Sustainability guidelines - why is that?

The United Nations has established 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for humanity. We have a German Sustainability Strategy. And the Free State of Saxony calls on us to follow a Saxon strategy for sustainable development.

So why has our University Executive Board once again adopted its own sustainability guidelines for our university?

With the sustainability guidelines recently published in the HIP, the university strategically articulates the university-wide understanding and framework for sustainable ecological, economic, and social development. This ensures that we understand what a sustainable approach to academic life and daily university operations means for us as students and employees. In addition, we now know the areas of action in which we must contribute—to the best of our ability—to environmental, climate, and resource protection, as well as to social and cultural equivalence and conflict-free interactions with one another.

The practical, operational implementation is carried out through our MACH MIT Environmental Management system, based on the “Sustainable Campus” modular concept. The MACH MIT Environmental Management system builds on many years of successful implementation of Environmental Management according to the EMAS system. As the first German university to be certified under EMAS in 1999, we wish to continue fulfilling our role as a pioneer, role model, and change agent—a role that distinguishes us as Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences.

You are cordially invited to join us and get involved! Thank you very much!

Feel free to browse the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences’ sustainability guidelines here