sustainability

During the first year of IBM I chose not to participate in the mentorship project, but instead I chose for the sustainability project. Our team decided to join the SDG corner and follow their lead. SDG corner is an initiative from students who study at Artevelde and who are interested in creating actions to help the climate.

During the first semester we have only had a couple of meetings but have not been able to do something in real life because of corona. In total we have had 3 meetings with the SDG corner. Our team is responsible for the student challenges, which includes coming up with contest and planning these contest. So far we have come up with five contest regarding sustainability and the environment. We divided these contest over four months, starting in February. The people who attend these contest can win some really nice prices, also picked and based on sustainability.

We were divided in groups and I was part of the ‘trash collection’ group, this group would focus on that topic and research some more information. We came with an initiative to rent trash ‘grabbers’ so when the festival would come we would have these. We discussed other ideas such as a walking routes through Ghent where most trash can be found. But due to Covid19 we had to keep some rules in mind, such as keeping the limit at ten people, obligatory wear of masks etc. We came with the nice idea to give the group that picks up the most trash a price for their participation. The prices they would get are part of the list we got for our contests. All the prices were linked to our topic, trash collection. Such as zero waste cleaning products. Other than that we also had to do some research about trash, such as the difference between virgin plastic and recycled plastic. I was in charge to do research about recycled plastics and the sustainability of paper and plastic pens.

During the second semester there was more participation at the SDG corner. We had to prepare ourselves for the climate festival on the 6th of May. To prepare for this we had regular meetings, mostly on weekly basis. During the meetings we talked about different topics we wanted to explore. End of march is when we really started to get into the preparations for the climate festival.