Sustainability day and week

While 10 October is our national sustainability day, this year it falls on a Saturday. The entire week after is Sustainability Week at the UT campus. Especially interesting is the plant cutting workshop on Wednesday the 14th, during which you can learn how to cut of small pieces of specific species to propagate new full grown plants of. 

While there are less advertized activities around Enschede, the region of Zwolle has a spotlight event every year with famous speakers. This helps gain perspectives from not just academia, but also policy and practice. 

National Greenery Day

Today is National Greenery Day, a day on which the collaboration on climate adaptation, vegetation and water is strenghtened. It intends to bring together different stakeholders: municipal, provincial, and water board employees, consultants, housing association members, researchers, and civil society members. It is an event in the middle of the country and has a whole day programme including excursions. Worth a visit if you want to learn more about the impacts and implementation of green infrastructure.

 

Heat governance workshop invitation

Calling all heat governance experts: A Dutch–U.S. Dialogue on Governance Capacity for Extreme Heat | Workshop 4 November, 2026 | register here https://lnkd.in/ee_3Nwk7

 

That's right, we are 1 out of 5 projects awarded by the 4TU funds for small proposals. Read our summary below and find the others here https://lnkd.in/eN6FJi8c

 
A Dutch–U.S. Dialogue on Governance Capacity for Extreme Heat – Workshop 4 November
Lead applicant: Sean Vrielink, University of Twente (UT), and Namkyung Oh, Auburn University. Co-applicant: Srijith Balakrishnan, TU Delft.
Local governments in both the Netherlands and the United States face a rapidly growing challenge: building governance capacity for extreme heat, a hazard with low institutional maturity compared to flooding. The core objective is to identify which governance-capacity factors most influence local ability to assess heat vulnerability and implement adaptation measures. This will be achieved through a structured Dutch–U.S. workshop bringing together stakeholders from both countries to share insights and best practices. Three researchers from Auburn University are visiting the Netherlands, and you are invited to join them at this workshop.
The workshop will take place at the University of Twente on Wednesday 4 November, the day after the UT Climate Event.

Show Your Stripes Day

Today is international Show Your Stripes Day. "An annual day to grow awareness about human-caused climate change, its impact, and what we as a society can do to ensure a sustainable future for the people and places we love. The Climate Stripes, or Warming Stripes, designed by prof. Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading, represent the increases in temperature seen throughout the past 150 years."

At UT this is also practiced and the stripes for the Netherlands look like this:

 

I want to point out again this video made by the Climate Talks about why it is so important to keep sharing this information with people. Here another good visual is pointed out to show what we will have to deal with even if we reach all our goals:

 

“Warning Stripes” by Alexander Radtke, which show Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Until 2200 the world will be hotter on average with more climate extremes, we can only hope to reduce this as much as possible. The majority can be accomplished by international collaboration and policy changes, but it still requires individual changes. As reminder, we have a workshop to help achieve the second part, as well as local information on where to go to reach your goals for e.g. second hand items or walks in the park.

 

Heat Action Day

 

June 2 is Heat Action Day in the Netherlands. As per the organizing website: 

"On this day, we are joining forces across the Netherlands and internationally to raise awareness of the serious risks posed by heat. Why is Heat Action Day necessary? Heat is the most urgent and deadly climate risk facing the Netherlands. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and lasting longer. Older adults, young children, and people with underlying health conditions are at the greatest risk. 

Heat isn’t just a problem in our cities—people in urbanized neighborhoods in smaller municipalities also suffer from the heat. More than half of all Dutch people live in homes that are at risk of overheating in the summer. Heat doesn’t have to become a major problem. Fortunately, many heat mitigation measures are relatively simple, and a lot is already being done: municipalities, provinces, housing authorities, health organizations, and research institutions are working hard on solutions. But more is needed. That is why Heat Action Day is the annual occasion to come together and reflect on the importance of addressing heat stress. On this day, organizations highlight their heat-related initiatives and raise “hot topics.”"

Can't find anything nearby? Join the online webinar on how to keep cool indoors in your house, or another about designing outdoor spaces. You can also check out the newly developed tool by the Dutch meteorological agency that shows the heat strength on an app, based on the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature.
 

Art on Climate Change Illustration Competition

Today the Green Hub hosted a very fun competition on climate change. It was an open art competition! Anyone was welcome and materials were all provided. There were also good talks and discussions on fast fashion, perspectives on climate and sustainability as well as hope, and how to change. Though the format to work on was mainly canvas, I brought some preprinted material to work with as I wanted to connect my entries to countering the extinction of knowledge, our theme for our walkshops. 

If we design a climate change adaptation measure, who are we designing it for? If you want more vegetation in your surroundings because you heard it helps against climate extremes, what local vegetation would you want to implement and maintain and what related ecosystem species would you want to attract? This means at least the people involved in designing measures need to know about their local species, and at least, the ones that used to be local. But here we often find a lack of knowledge. 

Already back in 2002 a British study showed that elementary school children were far better at recognizing randomly drawn Pokemon cards than their local wildlife. [An experiment involving 109 primary school children aged between four and 11 found that by the age of eight most were able to name 78 per cent of the 150 Pokémon characters such as Pidgeotto, Pikachu and Jigglypuff. The same age group could manage correctly to identify only about half of the pictures of animals and plants, such as "beetle", "deer" or "oak tree", displayed on cards shown to them by the scientists.] The important message from that study was "why should a child care about the extinction of a species if he or she has no idea what it is?"

With this in mind I used local data from the freely available observation of wildlife tracker and selected  species to make Pokemon style cards from using a freely accessible tool. Rather than attacks or abilities, I used this space to include a description of their appearance and behavior that appeared to me the most striking, with text from Wikipedia (in Dutch). Now we can enjoy a fun format of actual local creatures, to learn more about them and maybe recognize them outdoors. You can view all the entries in the Vrijhof until 22 June. This event is even featured on the local Uit In Enschede website of events.

 

 

 

Climate Exam

The UT is one of the many organizations hosting the Climate Exam between 8 and 29 May. You can join on Thursday 21 May at the Spiegel building after registering, as there is a limited number of 45 places. No time? No problem! You can take a short version online too. It's available in Dutch and English and allows you to get up to date with the state of our climate. I scored 80%, thinking that the melting of glaciers was already more advanced thanks to the exposition in Vienna I saw previously. 

 

Earth Day

Today is international Earth Day and the main question is, how is this different from Earth Overshoot Day? Earth Day is held on the same day every year since 1970 and is intended to show support for environmental protection. Earth Overshoot Day varies annually as it depends on when each country, or the entire planet on average, uses up its available resources for the year. It can be around the same time, but we hope earth overshoot day will be later and later in subsequent years. 

While the international website does not show activities for the Netherlands, there is a separate Dutch website with activities. And these are year round. For Earth Day there is a festival, a tree planting event, music in gardens and much more. A good time to remember that we owe our lives to the sun, 15 cm of top soil and the fact that it rains sometimes. 

 

 

Drought research network event - first visitors to our new roofs!

Today we had a networking event for drought research, with over 10 people being the first official research visitors to our new roofs, while the other attendants visited the waterlab or the DISC.

 

Other projects for this topic can be found here.  

A common question was how to compare the rooms/roofs when they are not all oriented in the same way. Originally we did request a new building to be constructed that would allow for identical rooms and orientation, but as this was not possible due to permits, we have to make due with what we have. The difference in orientation, and also use, will have to be taken into account when comparing results.

We also hope to see the vegetation growing in the coming months and to be able to identify the different species as they bloom.  

Green Energy Day

Green Energy Day is the day on which all the renewable energy produced in the Netherlands that year has been used up. In 2026, that day falls on March 30. According to the website this is 6 days later than the previous year, but we need to move it up 12 days a year in order to reach full green energy by 20250. They even calculated what different measures could have as results (in Dutch), consisting of changes to transportation, industry, green gas, heat networks, heat pumps, electricity savings and more green energy generation.

 

For this reason we want to further explore the productivity of solar panels combined with blue-green roofs in the third year of measurements at the UT Field Lab. We are still looking for partners who would lend their panels for a year to see how much more energy they would produce given our different roof types.  

KIEM MV Event for blue-green roofs and solar panels

We are having another KIEM MV event regarding our research on blue-green roofs and solar panels, this time in the botanical garden in Amsterdam. The only drawback is that the event is in Dutch. Hope to see you there!

 Invitation:

Tijdens de Week van de Circulaire Economie nodigen wij je graag uit voor een inspirerende bijeenkomst over de toekomst van het Nederlandse daklandschap op 19 maart, genaamd Groene daken met zonnepanelen, haalbaar en schaalbaar?

 Klik hier om aan te melden!

 Waarom deze bijeenkomst?

Veel stedelijke daken zijn nog steeds donkere, ongebruikte oppervlakken die bijdragen aan hittestress. Door groene daken te combineren met zonnepanelen kunnen we zorgen voor:

 • Meer biodiversiteit  

• Duurzame energieopwekking  

• Een klimaatbestendige stad

Tijdens deze bijeenkomst presenteren de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Dakbloemenweide en Universiteit Twente de resultaten van een praktijkgericht onderzoeksproject naar circulaire groene daken met zonnepanelen.

Wat krijg je mee?

• Voorbeeld mini-ecowandeling voor jezelf of (zakelijke) contacten

• Canvas voor regeneratief bedrijfsmodel

• Na de bijeenkomst: projectresultaten

• Netwerkgelegenheid

 Locatie: 

Botanische Tuin Amsterdam Zuid  

Van der Boechorststraat 8  

1081 BT Amsterdam  

 Programma:

09:00 – Inloop met koffie en thee  

09:45 – Introductie: Het project Integraal Duurzame Daken  

10:00 – Onderwijsresultaten: Minibosbad  

10:15 – Onderzoeksresultaten: Business Model Canvas  

 10:30 – Rondetafelsessies

·                Nieuwe gebouwen en de schaalbaarheid van duurzame daken  

·                Bestaande gebouwen en de haalbaarheid van duurzame daken  

 11:15 – Plenaire terugkoppeling  

11:30 – Borrel en snacks

 Voor wie?

Ondernemers, beleidsmedewerkers, onderzoekers, docenten en gebouweigenaren die willen meedenken over de transformatie van het Nederlandse daklandschap.

Als je nog mensen kent die graag willen weten wat we rond het experimentele circulaire groendak + zonnepanelen hebben gedaan, dan mag je hen uiteraard uitnodigen. Dat kan met deze mail, of door deze LI post te delen: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/katinkaquintelier_weekvandece-circulaireeconomie-activity-7435979158784114688-K11H?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAGnGBwBsMVQXDf-R8ig3zHG7BaU2AWA1uc