It was so sad to finally reach our last day in The Netherlands, but we ended it with a great adventure. We started today by visiting a floating cow farm! This farm was unique to any farm I’ve ever seen before. We started off our visit with a brief presentation from the company about why they started and what they do. The company was made after the owners saw the effects of a hurricane in New York City on the city and fresh food supply, and decided to construct this farm to combat those issues. The farm looks how you would expect a floating farm to be – an elevated surface for the cows with the manure supply below. The presentation also informed us of how the company strives for sustainability. One way they do this is by reducing the city’s food waste. They take typically scraped food, such as beer foams and used grass from soccer fields – and repurpose it into feed for their cows. They also put the cow manure to much use, not only for fertilizer, but also by drying and hardening it into bricks, pots, tiles, and much more. The farm produces very little waste and really makes an effort to contributing to a clean and sustainable environment. After our presentation we got to walk into the actual farm – which didn’t smell great – to see lab workers working with the manure to see and preserve it. We also got to see a shipment container of the food waste that is brought in to the city to be turned into cow feed.

We took a short break to rest and get some packing done. A few of us explored some new places to eat, I got an acai bowl and a latte!

We then took a visit to RDM campus where we got to see students and companies working hands on with innovative projects and sustainability. One company located here that really stuck out to me was using 3D printing of wasted materials to reconstruct underwater reefs, and they’ve even started to be used in the Great Barrier Reef and other locations. We even got to see this unique material beings “watered”, which helped solidify the artificial reefs and coral.

We then took another trip back to the hostel to get ready for our final dinner. We ate at a restaurant that was actually on a boat on one of the cities in the canal! You could even see the boat moving while we were eating. We all said our final goodbyes and returned to pack all of our last minute souvenirs. This experience has been so amazing and insightful, I learned so much about bringing a concept to consumer and many initiatives that both engineers and business workers can use to increase sustainability in their practices. I truly will value this experience for the rest of my life and I’m so excited to apply the concepts I learned here to the rest of the world.