On June 21, 2021, Bucerius Law School was awarded membership in the Environmental Partnership Hamburg. This was made possible by participation in the EcoProfit entry program of the City of Hamburg.
ECOPROFIT: ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT GUIDE
"EcoProfit" stands for "Ecological Project for Integrated Environmental Technology." This is a cooperation project between the city, local businesses and other regional and national partners. The program is designed to enable companies to implement an environmental management system. This serves to ease the burden on the environment by reducing energy and water consumption and cutting waste and emissions.
For the law school, the certification is an important step for climate protection. Benedikt Landgrebe, Deputy Managing Director of Bucerius Law School: "We are extremely pleased about the successful EcoProfit certification. It shows that we, as a university, take climate and resource protection very seriously and are willing and able to make an active contribution. The EcoProfit program is a good framework to consistently continue on this path."
Thies Hauck is head of the university's "Green Office", which administers the environmentally friendly measures. Asked about participation in EcoProfit, he said: "After founding the Green Office, we decided on EcoProfit as an environmental management system that provides support, in the least bureaucratic way possible, to implement our own ideas quickly and at the same time provides new impetus as far as climate and environmental protection are concerned."
MEASURES OF THE UNIVERSITY
Even before participating in the program, Bucerius Law School had introduced environmentally friendly measures, such as modernizing the heating control system on campus. The most important activities carried out by the law school as part of this program included the following:
- Introduction of a "Green Travel Fund" to support climate friendly mobility for students
- Reduction of paper consumption through an "opt-in" model for lecture notes
- Converting to recycled paper within the university and with external service providers
- University wide travel policy, including climate compensation
According to Hauck, the projects’ implemented focus is on "the energy and resource consumption of the campus, as well as the field of mobility, which is often very challenging for universities."
SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATION SEEN AS A GROUP ACHIEVEMENT
The students and employees in university management also contributed greatly to the success of participation in the program. "We benefited enormously from their ideas and commitment, and in the long term the involvement of so many university employees will be a key component in establishing a climate neutral university," says Hauck.
The Head of Facility Management at Bucerius Law School, Torben Behnke, additionally thanked the ZEIT Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius for supporting the project: "The financial support makes it easier for the Facility Management to implement ecological measures."
