Photo: Guy Ackermans So who is on the Council and what do they do there? This week, Resource invites a member of each party to get on the soapboxes. Today: Xiaoxiao Peng (24) representing Sustainability & Internationalization (S&I).
‘I have a strong passion for sustainability and I wanted to put sustainable ideas into practice. That is why I joined the Student Council. Within the council, I look at how we can make operations in this university more sustainable. A couple of years ago, the SC initiated the Keep Cup campaign. Thanks to this initiative, people get a discount on coffee if they bring their own cup.’
‘By doing this, we saved on 30,355 disposable cups in 2019 – a real success. So now I am working on a Bring Your Own Lunchbox campaign to decrease the amount of disposable plastic used in some restaurants and salad bars.’
I initiated a sustainable education project, with the goal of creating a long term vision on sustainable education at WUR.
Sustainable education
‘When it comes to sustainability, you have the three P’s: people, planet, profit. In this society, I think there is too much focus on profit and not enough on planet and people. To make WUR’s education more sustainable, there should be more attention for people and planet. To do this, I initiated a sustainable education project, with the goal of creating a long term vision on sustainable education at WUR. This must be the vision of students and the teaching staff, so we will start by facilitating meetings between students and teachers to reflect on our current education system and figure out if more sustainable education is necessary, and if so, how to achieve this.’
‘Of course, sustainable education is a complex topic, so this project is now only starting. And it will continue after my Student Council year is done.’
