Over the past few years, sustainability has become a top priority on a global scale. And rightfully so. With just 10 more years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are at the beginning of a 'decade of action'.

At the Faculty of Business and Economics, we believe it is our duty to be role models and to steer our graduates in the right direction. After all, they are tomorrow's leaders, managers, entrepreneurs,… We want them to embody corporate social responsibility, and to work and live in a sustainable manner. 

The city of Antwerp leads by example when it comes to sustainability, having risen to an impressive place 27 worldwide in the Sustainable Cities Index 2022. This study is held by the consultancy Arcadis and ranks 100 of the world’s cities based on 51 metrics, arrayed under the three pillars of sustainability: planet, people, and profit.​

In the ‘planet’ pillar, Antwerp obtained an impressive 8th place. The researchers consider this pillar to be the most important, taking into account efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, public transport, energy consumption and efficiency.

​So how do we hope to achieve that? On a central level, sustainability is one of the university's strategic policy themes. Interfaculty and interdisciplinary initiatives are stimulated so that students and employees can broaden their views on sustainability.

The University of Antwerp also launched its ambitious Climate Change Strategy. Besides setting goals in 11 different domains, the university is committed to becoming climate neutral by 2030 and fossil-free by 2050.

Within the curriculum

• International week on Sustainability
• Course unit 'Sustainability Management' for Master students in Business Engineering and Business Economics
• Specialisation 'Master in Business Engineering: Sustainability Engineering'
• Summer School Sustainability engineering and economics
• Several professors specialised in sustainability, e.g. Luc Van Liedekerke, Steven Van Passel and Hans Verboven.

Extra-curricular

• Start-up Sustalab
• Business Update ‘Why Sustainability is inevitable’

Research

• Research group Environmental economics
• Research chair Ethics and Sustainable Economics

In conclusion, sustainability is embedded in our education and research. But we can always do better. Do you have suggestions or ideas on how we can improve our sustainability policy? A corporate project or student initiative we can support? Let us know and contact Sara Weyns.

The past academic year, FBE took part in the Green Impact project, as part of the UAntwerp climate strategy. With the toolkit offered on this platform, several teams took small but important actions with regard to reducing waste, saving energy and water, greener mobility, incorporating sustainability more in education and research, etc. After an audit by the Green Office and SOS International, our faculty came in first place!

Find out what you can do and which projects you can take part in. For example, you can contribute by using Ecosia, a search engine similar to Google, that plants a tree for every new search query. It doesn't get much easier than that to give back to nature.