Ariella Ventura is a rising second year industrial engineering major, originally from Long Island, New York.

Hi! My name is Ariella Ventura and this summer I am studying abroad in Eastern Europe on Georgia Tech’s Leadership for Social Good program, specifically in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest. For this blog I would like to highlight the sustainability efforts that have caught my eye throughout my travels here in Eastern Europe.

To start off, let me walk you through my first eye opening experience.  Imagine this: You walk into a beautifully stocked grocery store and walk down the aisles grabbing all the delicious food your taste buds are dying for. After the 10-minute wait at the checkout line, you finally get to pay for your food and bring it home. But wait…… The check-out lady isn’t bagging your groceries. In fact, there are no bags at the end at all. You look around and see everyone else in the store has those “hippie” reusable bags that you bought once but always forgot to bring grocery shopping with you.

Well that was my first experience with sustainability here in Europe. Though I was able to purchase a reusable bag and bring home my groceries, my first European grocery shopping experience really opened my eyes to changes that could easily be made back at home. While yes, reusable grocery bags do exist in the U.S., if you forget to bring your bag shopping you can just use the default plastic bags at the end of the counter. Yet, if you forget your grocery bag here you have only 2 choices; carry everything in your arms [see picture] all the way home or buy another reusable grocery bag.

While some people may not mind buying a new reusable bag every time, the thought of purchasing a grocery bag once was enough for me.  Though this change in practice may seem very out of the norm for the typical American shopper, this is a change that can make a huge impact on our future. By reducing our use of plastic bags we can work towards reducing our waste and saving the environment.

Along with reducing our waste through individual actions, urban environments offer us the opportunity to work together towards achieving even greater sustainability. With everything so close together, urban environments allow for individuals to cut their transportation costs (i.e. buying a car + gas) and instead use public transportation [which in Budapest includes boats, though I'd say they are mostly for tourists to sight see].

Having grown up in New York I never realized how useful public transportation was until I moved to Atlanta. (For those who have never been to Atlanta, good move. The public transportation is horrible and barely goes anywhere). Not only does using public transportation cut costs, it also cuts pollution and traffic! [NOTE: ATLANTA TRAFFIC = VERY BAD]

While I could hate on Atlanta’s lack of public transportation for hours, I would like to bring up a good point about Atlanta that I learned through my internship here in Budapest.  I am currently interning at a NGO called CEEweb for Biodiversity, specifically focusing on a green roof project and green infrastructure.  So to come back to my praising of Atlanta…….. I take it back a little. I’m going to praise my beautiful school of Georgia Tech (which is in Atlanta so you can let it count).

At my beautiful school of Georgia Tech, as many may know, we have a green roof on top of our CULC (Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons). Though I will say I always thought the green roof was just to be pretty, through my internship I have learned that green roofs have many more benefits than just their beautiful appearances! Green roofs combat pollution, flooding and urban heat waves whiling aiding in noise and heat insulation, preserving biodiversity and wildlife, and even aiding people’s mental and physical health.

On that note, I would like to introduce you to CEEweb for Biodiversity’s new twitter challenge! We want you to tweet out a picture of your favorite green rooftop with the hashtag #GreenRoofChallenge. Spread the word and let’s help make green rooftops a greater commonality throughout all urban environments throughout the world!