"Greener offices, one step at a time"

Photo: Mario Salerno

As the European Week for Waste Reduction draws to a close, meet the man who pioneers "Green Office", the campaign designed to make the Lex building a greener place. An old hand in DG A 3′s Dutch unit, Rik has seen the Council's translation service evolve from jumbo department gliding in for summits all over the Community to a modern division moving towards paperless offices. Although Rik himself champions virtually every way of going green, there is one thing even he keeps struggling with.When Rik says "I'm probably too old to work entirely paperless" you assume this largely to be coquetry on his part. For when you meet him - an avid cyclist, a master of nine languages, a local politician and a driving force behind DG A 3′s greening efforts - it is hard to imagine a more flexible person. And yet there may be a grain of truth in it, as Rik admits he just loves jotting things down on paper, perhaps owing to the way he learned his craft and how the GSC worked when he joined back in 1987, arriving fresh from the Netherlands.

Frisian is not the reason

If you try to find Rik in the GSC's (electronic) organisation chart, you will only stumble on a certain Reimer Jellema, who indeed is him. "Reimer is a typical Frisian name, but nobody calls me that, even in my home town of Leeuwarden," he explains. 'Rik', on the other hand, is derived from his more common third name, Hendrik. That does not mean any denial of his origins, though. On the contrary: as a teenager Rik even chose to learn the Frisian language, although it was unfashionable at the time and considered as "peasants' speak".

Few non-Dutch people know that Frisian is still the Netherlands' second official language today. Yet it is not an official EU language, so there must be other reasons why Rik ended up as a translator at the Council. Indeed, his talent for languages took him to nearby Groningen to study French and Portuguese. If the latter doesn't seem an obvious choice, it is easily explained by Rik's love of the Portuguese culture and people. "Portugal is like the Netherlands," he says, "a small country by the sea with a big history."

Then, when Portugal had joined the European Community and Rik had graduated, he saw a newspaper ad for a Dutch translators' competition at the Council. "Those were the pre-EPSO days, so the competition was only for the GSC," recalls Rik. He had just broken his leg the week before the first round, but despite his doctor's advice to stay at home he went to Brussels to have a shot at it and ended up on the reserve list after the written and oral tests.

Before bits and bytes

For those of us who only joined the GSC recently, it is difficult to imagine what office work was like in the late 1980s. "Of course there were no computers," says Rik, "so we would either deliver hand-written translations or dictate them to assistants who would type them up." Another difference lay in the source language. Back then, Rik translated around 85% from French, whereas today more than 90% of original texts are drafted in English. Over time, Rik has learned more and more foreign languages at the GSC, so he can now also translate from Spanish, Italian and Czech, in addition to German and English, which he already knew from school.

Well into the 90s, having no computers (let alone e-mail) also meant that an army of translators had to be flown to all European Council meetings, held in the rotating Presidencies' countries, to translate documents on the spot. "That was good fun and a great way to get to know people. Today this is much more difficult as there are so many of us and we're spread over 14 floors." On the other hand, the GSC's environmental footprint has become much smaller in the meantime, and reducing it further is one of Rik's chief concerns.

Nice office - do you have the same one in green?

He did not think twice in September last year, when Margarida Lacerda, Director of DG A 3, had the idea of launching the "Green Office" campaign. It is part of a broader environmental management project aiming to make the GSC a more eco-friendly institution in order to gain the entreprise éco-dynamique label from the Brussels region, as a first step towards the more demanding EMAS eco-audit certification (which an environmental coordinator, Marco Sereno, has been put in charge of). Rik was happy to help drive the campaign forward, heading a team of five other DG A 3 volunteers devoting their time to producing a catalogue of long-term ideas to be discussed by DG A management as well as a series of eco-tips published every week on the Atrium intranet since April.

The long-term ideas are all about green procurement, eco-friendly building materials and energy efficiency, explains Rik. "But the ecotips on Atrium are about changing habits, about what we all can do every day to reduce the pollution of the planet." Tips range from ways to avoid unnecessary printing to using one's own china coffee cup in the vending machines. Of course, nobody likes changing their habits, so a network of 23 "eco-coaches" was set up to help each language unit put the tips into practice.

Walking the talk

Leading by example is just as important, however. Rik knows this all too well, as both an environmental and political campaigner. As a member of the Etterbeek Communal Council since 2001 (guess for which party), he was one of the first to benefit from the 1994 Directive, implemented in Belgium in 2000, that allows EU citizens to stand for election in communes across the EU.

As a Dutchman, Rik is naturally inclined to bike anywhere below the timberline. "But since I live in Etterbeek, my way to work is much too short to really enjoy the bike ride," he jests. To make up for that, Rik always takes the stairs in the Lex building, up or down, and after lunch even all the way up to his office on the 11th floor. To him, the green on the stairwell doors not only symbolises safety in case of an emergency, it also shows the way to a better future.

Rik was nominated by René Smeets, DG A 3 Communications Officer and member of the Green Office team:

"I've known Rik for a long time from the Dutch translation unit and I admire how he has integrated into Belgian society. He does a great job coordinating the Green Office campaign, not least because I can always rely on him for a fresh supply of ecotips to be published on Atrium."

bron: DG A1A - Internal Communication Unit - Domus - The Intranet of the Council