DWARS Groningen calls for sustainability of student houses (press release)

Sunday 6 March from 14:00, DWARS Groningen will temporarily inhabit the music dome in the Noorderplantsoen. Here, the Groningen branch of the youth organisation GroenLinks is drawing attention to the poor insulation of student houses and its consequences. If your student house is poorly insulated, you have little influence on this, while you pay for the high energy bills. The incentive for landlords to improve sustainability is often lacking. Besides being hugely unfair, this is also bad for the environment. It is precisely in the area of sustainability that there is much to be gained for these reasons.

‘It's not a nice feeling when your landlord threatens about recovering the higher energy costs from you, while you also feel the draft coming through your single glasses every day,’ said Sophie Middelhuis, chairperson of DWARS Groningen. ‘You can put on a warm jumper, but the responsibility that you are warm without a sky-high energy bill should lie with the landlord.’ 

On Sunday, the dome will be surrounded by scarves and banners, and inside it will be decorated like a living room. This is symbolic of how students live: you have a roof over your head, but it is draughty from all sides and you have to come up with a creative solution for that yourself. This is why DWARS Groningen demands that landlords should be forced to become more sustainable. For example, set requirements for the landlord licence: mandatory transparency on energy costs and a minimum energy label.