Students4Sustainability: ‘We give students the tools to make an impact on their own lives’

There are plenty of good reasons to do a board year, even for student associations that have no members like Students4Sustainability. S4S does have four committees, lots of events and a big group of donors. The Chair, Wieger Lamers, wanted to challenge himself in terms of sustainability (“I was doing too little”), and the Secretary, Gerben Post was drawn to the classic combination of impact and experience. The most ‘classic student’ reason is Treasurer Jonas van Waveren’s. He consciously opted to delay his studies, preferably for a serious board than for ‘one of the party committees’.

You did not know each other before. How did you build a strong alliance?

Wieger: “We went on a strategy weekend as soon as we started. We went to a small house in the middle of nature. We quickly grew towards each other and started working on S4S immediately. Now we regularly do nice things together.”

Gerben: “Doing fun things together makes collaborating easier. We also get together for lunch every week in our boardroom. We then always eat vegan.”

How do you think sustainability is going among students at TU Delft?

Jonas: “We see that a lot of people know that it is really important, but because it is such a huge problem, they do nothing about it, either for reasons of convenience or of stress.”

Gerben: “That’s why we want to give people the tools to make an impact in their own lives. You could eat less meat once a week or skip flying once. Hopefully these small actions ultimately lead to a bigger movement.”

One of those tools is your Vegan Chef event. Can you tell me more about it?

Gerben: “Vegan Chef is an annual competition in which students are challenged to prepare a vegan dish. Four pairs can cook live for a jury. Last year one of the jury members was Julius Jaspers, the professional chef, and it was attended by 100 people. The Vegan Chef will be held again on Monday 24 March.”

Jonas: “We want to use the competition to show how nice it can be too cook vegan. Cooking vegan does not have to be a limiting factor. It just means thinking differently.”

What are you proud about?

Jonas: “I am very proud that this year we have already given funding to 20 sustainable student projects in low-income countries. We do this with money from over 900 donors which goes entirely to the projects.”

‘Cooking vegan does not have to be a limiting factor. It just means thinking differently’

Do you have any surprising plans in the pipeline for this year?

Gerben: “Our decision to stop doing the Groene Pint (an annual report about sustainability initiatives among 47 student associations in the Netherlands, Eds.) means that we have the space to think about a new event. This is the Groene Pitch.”

Wieger: “This will be a competition in which students can pitch their innovative ideas to an expert jury in June.”

Gerben: “We are in discussions with the municipality and TU Delft about how we can include the competition in the city or on campus in order to have a bigger impact.”

• Also read the other parts of this series about the rowing association Proteus-Eretes, board sports association Drop and freerunning assocation Kong.