Last few weeks were incredibly busy with exams and ongoing projects for committees I´m working with. With is why I didn´t spend much time thinking about charity, my time in Africa or the problems the world is struggling with. I did however spend my time working out how ecosystems work, how ecologists see the world and how to assess the ecological impact of a project in my course Ecology. Together with another course called Sustainability Assessment you could say that I was busy with how the achieve sustainable management of ecosystems after all. I took these courses because I wanted to attain experience and knowledge in how interactions in nature shape the way nature works, and how we can assess them in order to understand relations between individuals, human society, the environment and the economy.

In Sustainability Assessment, the ultimate goal is to recommend ´robust´ policies: policies that work throughout several future scenarios and that are applicable in several cases. I had to create a work plan myself for a sustainability assessment project and chose to look into sustainable waste management at primary schools in the Netherlands. Universities are often known for their progress towards sustainability, brought forward by sustainable technology, solar power innovation, waste separation systems or sustainability education. However, primary schools stand last in line when considering the sustainability of their school system and their (children’s) behaviour: the budget as well as teacher knowledge is lacking. A change of the schools’ general policy is needed in order to trigger change towards sustainable behaviour. Therefore a sustainability assessment can be useful when assessing the possibilities for and impacts of such a change.

All in all, I learned a lot last period. Next period (the last one of this year) will be filled with a research project rooted in psychological research about body satisfaction. Less related to the environment but a very useful and interesting experience into research manners, the field of psychology and the organization of data in questionnaires.

*Sorry for the late update, I tried earlier but it didn't work, this time it worked however.