During the Week of the Circular Economy, the University of Twente is announcing an important next step in shaping a more sustainable future for our campus. This year, the UT will work on an update of the policy framework for operational management of the Sustainability, Energy & Environment (SEE) programme. While our long-term ambitions for 2030 and 2050 remain in place, the university will now focus on developing a clear roadmap that outlines how we will achieve them, with a focus on the first 5 years.
Long-term ambitions
The SEE programme continues to build toward the established goals for a sustainable UT campus:
- Fully circular campus - focusing ont the university's operational management and the development of a closed-loop system for materials, resources and procurement by 2050.
- Waste-free campus - with a maximum of 10.5kg residual waste per person per year by 2030.
- Carbon-neutral campus by 2030
- Carbon-negative campus by 2050
These goals form the foundation of our current sustainability policy. The new roadmap will describe the concrete steps, milestones, and collaborations needed to achieve them.
Co-creating the roadmap
Achieving a circular, carbon-neutral, and waste-free campus requires the insights, creativity, and commitment of the entire UT community. As we update our SEE policy, we want to include the perspectives of students, staff, and researchers from all faculties and service departments.
We therefore invite everyone at the UT to share their thoughts, questions, and ideas on the following:
- What does a circular UT campus look like in practice from your perspective?
- Are our long-term ambitions realistic?
- In your line of work, do you have recommendations/ideas?
- What sustainability opportunities or challenges do you see in our operational management?
- Which themes should be prioritised in the roadmap?
- Would you like to contribute to a working group (gets together a couple of times this year, and will take up approximately 2 hours of your time per month)
- Or would you like to contribute to a discussion panel (will be held once or twice this year).
You can help with brainstorming in both the working group and discussion panel. Would you like to be more involved, we can also participate in work that needs to be done via the working group.
Your input is essential to ensure that the roadmap reflects the ambition and expertise present within our community.
How to participate
If you want to share ideas or join a working group or panel session, please contact the SEE team at: sustainability@utwente.nl before April 15th 2026.
Together, we can shape a future-proof, circular, and climate-responsible UT campus.
