Sadly, today was our final full day in the Netherlands, sadly meaning my amazing experience with this trip and trip group is coming to an end. Despite this, today was one of the most rewarding days regarding sustainability topics, with today’s visits to the floating farm and to RDM both producing a litany of interesting points regarding how businesses in the area maintain a level of clean energy. This was a great cap off to such an informative and enjoyable trip, and even writing this blog post makes me sad that these two weeks are coming to an end!

The Floating Farm in Rotterdam, our first stop for the day, gave excellent insight into how innovation can help guide the future of farming and be a potential component of solving food crises around the globe. The idea for the farm, developed in response to natural disasters and growing climate change leading to problems with the distribution of food in times of need (specifically during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when food deserts were created in major cities), is very sustainable, as a primary focus of sustainable practices is implementing procedures that ensure equitable access to resources. In the case of the farm’s approach, I could see this taking off across the globe (something our guide noted as currently being in the works), as access to food on a body of water can help alleviate the increasingly dwindling land for agriculture. Further, the company’s dedication to reusing waste products to create refurbished goods and to produce a good deal of its energy with solar energy indicate the company clearly wants to be as sustainable as possible. I also found it interesting how the global temperature increases being seen due to increasing CO2 emissions were cited similarly on this tour as they were during the climate frisk. These issues becoming more well-known and implemented in fields that extend beyond normal business is key to meaningful solutions being developed, and (given Agriculture’s high impact on carbon emissions) seeing sustainability being practiced in a farm setting gave me hope for this becoming a reality.

After the floating farm’s practices were explained to us, we had a chance to tour the actual farm, seeing both the actual cattle the farm uses to produce dairy products and the plants grown in the basement using LED lights. It was really interesting to see how the cows, using an automatic milker with a food-reward mechanism and an automatic feeder that distributed food for the cows, had so many of their needs met through automation, something the guide claimed was the farm’s ultimate goal. This did give me a bit of pause however, as it isn’t very sustainable to seek the replacement of the work force with machinery, but this is unfortunately the mixed reality of company’s conducting business to make money. I also found the way the company used purified wastewater to water their plants, as adding this level of “cycling” of resources is both cost-effective and environmentally conscious, pointing to it as something that should be implemented more broadly across agriculture.

Next, we had a chance to tour RDM, a port in Rotterdam that houses several different businesses, education centers, and innovative projects. I found it very compelling how the hot air from the top of a warehouse, produced by heating coils in the floor, was reventilated towards ground level using tubes on the walls, a testament to the engineering students working in that very warehouse. The installation of the “greenhouse” structures for the students to similarly solve this issue also really struck me as innovative, as such an old structure couldn’t possibly have achieved the level of comfortable temperature it did without solutions like this. The two projects we were shown that I found the most interesting were the 3D Printed Synthetic Coral and the Hyperloop testers, as both of these businesses were working to build real solutions to some of the largest sustainability issues of our time (natural environment decline and the release of carbon due to mass personal transit). The coral felt much heavier than I thought it would, and it’s really interesting how (due to the need to integrate in the local ecosystem) local materials had to be used for the reefs. Also, I found the sheer speed of the proposed Hyperloop to be shocking, and I would love to see this implemented on a large scale.

Overall, today was a great end to the trip, providing one last look at sustainability topics that we have learned over the course of the trip. Having the chance to explore the Netherlands’ people and culture has been such a gift, and I feel I was seriously enriched by this trip and the people I got to share it with.