Webster Vienna Hosts Sustainability Week

As students returned to campus for the Fall semester, Webster Vienna Private University (WVPU) hosted its inaugural Sustainability Week, a collaborative effort aimed at underscoring Webster’s commitment to environmental responsibility and engaging its community in meaningful discussions about sustainability.

This weeklong initiative, spearheaded by the WVPU Human Resources department and the Student Resource Center, provided a platform to raise awareness about important topics like recycling and waste reduction, encouraging students and staff to adopt more sustainable practices.

Sustainability Week kicked off with a presentation by Die Tafel Österreich, Austria’s oldest social and environmental organization. Die Tafel Österreich saves four tons per day of edible food from being thrown away, totaling more than 1,000 tons in 2023 in Austria.

Faculty and staff attendees learned about food waste, food donations, and volunteering opportunities. Seventeen percent of the Austrian population is considered at risk of poverty, and there has recently been an increase in the number of people considered “significantly deprived.” 

The next day, students, faculty and staff attended a field trip to the Spittelau waste incineration plant. The Spittelau plant processes around 270,000 tons of household waste every year to produce green heating and electricity. Around 50% of the energy produced every year from waste incineration comes from biogenic or renewable sources. The climate-friendly heating produced at Spittelau is enough to heat more than 60,000 households in Vienna in a year, and 30,000 households can be supplied with electricity every year.

On Wednesday, members of the community attended an info session by the Wiener Magistratsabteilung 48, known colloquially as MA 48. This is Vienna’s waste management, street cleaning and vehicle fleet managing agency.

On the final day of Sustainability Week, the Student Resource Center and Student Government Association hosted a Charity Shop Hop. Attendees visited five second-hand stores throughout Vienna to buy vintage and second-hand clothes rather than purchasing new, helping reduce their footprint. For example, one location, the Vintage Shop by Textile House, sold more than 20 million pieces of clothing in calendar year 2017. The store calculates that production of only one T-shirt consumes 2,800 liters of water, thus purchasing second-hand contributed to saving 57 million liters of water in just one year through this store alone.

Students and alumni — stay tuned for more workshops and events related to sustainability on the WVPU campus!