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| The view outside my window on the flight back to the US. |
Throughout this program we had lectures on topics ranging from biotechnology to plant production to food packaging. It hit me then how COMPLICATED sustainability is. I mean yes, we hear the word thrown around a lot, and it is basically the solution to all of our environmental/climatic/planetary problems, but I don’t think it’s fair to stuff so many concepts and processes into one word, you know? Maybe that’s why I had such an oversimplified view of sustainability. It needs to be changed into one of those 9-letter acronyms or something. Something that would actually be representative of the complexity. Anyways, I digress.
Big-picture wise, I understood just how much effort and research has to go into making an industry sustainable. Or at least more sustainable than it was. It just comes to show how much we have deviated from paying attention to the environment. Easy for me to say I guess, but if we had figured out how to make things more environmentally-friendly in the first place, as in during the inception of a certain industry, we would not have to be dealing with so many problems at once. How does the saying go? You live and you learn? Well, we have to learn and fast.
Speed brings me to my next point. I may have come to this conclusion because we’ve only been exposed to people who care about sustainability in Belgium, but I feel like Belgians are aware of both the importance and urgency of more sustainable living than Americans. Then again, I haven’t really looked into how companies in the United States are dealing with waste cycling and minimizing their carbon footprints, etc. but I just got that vibe. There are still too many people out there that don’t know or don’t care. Hopefully that will change real soon.
Anyway, I felt that all that we learned about sustainability is very applicable to the US food system too. Belgium and the US share some of the same problems (like too much animal waste for example), and the industries that we discussed are all universal, so I didn’t feel anywhere that there was no relation to the US food system.
The “Algae and Plant-Based Wastewater Treatment” was my personal favorite since it was relevant to what I want to do for my honors project. It was especially informative of how wetlands can be constructed to filter and potentially purify household and municipal wastewater. We also discussed ways to intensify the wetland so it wouldn’t take up so much space. This entire lecture was basically taking something I had some idea about (constructing wetlands) and then slightly morphing its function to address wastewater treatment instead of environmental restoration. It would be fantastic if we can figure out an effective way to use plants to recycle wastewater.
Overall, I had a great time in Belgium. This was my first time visiting Europe and it was a very unique experience. Oddly enough, when I would watch the city rolling by as we rode on the bus, I would have this déjà vu feeling. It took me a few days to pinpoint it, and I don’t really quite know what the correlation is (maybe it’s the way the buildings are laid out?) but Belgium sometimes reminded me of India. Of course, it’s much cleaner and less chaotic in Belgium, but still. I know this is weird, but it’s just a feeling I had.
I loved Belgium and hope I can visit again! Thank you so much to the faculty at the University of Gent for making our stay so pleasant and fun-filled! Srusti signing off!!
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Chemistry major Srusti Maddala spent the May intersession 2018 in Belgium with our U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System.
Read more from Srusti at https://sites.uark.edu/smaddala/blog/
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