The Idea Team

I (Viktoria) was the initiator of the project and a research assistant at the FU Berlin's Institute of Art History. I am networked and in contact with the Sustainability & Energy Office, the FU initiative SUSTAIN IT! and the IT group of the Department of History and Cultural Studies.

About the Idea

The FU Berlin has unused, leftover or discarded resources that are at risk of being disposed of but are actually still usable, such as consumables, furniture, electrical appliances, laboratory materials, crockery and even safes and rowing boats, spread across all of its properties. For several years now, the FU has had a digital "marketplace for waste avoidance", the FUndgrube, through which items that are no longer used can be passed on. However, for various reasons, such as a low level of awareness, only limited use can be observed there. It is also only possible to find a fraction of what the FU still uses itself and therefore does not need to buy new items, or what it could give to its own employees, students or needy institutions or people outside the university.

The aim of the project was not only to give the existing FUndgrube a revival through improved visibility and usability - also beyond the digital space - and to connect it to other FU initiatives such as FUdsharing and UniGardening. The aim should also be to recalibrate processes in the administration and on campus in the areas of procurement, distribution, use and disposal towards more sustainable and resource-conserving options in line with the climate emergency declaration and thus establish a different approach to existing resources, which should also be understood as hidden capital.

The first phase involved defining and analyzing the groups of people, mechanisms and structural factors involved in these repetitive processes. Particular attention was paid to the IT area. This is affected by the frequent replacement of devices and offers a large amount of discarded but still functioning devices that were to find an actual reuse within the scope of the project, which had not always been feasible in the past.

The graphic provides an insight.

Conclusion

I was pleased that the need to contribute to more sustainability at the FU has become an idea that has been implemented with other equally valuable and exciting projects and will be implemented without me. I was looking forward to the exchanges with the individual project groups and other aid initiatives, even beyond the university boundaries. I hope to have provided an impetus for long-term change.

Contact

FUndgrube