Explaining and promoting sustainability

When you start your studies, you don’t know what the future holds. And even after that, predictions don’t get easier; after all, who would’ve predicted the COVID-19 pandemic or the current war in Europe? Who could have guessed the impact of such incidents on studying and the working world? However, one thing we know for sure is that our climate is changing. The question is: How can students address this crisis?

Committed to the future

Studying at ETH Zurich opens many doors. And yet questions keep coming up, including what career decisions to make. How can we use our studies to do our bit for the future and the planet and make the world more sustainable?

Two physics students, Petia Arabadjieva and Jan Zibell, have also asked themselves these questions – and have developed Who Cares?, a project that aims to provide other students with a tool for investigating these questions.

Sustainability in professional life

As part of Who Cares?, ETH students ask past graduates how their studies at ETH have informed their commitment to sustainability today. Answers to these questions can be found in short video statements and corresponding interview transcripts. Questions include “What skills from your studies have proven useful?”, “What would you do differently today?” and “How can the knowledge gained in abstract lectures be of use when it comes to societal challenges?”.

A broad spectrum of commitment

Who Cares? is not just about finding scientific solutions to climate change; it also seeks to identify approaches taken in the private sector. Currently, the website already features interviews with CERN researcher Michael Dittmar, who, in addition to his particle physics research, has created a course on energy and the environment for physics students at ETH Zurich, and David Bresch, Professor at ETH’s Institute for Environmental Decisions. Further interviews will be added over the coming weeks. Interviewees will include Gianluca Ambrosetti, CEO of ETH spinoff Synhelion, and doctoral student Amy MacFarlance, who advocates for more sustainable Arctic research.

The variety of professional orientations of these former students shows how broad the spectrum of commitment to sustainability is.

A solid foundation ready for scaling

The technical implementation for this student project was deliberately kept simple: students film and edit the videos using everyday equipment like their own smartphones, and the website is set up specifically for this purpose – to make it easier to scale the project.  Over time, the videos and texts should reveal an increasingly wide range of possibilities. The basic structure is suitable for all fields of study. ETH Sustainability, the central platform for sustainability at ETH Zurich, now also supports the project, providing help with dissemination, placement and networking.

Making progress together

Physics students are, of course, neither the first nor the only people who want to make ETH students aware of how they can use their drive and skills to make the world more sustainable. ETH Sustainability provides an overview of many initiatives at ETH and helps to make them known. The development team of the Student Sustainability Commission (SSC) is also working to promote sustainability in all areas of ETH life. It collaborates closely with VSETH to bring students’ demands for more sustainability in campus development to the attention of the appropriate people in ETH administration.