Day 9 was an event-filled one! We started our morning with a short train ride from Rotterdam to Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). There we were welcomed by the looming colorful buildings and beautiful canals seamlessly slithering through the campus walkways. Our first stop on campus was the Green Village, a small village that the university uses as a field lab for start-ups and student projects related to sustainability. Yan, our tour guide, was a fifth-year mechanical engineering student at the university. He showed us numerous interesting projects, like one student’s graduation project focused on reducing the weight of trees so that they could be planted on roofs, or another that was a miniaturized hydrogen generator separate from a grid, which uses solar panels to fuel the electrolysis of an H2O solution, creating hydrogen gas that was then stored to be used by a smaller community for energy. He also highlighted some more civil engineering related projects like a house built out of bricks that were made from recycled plastic and sand, some structural experimentation using glass as the main support structure, and a bridge made with no concrete that was fully held by its own weight in an arch structure. Overall, the space was very interesting and inspiring.
Next, we enjoyed a long lunch before exploring the campus for a couple hours. Then we met up with the whole group for our next activity: a “climate fresco.” This three-hour workshop was informative and more emotional than I anticipated. Though I’ve been learning about the climate crisis since preschool, thinking through the basic cause and effects while diving into the lesser known effects made me realize just how interlinked every aspect of climate change is. Even problems like increasing armed conflicts are related to climate change. Our discussion was sad but hopeful, as we went over how to mitigate the changes to our planet. We each vowed to change one thing about our lifestyle after the workshop, and my promise is that I will phase out red meat from my diet, as it has a significantly higher green house gas footprint than other forms of protein.
After the workshop, a couple of friends and I took the bus to Delft. We walked around the beautiful brick city and grabbed a quick dinner before jumping back on the train to Rotterdam. Once again, I was mesmerized by the efficiency and ease of the train system in the Netherlands. I wish it was this easy and cheap to travel around the US.
