I’m originally from Bangladesh, a place where climate change isn’t an abstract talking point but a lived reality; every monsoon season, I’ve watched rivers swallow farmland that families depend on for generations. I carried that awareness with me when I moved to the US for college, and I’m carrying it again now as I prepare to travel from Babson College to the London School of Economics for two semesters abroad.
Sustainability starts before the plane ticket for me. I booked a direct flight from Boston Logan to London Heathrow instead of a connecting itinerary, since layovers add unnecessary fuel burn per mile traveled. Once I land, I’m skipping cabs entirely and getting a contactless Oyster card for the Tube and buses, both because it’s practical and because relying on shared public transit instead of adding another car to London’s roads fits squarely with SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Packing was its own exercise in restraint. Rather than shipping boxes of belongings overseas from Massachusetts for a full year abroad, I’m traveling with a single suitcase and plan to buy anything else I need secondhand, from charity shops like Oxfam or the British Heart Foundation near LSE’s Holborn campus. I’m bringing a refillable water bottle and a fabric tote to cut down on single-use plastic, small habits, but ones that support SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, and ones I intend to sustain across both semesters, not just the first few weeks.
This mindset didn’t start with this trip. Back home in Bangladesh, I’ve been working on an agro-processing venture in Madhupur focused on extracting value from pineapple waste, byproduct that would otherwise rot in landfills after processing. That project taught me to see waste as a design flaw rather than an inevitability, and at Babson, my coursework and campus involvement have pushed me to think about how systems, whether academic, entrepreneurial, or logistical, can be built more responsibly from the start. I want to carry that same lens to London for the full duration of my time there.
Over the two semesters, I plan to join LSE’s Sustainability Society and look for ways to volunteer locally, whether that’s a Thames river cleanup or a food redistribution initiative like The Felix Project. I want my time there to contribute to SDG 13, Climate Action, in a way that’s tangible and local, not just minimizing my own footprint, but adding something back to the city hosting me for a full academic year.
I also intend to keep a running comparison of the sustainability infrastructure I encounter, recycling systems, transit incentives, food waste policy, across Dhaka, Babson’s Wellesley campus, and London, so I can bring workable ideas home instead of leaving them behind when my two semesters end.
Traveling from Bangladesh to Babson already taught me that a footprint follows you wherever you go. Traveling from Babson to LSE, for a full year this time, is my chance to make sure that footprint gets a little lighter.
