Clic on Sustainability

Our semester is coming to an end and there’s only a few topics left to discuss. This time, it was about the word “Play”. What could we say about this subject? It involves a variety of things, such as sports, puzzles, board games, video and online games yet other things like playing with nature and also, in a more literal meaning, playing with words. We, as a class, had to relate play and sustainability by building our ideas with the help of Lego pieces. So, we decided that the best idea would be to incorporate several sustainable sports into an Olympic competition of the future, where the importance of recycling is shown and praised, because in this case it would mean that you could also take a prize home. It went as pictured: It will be a pet friendly place, so you won't need to keep your four-legged friends at home to enjoy the show.    Instead of the regular sports we're used to seeing on television, this time we came up with some ideas, as followed: A relay race where the b

  URBEM is an NGO based in Lisbon, which aims to awaken citizens living in cities to Nature, through the conversion of spaces little used or with low biodiversity, into miniforests or fast-forests. Using the scientifically proven method of the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who privileges the introduction of endemic native species of low maintenance, we seek to involve the local community to carry out the numerous tasks of planting and maintaining each of these spaces. Equally important are the educational and cultural taskspromoted around these spaces, with the aim of sensitizing the various age groups of the community on various themes related to nature. At the moment URBEM is responsible for two fast-forests in Lisbon - Parque da Montanha in Bela vista - in partnerships with the Lisbon City Council and the European projects CONEXUS and LIFE-LUNGs. In addition to these initiatives, the implementation of more miniforests is planned in 2023 - 2024, partnering not only with the Lisbo

  We are facing one of the biggest challenges in human history, the world is changing in a rhythm without precedents and most of us are unaware of the consequences and the danger we may face. Our behaviour is harming our world, the industry overproduces, over-extracts, over-pollutes and over-wastes to support our wealthy way of living. We have been so inconsequent in these past years, that we have started changing the ocean – which was thought to be far too big to be affected by us. https://as2.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/04/22/61/85/1000_F_422618559_aRLqzp8FaxIzkSf08dh496zKlAhba9I0.jpg  The ocean is where life started, the most diverse forms of life live there. More than half of all oxygen that we breathe is from the ocean. It controls the climate by distributing the heat and the global temperature by absorbing the heat. Without a healthy ocean, there is no life on Earth. Yet, it is still an alien in our planet, we put billions into exploring what is out there and we forgot what our priority sho

  Scouts believe in putting nature first. We want to protect the environment that we enjoy while camping, hiking, playing, and learning in the great outdoors. In a world facing a climate crisis and alarming rates of wildlife and nature loss, Scouts are leaders in sustainability and climate.     Imagine 50 million Scouts working as active  citizens to leave this world a little better than they found it. That’s the power of our ground-breaking project: Scouts for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015, is set of goals which we all must aim for if we want to ensure peace and prosperity for people and for the planet, now and into the future. Here's how scouts can be involved in and contribute to some of the SDGs: Environmental protection: Many SDGs, such as Goal 13 (Climate Action) and Goal 14 (Life Below Water), focus on environmental sustainability. Scouts can contribute by enga

  In order to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and of the 2030 UN agenda, several colleges are betting in 4 areas to improve sustainability in higher education institutions: 1 - Environmental sustainability; 2 - Energy transition; 3 - Digital transition; 4 - Social sustainability In this post, we will see 2 examples of different colleges work on improving sustainability that belong to the IPL group, while leaving a website that shows 8 more universities around the World that do similar things: 1 - ISEL - Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa - Building a Zero Carbon residence in ISEL campus  According to ISEL zero carbon project, a residence will be created on ISEL's north campus to accommodate students, teachers and researchers, integrated into a new polytechnic campus, designed from scratch to promote environmental and social sustainability and achieve the goals defined in the Paris Agreement.  By building this residence, ISEL aims to provide innovative equipment cha

O Can LEGO parts be used to promote debate about politics and politicians? Yes, it is possible, and CLIC – the Polytechnic University of Lisbon’s Language Centre shows us how. Politics and sustainability is the theme of one of the units at the Advanced Level at CLIC' English course. As politics always appears to be a sensitive theme and, probably, a not much-loved one, our teacher has proposed a new approach to it. In this model each student builds a sceene, using LEGO parts and, after that, they present it to their classmates. The LEGO parts are supposed to represent the politicians, the people, some ideas and their relationships. Furthermore, students relate their own ideas about the theme with the scenes they have built. This method seems to generate a good interaction among the students and show the way students look at politics and politicians. Firstly, this kind of approach appeals to students’ creativity. They need to find, among an ocean of LEGO pieces, those which are adeq

Sustainability is in the order of the day. The avoidance of the depletion of natural resources to maintain an ecological balance, seems to be the great challenge of human kind, right now. With this scenario, I firmly believe that each of us, as individuals or entities, should develop actions to keep out our activities sustainable. Is true that the modernity has brought us a lot of improvements in our way of life, however, we have the other side of the coin. Several studies show that in the developed world, factors as burning of fossil fuels, factories, industrial emissions, construction, or open burning of garbage waste, are among the most polluting activities. Regarding Social Action Services of the Polytechnic University of Lisbon - SAS/IPL’s activity, the academic canteens are the most sensitive area when we talk about sustainability. The energy consumption during the production process; the origin of the products; or the way they are produced and distributed; or even the waste, are