• Question: what interests you in sustainability

    Asked by MayaM on 8 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Danielle Nader

      Danielle Nader answered on 8 Nov 2021:

      Even though it may not seem like it, we each play a huge role in making the environment better. Not just for ourselves and our future, but for the next generation. Being sustainable in our daily lives at home, school, and work will protect our ecosystem, and that’s what I am most interested in. Ocean and forest conservation is really important for preventing climate change since they protect against dangerous greenhouse gases and provide us with clean water! Even little things that we do like recycling and re-using items are really great ways to be sustainable. Also, limiting how much we buy (only buy what you *need* and not what you *want*).

    • Photo: Peter Milner

      Peter Milner answered on 8 Nov 2021:

      My research in ultraviolet LEDs will try to replace the current UV light sources being used around the world. At the moment, Mercury lamps are used to generate lamps. But these are high power, require time to heat up, and mercury is a toxic gas. UV LEDs can be a lot more efficient with energy (and don’t use mercury!), so in the future hopefully all UV light sources will be LEDs…

    • Photo: Avion Phillips

      Avion Phillips answered on 8 Nov 2021:

      The fact that at it just makes sense to do things in a way that will let us keep doing them and allow everyone who comes after us to do them as well. If we cut down all the trees, no one will get to experience them in the future and that sucks!

    • Photo: Andrew McGovern

      Andrew McGovern answered on 8 Nov 2021:

      I like the world how it is and how it was. The world I will be in will be different but I don’t want it to be too different. I want my kids to see tigers, giraffes and even the occasional bumblebee. Sustainability is one of the means through which we protect the world and that is worth caring about.

    • Photo: Georgiana Ifrim

      Georgiana Ifrim answered on 9 Nov 2021:

      We are not separate from nature, even if we may think we are.
      We are using lots of free resources, think about the air we breath for free, we want this to be clean and unpolluted, the water we need to survive, the food: fruit, veg, crops that grow and provide us with nutrition. In turn, we have a responsibility to keep our environment clean, to look after nature, to come up with new ways to live without harming our planet. It simply makes sense to think of ways to be more sustainable, to stay healthy while keeping the planet healthy, this is the only way it works, because of our interconnectivity. I also think each of us can do small steps that add up to a lot: walk more, cycle more, less shopping craze, less packaging, less harmful fuels, less litter.

    • Photo: Anita Pax

      Anita Pax answered on 9 Nov 2021:

      What we can do on a small scale, as individuals. I’m interested in reducing the amount I ‘consume’; whether its taking into account food waste, clothes, stuff, recycling, etc. If more of us can live sustainably at home, then we can help to play our part to improve the environment and planet.

    • Photo: Pawel Rulikowski

      Pawel Rulikowski answered on 11 Nov 2021:

      Professionally, I try to build as energy efficient devices as possible – telecommunication industry uses a staggering 2% to 3% of the total power consumption of humanity. So, I am sure we can do better. I find a lots of inspiration in nature where living organisms have to find a clever ways to use as little energy as possible to survive. The digital computers are great and extremely useful but they are termed as universal computational machines; that means that they can do many different things but not particularly efficiently many of them – this is the price for universality. Think about your brain how efficiently it processes information, now scale that down to an insect like dragonfly – the agility in flight and tiny operations that it needs to perform is far beyond our flying machines. It can do it because it evolved a specialized hardware. We can evolve a specialized hardware and software for our telecommunication networks to improve their energy consumption and performance.
      I am also interested in so called product cycle – think about LED bulb, it consumes very little energy comparing to standard incandescent bulb. However, to make it uses far more complicated processes that consumes lots of resources and you cannot throw it away to the bin you have to recycle it, this consumes lots of resources and energy. So all of the sudden LED bulb is not as energy efficient as one can think at first.

    • Photo: Cyrille Thinnes

      Cyrille Thinnes answered on 11 Nov 2021:

      Hi Maya, we are guests on our planet and all have a responsibility to ensure we are taking care of this amazing place to be alive. Therefore, we shall all have a think about what we are currently doing, how it affects our environment, and if there is anything we can do better. Each of us can take a small step in doing so. For example, are you aware of “Leave no trace” when outdoors? Do you move around such to avoid negative effects on our environment? Do you eat foods produced locally? To me, sustainability is not a mere “interest”, but a lifestyle.

    • Photo: Ohood Alharbi

      Ohood Alharbi answered on 16 Nov 2021:

      There is many ways to interpret sustainability ,,
      For me sustainability allows us to sustain a habitual environment for many future yet to come. We share air, land, and resources on earth, and thus it is our duty to make sure it will be enough for all of us right now and sustain for our children and the next generations.

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