Like every other day, day nine started with another traditional Dutch breakfast. We got our train tickets and boarded the train to the Delft stop where we headed to TU Delft, one of the technical schools in the Netherlands.
When we got to TU Delft, we headed over to their Green Village. It is a university-owned areas that allows businesses or people to test out their experiments and designs in a sustainable way. One of the most interesting ways that I saw was the bridge the Green Village built. Glue in many bridges is bad for the environment, and an easy way to fix this, is to use blocks shaped like puzzles so it stays together. This was a very cool way to promote sustainability in a very easy way.
The second thing on the tour that really caught my eye was the 3D printed sewage system. I thought it was super interesting because I had learned about how people can program 3D printers to build houses. The one company I had learned about used 3D printing as a more sustainable and cheaper way to build houses for a lot of the homeless population in Texas. It was very cool to see the topics I had learned about being applied for sustainable living in the Green Village.
For lunch, we got to eat in TU Delft’s dining area. I was able to get a panini, which was super good and also the first day they were making them. We then took advantage of the outdoor seating and warm weather and sat outside until it was time for our sustainability workshop.
We went to the sustainability workshop to do one of TU Delft’s puzzles called Climate Fresk. It was essentially us ordering and making connections to climate change. It was shockingly difficult though and making connections throughout the events were more difficult than I imagined. It started by us addressing what started climate change, what (scientifically) is going on now, and then how humans are impacted. At the end of the three hour puzzle, we were asked our feelings on the subject.
In my opinion, it made me feel more helpless and useless. It was sad to see that humans are, in 100% fact, the reason our planet is dying. Earth has held on for so long and helped us mitigate climate control by putting some of our emissions into the ocean and photosynthesis, but some greenhouse gases will always be in our atmosphere, which heats up our planet.
It was also disheartening to reflect on more of our actions as humans. It was sad to think about how climate change is growing the inequality in our world. During this workshop, we learned that the richest 10% of the world contributes to over 50% of climate change. It is devastating to know that the majority of countries who contribute very little climate change pay the highest consequences, and most of those countries are lower-income countries.
I think my biggest takeaway from today was that sustainability should be implemented in our everyday lives. Most of the time I feel like I have believed that it is all the major corporations who burn fossil fuels into our atmosphere for the highest profit, but the truth is all of us contribute to climate change. There have been many times when I have not taken public transportation and instead opted to drive myself, even though there is a very good public transportation system near me. Doing this workshop reminded me that if we want a prosperous future for our planet, we need to focus on a green future.
And after TU Delft, we took the train back to Rotterdam where we ate dinner. We then opted for a Dutch signature, the stroopwafel, in the Markthal. Having a warm stroopwafel in Rotterdam could not compare to the grocery store stroopwafels from the United States that I had before. After that, we walked back to our hotel and got ready for day ten!
