The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a list of seventeen goals the United Nations aims to achieve by 2030. These goals address challenges like the urgent environmental, political, and economical in the world to gain a better future for all. 

This year, the project of RS_Joint_China team try to tackle the following goals for the world.

The goal is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. The covid-19 and other healthy related diseases has impact the millions of lives in the world. The world is working on providing solutions to handle the problem. We believe that despite the impact of Covid, other life-related measure also need to be taken. Our project can not only adsorb heavy metals from the soil and contribute to soil restoration but also contribute to providing more agricultural land for human beings in the future from the perspective of sustainable development. Through biosynthetic technology, poplar will absorb harmful lead elements into the soil and use them as nutrients, converting the toxins harmful to the land into resources for its growth, realizing sustainable development, and the perfect implementation of reversing the land transformation. Soil security is no small matter. There are 560 million farmers in China, accounting for 40 percent of the Chinese population. China is an undoubted agricultural power, with the world's most considerable grain output and the world's third-largest grain exporter, with a grain export value of $1.764 billion. The quality of soil ensures healthy food, which is linked to the security of millions of people of all ages. Minerals are also crucial to human development. For the people in mining areas and areas severely affected by lead contamination, our project will significantly improve their living environment and cost in the future. In these areas, especially the elderly and children can breathe fresher air in the future after implementing our project instead of leaving the contaminated area. Therefore, our task is very constructive for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3.

Education can improve the socio-economic status and is the key to eliminating poverty as part of our project to understand better synthetic biology and our efforts to combat heavy metal pollution. Therefore, we plan to make some offline pop-up exhibitions and campus lectures, as well as promotional public account to help achieve the goal. At the same time, we also plan to make related educational products, such as teaching materials that introduce synthetic biology and easy-to-understand picture books for children in the future.

We understand that quality education is significant and long-term work. And we have limited knowledge as we are primarily high school students. However, it does not mean we cannot educate or enlighten others. After discussion, we chose middle/high school students, their teachers, and parents as our primary target audiences. Students are the future. Teachers and parents are those who impact students a lot. Therefore, we educate them with basic synthetic biology and general biology knowledge. As a result, they can understand more about the concepts and how synthetic biology will help shape the world into a better place so that they can raise their interests and know more about it.

We held a live online lecture in August. The lecture was also very effective. As our team members are from all over the country, we attracted more than 100 parents and teachers from all over the country to participate. We plan to hold a similar online event every other month to let more students, parents, and teachers know about synthetic biology.

Our pop-up exhibitions are intended to be in the form of pictures and videos. Let the participants touch the organs to change the image. Get a feel for our experiments with intuitive visual changes. And at the end of the exhibitions, we have people answer the questions during their visit and explain the whole product again to understand better. Other education tools like lectures are the same. We want to expose students and teachers to synthetic biology concepts at school. We are stimulating their interest and potential. Teaching materials and picture books are helping us improve teaching quality. We will demonstrate the concepts of synthetic biology in simple words and patterns. Eventually, we try to let all age groups have some understanding and attention to it. You can refer to our education and communication page for detailed education methods.

The goal is to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Using synthetic biology technology, our team extracts the DNA of poplar to inhibit heavy metals in the soil, implementing the ideology of SDG. Under our independent research and development of biological synthesis technology, poplar will absorb lead as a harmful element in the ground. Its nutrients will harm the growth of the toxins into its land resources, realizing sustainable development. It is the perfect implementation for reversing the land transformation. At the same time, we use a very environmentally friendly method, which can play a role in soil restoration, further promote the growth of poplar trees, and improve the local plant's ecological environment. In areas covered with vegetation, air quality will also improve to a great extent. With time, more migratory birds will also pass through, further affecting and improving the ecological environment. In addition, the increase of poplar vegetation coverage can significantly improve the environmental image of the polluted areas. Some insects and animals living in the plant environment will return to the area with the improvement of the soil environment. And in the future, when the land and vegetation are restored to a safe and stable extent, we believe that more people will return to the formerly polluted areas for development. Therefore, we believe that our research project is also beneficial for SDG#15.

Goal 17 means strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development. Not only between iGEM team, we also reached our to Loins Clubs International Beijing division to establish a partnership relationship to better help the world to be a better place. Lions Clubs International, founded in 1917 by Melvin Jones, is the largest service organization in the world. It has 48,000 chapters and 1.5 million members. Members are distributed in 209 countries and territories. We planned to hold an offline public welfare activity in late August with Lions Clubs together in Beijing. Unfortunately, we have had to suspend our activities due to epidemic control restrictions. Offline group activities is still not permitted in many areas in China, but we have been in good contact with Lion Clubs International. We are planning donating our profit from fund-raising sale, which is about RMB 2500, when the money is released from the account.

In the meanwhile, we also work with iGEM teams closely to deliver the goals. We cooperated with the two teams and conducted numerous exchanges and cooperation in publicity and education. Meanwhile, we also conducted in-depth communication with the other two teams to promote sustainable development. The project of HD_Wuhan_pro_China team is to detect heavy metals in soil. RS_United_China's task is to use poplar trees to better mass produce melatonin. We believe that in the future, our three teams can form a collective and have more meaningful cooperation in detecting the environment, repairing the environment, and using plants to benefit human life.