Sustainable Development
StarchLight's Sustainable Development Goals!
As actors involved in building tomorrow's society, we are aware of the challenges we face and thus of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were put in place to overcome these challenges. These 17 SDGs adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 were created as an urgent call for action, and therefore, the StarchLight team kept them in mind when creating our device. Considering the themes of our project and of the iGEM competition, we mainly focused on 7 of the SDGs : Quality education, Gender equality, Affordable and clean energy, Sustainable cities and communities, Climate action, Industry, innovation and infrastructure, and Partnerships for the goals.
Quality education
Throughout our different education and communication efforts, we aimed to incorporate sustainable development in the education of people of all ages and backgrounds. Depending on their level of scientific understanding, we tried to vary our vocabulary and the subjects. For example, for primary students, we introduced them to the subject of electricity in living things in order to create a pathway to talk about green energy. We talked a lot with the teachers of the students we taught in order to create a constructive and useful course for the children, to interest them as much as possible and, if possible, get them invested in sustainable development later in life. During the science fair in Paris, "La Fête de la Science", we collaborated with other French iGEM teams to talk about synthetic biology and the impacts it could have on many different aspects of our lives.
Gender equality
In order to promote gender equality and empower young women everywhere, we tried as much as possible to promote scientific careers for women. Having 3 out of the 8 members of our team pursuing studies in STEM, we think it is well enough time for gender parity to be reached in those fields, and the first steps are showing by example that women belong in those fields.
Affordable and clean energy
As a project centered around ground energy, we believe that our project steps in the direction of ensuring accessible energy for everyone. It isn't a secret that usual sources of energy, such as coal or petrol aren't sustainable for a green future. Generating energy from waste thanks to synthetic biology is a very low-carbon alternative that could be one solution to our climate crisis. In order to make sure our project could make an impact, we talked with members of the beer brewing industry, as well as some representatives from different industries, such as bakeries, and government institutions.
Industry, innovation and infrastructure
A major aspect of our project is helping the beer brewing industry enter in a circular economy and in a short circuit economy by re-valorising their main waste into electricity directly in breweries. This happens by incorporating our innovative StarchLight device directly into their infrastructures, so that we reduce all the transportation of waste logistics. One of our goals is making our system as easy to use and efficient as possible so that brewers would be encouraged and eager to incorporate our device in their production chain. To do so, we discussed directly with brewers all the possible issues such a device could cause, mainly because of the use of GMOs. We completed these discussions with information directly from the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation who was able to guide us through the steps we would have to follow to implement our project the way we see it in order to modernize the beer industry through our innovation.
Sustainable cities and communities
By creating this green economy in the brewing industry, we plan to set an example for other industries and communities to try and follow this lead. Indeed, waste reduction and revalorisation, as well as green energy production, are two of the main ways to attain sustainable cities and communities. StarchLight hopes that its values and the way it reaches them will help encourage others to do the same, hopefully using synthetic biology!
Climate action
In light of the current climate situation, notably with the Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2022, we know that we all need to do our part in order to promote green energy production as well as waste reduction. Moreover, we are a team constituted mostly by bioengineers, and we all have been well sensitized to the environmental issues, and we love the idea of being able to use our knowledge in genetic engineering to do our part in the fight against global warming. Creating green energy as well as reducing waste and therefore the greenhouse gas emissions that result from it being incinerated would be StarchLight’s contribution to reducing France's greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5% a year.
Partnerships for the goals
Finally, throughout our iGEM journey, we got the opportunity to collaborate with many teams all around the world who are working on similar themes. Creating partnerships and collaborations is one of the key aspects of the iGEM competition, and it is one of the reasons why the members of our team were so eager to participate in the competition. However, we also collaborated with the breweries who gave us their brewer's spent grain and with organizations such as the “Cité des sciences et de l’industrie” to democratize synthetic biology to the general public.