I found the talk by Antonios Vouloudis very informative, as he combined multiple concepts of sustainability with a lot of first hand experience in his professional journey.
One really important step in his journey was his work with ESTIDAMA, which is an initiative by the Abu Dhabi Municipality which mandated that all new construction projects must achieve a minimum level of sustainability credits. Among these requirements was that all projects must divert a certain percentage of waste from landfills, and a large amount of this waste surely consists of plastics. This means that this minimum percentage would ideally be reused or recycled, and institutions were urged to go above and beyond the requirement in order to gain more sustainability points and a higher rating; something which the speaker noted was easy for them once encouraged to do so.
One thing that I took with me was the firm understanding that sustainability, like everything, is a process. The speaker emphasized the difference and the advancement we see today as compared to when ESTIDAMA first launched in 2010. Many institutions were opposed to the idea of mandated sustainability at first, but after being educated and made aware on how to go about it, it is now years later the new normal. Another aspect that took time was building the infrastructure to facilitate such sustainability. An example the speaker mentioned was that of paints. Institutions were encourage to use the less harmful non-VOC paints in order to gain more sustainability points. The problem was that these paints were extremely difficult to obtain at that time. But after suppliers realized this new demand, they started providing the paints and now they are widely available in the market. This shows us that the process has to start somewhere; even if the implementation is not perfect today, laying the ground will lead to a better future.
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