Put on your sustainability glasses once in a while and go blue

Ecologically, the corona crisis is also having some positive consequences. After all, the restrictive measures affect our mobility. Fewer cars on the road mean fewer traffic jams and thus fewer exhaust fumes. On a global level, you can see the effects in Earth Overshoot Day, for example. That’s the day each year on which we’ve all used more raw materials and nutrients than the earth can produce in that year. For decades, it has been steadily moving up the calendar. In 2020, however, Earth Overshoot Day jumped back about three weeks, to 22 August.

Great news, of course, but there are still more than four months left that exceed the restorative capacity of the earth. Environmental agreements such as the 2015 Paris Accord are trying to reverse the trend. “The world is waking up and we as technicians are at the base of that change,” says Jeroen Rondeel, director of engineering firm Blue Engineering. “In fact, we can make a huge contribution to reducing the footprint by continuously focusing on sustainability in designs. From architect to engineer, everyone can take responsibility. Sometimes it just takes some guts.”