When I boarded my flight to Shanghai last month for an technology and business summer school, I knew the environmental cost of my journey started before I even landed — a layover through Beijing meant two take-offs, two landings and a carbon footprint I couldn’t ignore. Aviation remains one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, and international placements like mine sit at an uncomfortable intersection: they demand travel, yet travel is often what threatens the very environment we’re trying to protect. I couldn’t undo the flight but I could control what came after it.
Once on the ground, I made a deliberate choice: no taxis, no ride-hailing apps. Shanghai’s metro — one of the largest and most efficient rapid transit systems in the world — became my default, alongside the city’s shared bike schemes for shorter journeys. This connected me to how Shanghai itself is investing in sustainable urban mobility, supporting UN SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities.
That connection to sustainable infrastructure went further than transport. On a visit to Shanghai Highly Electrical Appliances, I saw the full timeline of their compressor development, technology that powers air conditioning, refrigeration and cooling systems worldwide. Their joint venture with Hitachi focuses specifically on high-efficiency compressors, a reminder that the same engineering driving China’s manufacturing scale is also being pushed toward lower energy consumption. It reframed sustainability for me: not just personal choices like transport, but the industrial systems those choices sit inside, directly reflecting SDG 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and SDG 13, Climate Action.
Accommodation was another point of intention. I stayed in international student housing already allocated and financed for the year, rather than booking short-term rentals that would have added extra demand to the city’s housing stock, a nod to SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production.
Food became my favourite form of sustainability. Alongside meals at my university’s own canteen, I sought out independent, locally-run eateries and ate at temple kitchens on visits to local temples, supporting small, community-rooted food sources over large-scale, resource-heavy chains, and connecting me to the culture behind the food itself. I also used reusable chopsticks throughout my stay, refusing disposable pairs at every meal.
None of this erases the emissions of that Beijing layover. But sustainability isn’t about perfection it’s about making the deliberate, controllable choices count.
If I could offer one resource to future students: the Alipay app made public transport effortless without fluent Mandarin and the UN’s own SDG tracker at sdgs.un.org turns abstract goals into a practical checklist for any placement abroad.
Sustainable travel isn’t a single decision. It’s dozens of small ones, chosen daily, in a city that’s still teaching me what that looks like.
