Patient: The Unsustainable Student Abroad
Date of Consultation: September 2026
Physician: H. Horton, Sciences Po Paris (Year Abroad)
Complaint #1: The Flight Reflex
The patient presents with a conditioned instinct to book a flight between London and Paris. Clinical assessment finds this wholly unwarranted. The Eurostar produces approximately 2.4kg CO2e for the London-Paris journey; the equivalent flight generates roughly 103kg CO2e per passenger, a differential of over 4,000% [1]. The patient has already responded to treatment before arriving at the clinic: the Eurostar is booked. The remaining complaints will prove considerably less cooperative.
Complaint #2: Chronic Overconsumption
The patient presents with fast fashion dependency and single-use packaging reliance, symptoms aggravated by proximity to the Zara on Rue de Rivoli (prognosis: poor without intervention). Vinted is prescribed for secondhand clothing. For food, France’s Loi EGAlim mandates that university canteens, including Sciences Po’s, source a minimum 50% of products sustainably [2]. The patient need not seek out responsible consumption in Paris. It has been legislated into their cafeteria. This is SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production; the treatment is structural, not aspirational.
Complaint #3: Food Waste Disorder
The patient presents with a tendency toward late-night delivery apps and canteen over-ordering. Too Good To Go is prescribed. Paris has among the highest density of participating restaurants of any European city, with surplus meals from local boulangeries and bistros available each evening at a fraction of their cost. (The physician notes this is also an excellent way to eat well in the 5th arrondissement on a student budget, a secondary benefit not covered by the SDGs but worth recording.) This addresses SDG 2: Zero Hunger by reducing food waste at source.
Complaint #4: Civic Disengagement
The patient presents with a failure to engage with the host city’s sustainability infrastructure. Vélib’, Paris’s network of over 20,000 shared bikes across 1,400 stations, is prescribed as the primary mode of intra-city movement, directly supporting SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. The patient is further directed to Sciences Po’s Développement Durable student network. Studying EU climate governance at the institution that trains the people who will implement it is not incidental to SDG 4: Quality Education.
Discharge Summary
I have written this assessment as though I stand apart from the patient. I do not. I am also the student arriving in Paris in September, carrying the same habits, the same temptations, the same gap between what I know and what I do. I will study these questions three streets from where the Paris Agreement was signed, at an institution whose alumni wrote significant parts of it. That proximity is not a credential but an obligation. I am not arriving as a tourist extracting an experience. I am arriving as someone with a relationship to this place and, because of that, a responsibility to it.
Prognosis: optimistic for a greener future.
References
1. www.eurostar.com/uk-en/tread-lightly
2. www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000043956924
Resources
1.www.europassenger.eu
2. www.thetrainline.com
3. www.vinted.co.uk
4. www.toogoodtogo.com
5. www.velib-metropole.fr
