There has been a mini-rev­o­lu­tion in the UTC’s asso­ci­a­tion land­scape in recent months. The term “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” is no longer pop­u­lar. “Behind this expres­sion, there is the idea that you have to go through a process of devel­op­ment, of con­sump­tion to be sus­tain­able, it does not rep­re­sent the phi­los­o­phy that we adopt at the UTC”, explains Julie Kociánová, a 3rd year stu­dent and sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer in the stu­dent union office. So a new term was adopt­ed: sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “Behind this word, there is the idea of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, no longer part of the log­ic of devel­op­ment, but which must per­me­ate all projects”. Inter­ac­tions has inter­viewed the per­son who seeks to make asso­ci­a­tions more eco-responsible. 

What is your role as UTC Student Office Sustainability Officer? 

When I explain what I do to my friends, I com­pare often that with the role of busi­ness con­sul­tant. The hun­dred or so asso­ci­a­tions of the UTC can ask me at any time to accom­pa­ny them in their approach towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty. There is a very admin­is­tra­tive side to it, with the expla­na­tion of stan­dards, the design of dossiers, etc. But my mis­sion also involves a lot of ped­a­gogy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I act as an out­side observ­er who looks at the var­i­ous projects car­ried out by the stu­dents. I also have a warn­ing role, when I realise that an asso­cia­tive project is not going in the right direc­tion. Often, all it takes is a meet­ing to put things back on course”. 

On what sort of projects have you been working?

I took on this respon­si­bil­i­ty only a few weeks before UTC was closed in lock-down. As a result, many of the projects I had ini­ti­at­ed had to be stopped rather abrupt­ly. But the Offi­cer before me had already pro­gressed on quite a few projects. For exam­ple, every year the stu­dents organ­ise a cabaret; a big evening where a meal is served and where artis­tic asso­ci­a­tions offer per­for­mances on stage. Dur­ing the last cabaret event, the stu­dent union (BDE) worked a lot with the organ­is­ing asso­ci­a­tion to lim­it as much as pos­si­ble the plas­tic waste gen­er­at­ed by this event. This is real­ly the spir­it of this mis­sion, to pro­vide max­i­mum sup­port. And with the clo­sure of the school, a lot of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and projects have been dema­te­ri­alised and com­put­erised, so I try to make the peo­ple I meet aware, as much as pos­si­ble, of good prac­tices for sus­tain­able dig­i­tal use. 

What is the programme for UTC’s Sustainability Week ?

This is a week of rais­ing aware­ness for stu­dents on all the themes that are impor­tant to us. A team of stu­dents is ded­i­cat­ed to this project with­in the BDE and my role was real­ly to accom­pa­ny them to make this event as suc­cess­ful as pos­si­ble. Due to the con­fine­ment, this year’s edi­tion was total­ly dema­te­ri­alised, but it was a great suc­cess. We organ­ised online con­fer­ences around sus­tain­able themes. Visu­als have been pub­lished with advice on how to adopt more envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble practices. 

Do you have more incentives to put sustainability into associative projects? 

With­in the BDE, we have set up a spe­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty grant. In con­crete terms, all asso­ci­a­tions apply for sub­si­dies every year. Well, if they decide — with­in the frame­work of their already exist­ing activ­i­ties, to set up actions specif­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty — we can sup­port them with some finan­cial aid. It is a real way of giv­ing an impetus. 

On a personal level, does this experience as a sustainability manager make you want to become fully involved in this world once you graduate?