The Idea Team

Our team is the FUsion of originally two FUturist initiatives of the Communication and Marketing Department and the Psychology Department of the FU Berlin in cooperation with two external colleagues from Paderborn and Bochum. We complement each other with our different skills and experience in the areas of marketing, web communication, social media, content creation and communication, and evaluation.

Team members: Karin Bauer-Leppin, Moritz Hartmann, Stephan Heinzel, Jan Keller, Monika Nilsson, Carina Pohle, Fabian Schäfer, Anna Tischewski, Bernd Wannenmacher, Kerrin Zielke.

About the Idea

By declaring a climate emergency, the FU Berlin has already taken numerous measures to contribute to a sustainable and climate-neutral society. However, one very important potential has not yet been fully exploited: The climate-related behavior of the more than 40,000 students and employees at FU Berlin. For example, individual decisions on commuting behavior (using public transport or cycling to university) make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from car traffic. This is where the idea of our "#FUClimateChallenge" project comes in.

We want to challenge the students and employees of the FU Berlin to several ClimateChallenges and encourage them to adopt more sustainable behavior. The aim is to reduce the ecological footprint from four different sources during the summer semester.

Through repeated surveys over the course of the project, we want to calculate the extent to which participation in the ClimateChallenges reduces the carbon footprint and whether the changes in behavior can be maintained in the medium term. Building on our previous collaboration as part of the Public Climate School climate education initiative, information video clips and other materials will be made available to support the ClimateChallenges.

Conclusion

Between June 9 and 29, members of Freie Universität Berlin took on daily challenges in the #FUClimateChallenge to make their everyday lives more sustainable. We are delighted that we were able to motivate a total of 207 members of Freie Universität Berlin to take part in the #FUClimateChallenge and would like to thank them for their positive feedback and suggestions for improvement.

The results of the study show that there were hardly any changes in the area of nutrition regardless of the status group, which underlines how difficult it is to break away from daily habits. The improvement in the average values regarding purchases of seasonal fruit and vegetables underlines the importance of preparatory actions (e.g. shopping or planning purchases) in this process.

In the area of mobility, the previous findings that air travel has a significant impact on the climate were confirmed. With regard to everyday mobility, we were pleased to note that the average CO2 values could be reduced over time.

**Picture: Evaluation chart on CO2 equivalents in the area of everyday mobility

Behaviors relating to the ecological handprint are of immense importance for future climate protection. We were able to show that there were short-term improvements as a result of participating in the #FUClimateChallenge, but the average values subsequently fell back to the initial level.

Creative ideas are needed to achieve a long-term change in the ecological handprint.

The full results and all information on the #ClimateChallenge can be found on the website: www.fu-berlin.de/climate-challenge.

Contact

• Karin Bauer-Leppin, Stabsstelle Kommunikation und Marketing

• Dr. Jan Keller - jan.keller@fu-berlin.de