factory, like in an unoccupied building and there were a lot of sort of alternative things happening there, it was a kind of a hotspot or a hub for this kind of alternative groups and projects to get started. Yeah, that really inspired me a lot — this kind of peer group of people very passionate and active in sustainability and civil activism and so on.
[00:02:27] Anna: So I know that the Green Office for Academia was born also in the Maastricht University where you studied. Is this where you met the cofounders of rootAbility? What brought you to rootAbility basically?
[00:02:43] Tim: Yes, indeed. People from rootAbility were my core study mates at University and a few of them were also part of this student group that I mentioned, The Student Workforce, and then [00:03:00] we launched the green office as an initiative, actually as part of The Student Workforce. So that was kind of the base of the whole Green Office movement back in 2010 and rootAbility was then set up by some of the co-founders or early members of the 1st green office in Maastricht in 2012 to help spread and scale the Green Office model internationally.
[00:03:28] Anna: That’s very interesting! Since Maastricht, where did it go to?
[00:03:34] Tim: Well, we have 40 universities around and a couple of universities beyond Europe that have adopted the Green Office model by now. So that’s mainly universities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. There’s a couple in Italy, Sweden, and in the UK there is one, one in Russia, actually in Belarus (White Russia). Also, there are the first ones now outside Europe — in Costa Rica and Uganda, actually.
[00:04:15] Anna: How, since when are you engaged in the rootAbility activities? Because nine years that you say that’s from 2010, correct? And you are there since the very beginning?
[00:04:29] Tim: I was there since the beginning of the Green Office in Maastricht, and I helped a little bit with the initial idea forming; other people were more active and actually launching the Green Office. I came back after it was already established to actually work at the Green Office. Some of my friends also started at rootAbility, and then I also joined a bit later, actually being a member of rootAbility in 2014.
[00:05:00] And actually just to get the facts straight, at this moment rootAbility is actually not active anymore as an organization. But my role as the Green Office Movement coordinator has now been passed on from rootAbility to another organization, which is just getting started now.
[00:05:18] So I forgive you for the factual incorrectness there because that just happened or is in the process of happening, basically. The organization is called ‘SOS — Students Organizing for Sustainability’, I think it’s a very appropriate acronym giving the urgency of our times.
[00:05:37] Anna: Absolutely.
[00:05:39] Tim: And yeah, basically the Green Office movement continues.
[00:05:42] It’s just that rootAbility was the main steward or catalyst to spread the Green Office Model internationally, support existing green offices, and connect them in an international network and this role now — spreading, supporting and connecting green offices has now been passed on to SOS, which is an International Association based on membership that aims to replicate very successful programs and models, like the Green Office around the world.
[00:06:19] So it’s actually quite a fitting next step in the evolution of the Green Office movement, and we hope that this will enable much more capacity, funding possibilities, and connections with other successful programs that are already happening in different parts of the world.
[00:06:35] Anna: So basically the name has changed but the model of the Green Office keeps on living and being spread, right?
[00:06:44] Tim: Well, the name, the Green Office Movement is still the Green Office Movement. It’s just that the organization which was so far behind the Green Office Movement as a steward and as a catalyst is not rootAbility anymore, but SOS.
[00:07:01] Anna: Okay.
[00:07:02] Tim: It’s a bit confusing sometimes… So we had individual green officers at a specific universities or which there’s 40 now.
[00:07:09] Then there was rootAbility as a Social Enterprise supporting the green offices, and the Green Office Movements is then the International Network of individual green offices. The green office coordination role which I’m fulfilling is also called Green Office Coordinator in the national network in the Netherlands, focusing on supporting Dutch green offices.
[00:07:32] And we also have other partner networks around Europe, like Net Second in Germany, and an association in Switzerland on forests, and Oikos International, bend in France. So yeah, it’s quite an international and diverse movement.
[00:07:52] Anna: Interesting! Nevertheless, I wanted to mention that 40 universities to be engaged in the whole process within nine years — that’s quite an achievement, despite the change of the name. But how does it work? How do you distribute the model, how did it start and how does it work? What’s the process now? Do you approach the universities? Or do they reach out to you? What’s, basically, the process?
[00:08:22] Tim: Yeah, basically we made all the knowledge that you need to get started with a green office freely available online.
[00:08:31] So, on the website www.greenofficemovement.com you can find an online course. That’s what guides you through four steps in initiating a green office:
a) forming a team together with other students and ideally staff members who are interested in applying the model in your University,
b) coming up with arguments of why a green office would fit in your local context and how it can be adapted to your context,
c) and then convincing decision-makers with a funding proposal to actually offer you a budget, and formally give you the legitimacy to operate as a green office,
d) block with various supporting resources and movement membership.
So once you are acting as a green office initiative or established as a proper green office, you can join the movement membership and that means they can join online calls to connect and learn from other green offices. We have various resources [00:09:47] to support people: templates and Facebook group. So, there’s a kind of online community for people to support each other.
[00:09:59] Anna: Is it free?
[00:10:00] Tim: Yeah, well basically, as I said, the online course and all the materials on our website are freely accessible and also the movement membership is free to join for green office initiatives or to establish green offices.
[00:10:17] Yet we do encourage those who have established green offices, which have funding from the University, to pay an annual financial contribution to enable mainly me as the movement coordinator to organize those channels for green officers to connect and learn from each other.
[00:10:41] Anna: Okay. We are talking about Green Office in the Academia, but how, according to you, it can be different from the green office model implementation, establishment of the green office, in companies and organizations. Is there any particular striking difference?
[00:11:00] Tim: Well, first of all, I think it’s probably important to look at if a company has a green office, then usually it’s more about actually greening office spaces. And this is not what the green office is about when we’re talking about the Green Office. So, the green office in the context of universities is about institutionalizing, embedding sustainability in all domains of the University through combining the bottom-up activities of students and staff members with top-down support of the university decision-makers, and basically, the green office then acts as a catalyst to promote sustainability in all aspects of the university: in research and education, in the operations, the governance, and the community engagement so that there is a [00:12:00] connection with the community of beyond the university. And there might be similar models in some companies. I’m not aware of any of them that are actually called the Green Office.
[00:12:15] Anna: The WWF Finland is one of the catalysts of the green offices for the companies.
[00:12:22] Tim: Right. Yeah, so I have to have a closer look at that one, actually.
[00:12:28] Anna: But you’re right. I also get to hear that a lot, that when I mention “green office” people are, like, “is it all painted in green?” or “does it mean there are only flowers in there, or trees?” Well, no, that’s much deeper as a concept than just turning off the lights or printing on a double-sided paper and so on.
[00:12:52] But it’s very nice to hear that green office at the Universities also engages learning opportunities, opens up learning opportunities for the students and kind of changes probably even their mentality towards sustainability.
[00:13:13] Tim: Yeah, exactly. So, the educational aspect of green office is definitely one of the key components. On one hand a lot of the activities that green offices organize are about raising awareness among the student population as well as staff members on the urgency of sustainability and what possibilities there are to get active in terms of personal behavior and lifestyle changes to career choices and [00:13:46] Master programs research projects, and they also focus on changes in the curriculum within the university so that sustainability becomes a topic [00:14:00] in all kinds of disciplines.
Because we basically need graduate students, who graduate from University, to go into careers and promote, become part of the solution of a sustainability transition in all domains — whether you are into law, or into entrepreneurship, or science and chemistry.
You know, all these different aspects are needed to transform society in all these different domains. And then, so this is one aspect of changing the curriculum within the university.
But then also the green office in itself is kind of an educational program, [00:14:42] if not a leadership development program, because the students who are working at the green office or volunteering with projects the green office is doing, get very hands-on experience and actually are working on sustainability, organizing projects, working together as a team, working with other stakeholders and really going beyond the formal classroom learning of just learning theory and facts to really having an impact with the projects that you organized and most of the people [00:15:14] who I have talked to, who used to work at a green office and have moved on now, they always emphasize how much of a learning experience they’ve had by being active in a green office and how all the skills they gained there were more valuable to some of them than their entire study program.
[00:15:34] Anna: Wow, that’s really valuable for them, and for you also — to know how much you change their lives. I know that you are currently involved in the PhD program. Do you feel in your involvement, your engagement in this green office movement, helps you somehow or integrates somehow in your study [00:16:00] findings, research findings? Did it change your life?
[00:16:04] Tim: Definitely. I mean, the green office movement is also one of my case studies actually for my Ph.D. research and looking at, you know, how this kind of, basically, networks of Social Innovation initiatives. So, you could say the green office is a social Innovation, basically. Inventing a new way of relating a new organizational model for universities in a way of connecting students with the staff and empowering students as changemakers.
[00:16:37] But you can also look at other social Innovations, like ecovillages or transition towns, time banks, fabrication labs, and slow food, you know, these are the examples of Social Innovation in all kinds of fields in the society. And the green office movement is just an example that I’m looking at [00:17:00], where I’m involved in myself, but I’m also looking at another movement, ecovillage movements, and the transition town movement, and how these kinds of networks can become really transformative in terms of actually radically changing society in the long run.
[00:17:16] And what the role is of network leadership is, so people who are supporting the development of those networks, like I am, but also people at various levels of such networks, even like a green office who’s very active in coordinating activities with other green offices, organizing meetings and so on, [00:17:38] they are also acting as network leaders. And how this kind of very engaged people in these networks can support the conditions for these movements to really become transformative.
[00:17:51] Anna: That’s really cool! How… could you share some success stories or some curious cases that you [00:18:00] remember, that are on top of your mind, of the green office implementation? [00:18:04] Might have been in the Netherlands, in the European Union, or elsewhere, like you mentioned Uganda, Belarus. That’s super exciting.
[00:18:14] Tim: Yeah, basically one of the projects that is one of my personal favorites, because it really just combines all the domains of the University that we were talking about is the Living Lab.
So the name can sometimes be a bit confusing because it means a lot of different things to different people but basically how it works in the context of what green offices do, is that they look at which kind of courses in the curriculum offer research [00:18:44] opportunities for students, where basically students need to do a course project individually, like a thesis or as part of a particular course, maybe a quantitative assessment, or doing interviews as [00:19:00] a group project, perhaps, and then looking at questions that stakeholders in the University or in the community around the University have, around how to [00:19:13] improve their sustainability performance.
So, for instance, somebody in the University, one of the staff members, wants to improve the vegetarian or vegan options in the cafeteria. And then that could be a project that students work on as part of their curriculum by doing research on we know which sort of options are actually the most sustainable one and how can we [00:19:36] incentivize people to choose more of those vegetarian and vegan options, and then the solution that is developed in those research projects actually gets implemented in practice. So, this is a really nice example.
[00:19:49] Anna: …it’s super-super applied.
[00:19:51] Tim: It combines the research, the education, and the operational dimensions, as well as the community engagement.
[00:20:00] But the other cool projects, for instance, is the Community Garden. Or setting up an Urban Garden on the campus, or organizing their own course where students can just self-organize their own learning experience on how they want to learn about sustainability. A lot of green offices organized like an annual sustainability week where, [00:20:26] basically, all existing sustainability groups been profiled, and made visible, and connected to each other to really make it very fun and vibrant experience for all students, and get to know what are the opportunities for getting active on sustainability.
[00:20:46] Anna: Where is this Living Lab implemented, at which University?
[00:20:50] Tim: The Lab is at Utrecht University. They’ve done a really great job there, Maastricht University started with it. I was actually the one setting it up [00:21:00] back then, I’m not sure how active it is currently. In Ghent, they are also doing one, in Belgium, and in Wageningen also, in the Netherlands.
[00:21:12] And I think a few more want to set one up. Those are the ones that are most active on that front.
[00:21:21] Anna: And what is the… is there any, like, the concept of the green office -does it ever really have any complete look? How much time does it take to set it up and to say “yes, I went through the whole process of green office implementation and now it’s done properly and correctly”. [00:21:45] Is there at all any timeline or the process let’s say? I understand it’s flexible and transformative, and so on, but can we say “okay, if you want to start with the Green Office, you should have that much time at your disposal”?
[00:22:06] Tim: well, it does depend quite a lot on the local University context, how long it takes to really get it started. In some cases, it went as fast as half a year. Um, where there was already a staff member responsible for sustainability and she really liked the idea, and she just started, she just handed in like a one-page proposal to the university board. They granted the proposal and then she could hire a team of students.
[00:22:42] In other cases it takes one year or two years even when it requires a little bit more convincing. Maybe there’s less staff who are really active already on sustainability, and a student group first needs to find out what exactly is already happening on campus, which sort of student groups are active, which are the kind of active staff members or influential staff members, who they can get on board to strengthen their case, what are the existing sustainability policies, you know, does the university already have a vision or any governance, like strategies and policies around sustainability, and to what extent are those implemented?
So there’s a few steps involved in really getting a good picture of what’s already going on at the University, [00:23:36] where are the gaps and how could the green office basically fill those gaps and make sure that there’s much more happening on sustainability, and really convince the key persons who are going to make the decisions on offering funds to the green office, and that is also very much dependent on the local [00:24:00] context idea.
In the ideal case the budget for the green office comes directly from the executive board.
[00:24:07] So it’s really … the legitimacy comes with the money, and when that comes from the center or from the top, so to say, executive board then the green has the most institutional support, but sometimes it comes from a particular faculty, and/or from the student services, or facility services, or from the Educational Quality Department.
Sometimes it’s a mix of funding from the university itself, as well as from the states or from externally-funded projects, but usually most of the funding ideally comes from the University itself and as centrally as possible.
[00:24:55] Anna: Okay, wow… I could talk to you hours and hours to an end.
[00:25:00] But since we agreed this interview to be short, to be not more than 20 minutes and we have already passed over time a little bit, one last question. Could you give the listeners one advice, what to start with, to those who are just starting, what would be their first step?
[00:25:21] Tim: Well, I would just re-emphasize to check out the online course, you know, we put a lot of effort into making a very interactive and putting all the essential information on there, and it’s really nice kind of almost gamified online course, so you can click yourself through it and there’s like characters you can interact with, and it really shows you in a very interactive and fun way all that you need to know.
[00:25:48] But to already give you a bit of a heads up, I would say, you know believe that it’s possible — is one key thing. It can be quite a daunting task to think of “Wow, I’m going to set up a green office at my University”, just know that a lot of people have done it successfully already, even though it maybe takes a couple of years, or that you might have faced a lot of challenges, and people might not support the idea at first, or say that it’s not possible, or that there’s no funding.
[00:26:16] But, you know, don’t give up, believe in yourself, find other people around you, that can be just a small team of three or four students. Ideally, have some staff members who support you and can point you to other people to get support with and, you know, just take it step-by-step as outlined in the course.
[00:26:39] Get in get in touch with me, you know, or we also have some other people who are still involved as volunteers from rootAbility to offer support in the startup phase.
[00:26:52] Anna: That’s very philosophical advice: believe in yourself, seek support. And things will happen — the green office will be established at your University.
[00:27:03] Thank you very much, Tim, for joining us today, to be our first guest at the podcast called Sustainability Explored. Thank you very much! For all the rest — stay tuned! Tim, great pleasure having you here tonight.
[00:27:21] Tim: Thanks for having me, and everyone out there — good luck with starting a green office and get in touch with me. If you do, we’ll put you on the map.
[00:27:30] Anna: Yeah, goodbyyyyeee.
[00:27:32] Tim: Bye-bye.
Additional resources
Online course for starting a Green Office, case studies of GOs, resources, and links to our social media: http://www.greenofficemovement.org/
Movement membership: https://www.greenofficemovement.org/join/
Map of existing Green Offices: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1gdfVdF_yPkgIr0v0YwBxbkgKD-M
Explanation about how rootAbility was integrated into SOS
An overview of GO projects here
If you liked the episode, found it useful and/or going to implement any advice given by Tim, please do let me or him know, we would appreciate your feedback, and it will most certainly make us very happy!
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Stay tuned, stay sustainable!
