My relationship with sustainability didn’t begin in a classroom. It began with movement. Born and raised in Qatar to Indian parents, educated in the UK, and now heading to Hong Kong on exchange, I’ve never had the luxury of a single home. Instead I’ve realized that sustainability is the thread that quietly stitches the world together.
In India I’ve seen farmers turn animal waste into compost that feeds entire villages, a practice so old it predates the word sustainability itself yet so effective it is now being reimagined through biogas and organic farming. In Qatar I watched a desert nation invest heavily in water recycling and green urban design just to make scarcity survivable. In Scotland where I studied for university I saw sustainability built into daily life, from a recycling system that sorts everything down to food waste and glass, to the Young Scot’s Card which lets anyone under twenty one travel for free on buses across the country. It meant I never had a reason to reach for a taxi when a bus could just as easily get me there. That small policy quietly reshapes how a generation moves, teaching me firsthand what SDG 11(sustainable cities and communities) actually looks like in practice: urban planning that shrinks a community’s footprint while improving daily life. Sustainability is not a Western export. It is a global instinct we are now relearning.
This is why as I prepare for Hong Kong I have committed to what I call a zero souvenir policy. Tourism often drives unnecessary consumption as trinkets are used once and forgotten, and waste generated far beyond what any trip truly requires. Instead I collect digital souvenirs, photographs, and cultural stories preserved in a growing digital travel archive. It costs nothing and it captures far more than a trinket ever could. This reflects something I stay mindful of wherever I travel, and what I now recognize as SDG 12 ( responsible consumption and production) which lets me stay conscious of waste and resource use.
I hope to carry this same awareness into Hong Kong itself, studying in one of the most efficient transit networks in the world and letting that reshape how I think about cities everywhere, much the way Scotland’s buses reshaped mine. I also want to live out SDG 13 (climate action) by keeping my personal carbon footprint in mind, choosing rail and public transit over short haul flights and questioning whether a trip is really necessary before I take it.
Ultimately the message I want to pass on is simple. True global citizenship isn’t measured by how far we travel but by the positive impact we leave behind. Borders separate nations, but sustainability doesn’t recognize passports. From compost heaps in Indian villages to solar lit streets in Doha to free bus rides across Scotland and soon the transit hums of Hong Kong, I’ve learned one thing above all. The most meaningful souvenir isn’t something you bring home. It’s something you leave better than you found it.
