Sustainable Development Goals

On August 6th, members of our education team went to an academy to teach elementary school children about the fundamentals of synthetic biology. With the permission of the teachers at the academy, our team gave a presentation accompanied by a brief lecture about the basic concepts of synthetic biology, such as atoms, molecules, genes, and DNA.

On September 24th, our education team members conducted an ISBC Education before the actual ISBC competition, giving an overview of the topic of Synthetic Biology. The presentation was composed of different contents, including definitions, enabling technologies, applications, and ethics. In accordance with the focus of goal 4 to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, our iGEM members focused on expanding the knowledge of participants on the topic of synthetic biology [7].

Goal 4 target 4.3 of the SDG goal focuses on “Equal access to Affordable Technical, Vocational and Higher Education” [7]. The ISBC education session works under the basis of this principle, attempting to give education to all participants on an advanced topic of synthetic biology.

Specifically, Goal 4 target 4.7 of the SDG goal emphasizes the need for “Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship”. The ISBC education session for all participants serves to achieve this target by providing equal opportunity for education at this international conference. In that, the purpose of the education session focuses on synthetic biology, and in that our research topic PineSorb works under the basis of striving for sustainable development without environmental damage by generating an eco-friendly oil absorbent with synthetic biology, the education session itself achieves the target goal 4.7 of “ensure[ing] that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.”

Goal #12: Responsible Consumption and Production

One of the most important messages that Seoul Korea wishes to convey is using ecologically-friendly solutions to ecologically-harmful problems. And our product, PineSorb is precisely that.

The standard modern remedies to oil spills are either to dissolve it using soap-like chemicals in the water or to use polypropylene, which is essentially plastic sheets made to absorb oil in large oil spill situations. Dissolving the oil in the water (which creates a rather unnatural mixture of water and oil) is extremely harmful to both the environment and humans who are exposed to such chemicals. On the other hand, using polypropylene sheets also causes subsequent environmental issues due to those sheets being unrecyclable and able to be removed only by burning them or burying them into the soil, which would cause both atmospheric and soil pollution.

This means that the contemporary methods of treating oil spills directly contradict target 12.4: “Achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment” [4].

Our team took this fact as an inspiration to create a method to treat oil spills in a way that has zero environmental harm and is fully recyclable. PineSorb is made up of entirely natural substances because it is simply pine bark that has been engineered and processed. Hence, it is unlike other oil sorbents that secrete chemicals into the ocean or cause secondhand pollution. Furthermore, PineSorb is fully recyclable [2]. After absorbing oil, PineSorb turns into a heterogeneous mixture of pine bark and the oil that was absorbed. Therefore, when compressed, the oil is fully squeezed out in its unchanged form, and the resulting “pellet” is a hardened form of the original powder that could be used as a flammable energy source.

On June 22~24, 2022, the National Coast Guard of South Korea hosted a national event in Incheon, South Korea, called The International Maritime and Safety Exhibition, an event in which government officials, coast guards, navy officials, and other related buyers are invited to browse through booths of startups and projects related to ocean safety.

At the convention, our team was able to set up a booth and introduce our project to a wide audience of buyers, coast guards, and navy officials. For three days, members of our groups worked to receive as much feedback as we could on our project.

After analyzing the reviews and feedback we had received during the event, we found that one of the most frequent questions from the audience was regarding the disposal of PineSorb after use. Because PineSorb is in a powdered form, it would be difficult to control in open waters. Hence, our team came up with a way to encase PineSorb into large porous bags, like very large tea bags. This would keep the oil sorbent from getting lost or flushed downstream while keeping its function unhindered [8].

Our project received overwhelmingly positive reactions from companies and the Coast Guard, as many of them asked to take samples of the product, and exchanged contact information and name cards with our team. After the convention, we received calls from the National Coast Guard and discussed the finer details of our project. Additionally, we were able to communicate with another company and even plan a visit to their oyster farm to conduct field experiments and learn more about the process of treating oil spills.

Goal #13: Climate Change

SDG Goal 13 focuses on “tak[ing] urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” [5]. Although PineSorb itself doesn’t directly tackle the issue of climate action but primarily focuses on water treatment, our project contributed to tackling this goal through several different methods.

On August 4th, members of our team visited the office of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Network Korea. UNGC is a voluntary strategic policy initiative that promotes businesses to participate in aligning their operations with a code of ten universally accepted principles. These principles are a collection of duties that approach SDGs from a corporate perspective, and help guide companies create strategies that respect these goals. Through this visit, Team Seoul Korea hoped to learn their thoughts on our initiative and grasp an understanding of the current state of sustainable development goals in corporate policy.

We explained our project, and first asked researchers why many companies select policies or use technology that is environmentally harmful, in which they responded: “Most companies recognize climate change as a significant problem and are aware that eco-friendly strategies are necessary. However, many times doing so is costly, which is a dilemma for these for-profit companies which both want to be sustainable but also need to spend less to maximize their profit.” They added that “UNGC takes these companies who all have their own varying interests and serves as a medium for them to hold discussions regarding the initiatives they must take, and offer programs that give guidance in engineering policies and designing company goals that serve as a process to meet SDGs.”

Then we explained our project PineSorb, and also asked how well our initiatives fit the guidelines of UNGC in which they replied that our project “does well in tackling problems regarding environment and sustainability,” both of which are important aspects of SDGs and UNGC’s ten principles. They specifically responded very positively to our Inclusivity initiative which aims to create educational sources for blind students, commenting that “While many corporate initiatives only focus on problems within their own group such as labor, it is also important to contribute to local society” and that our project “does this job appropriately.”

Goal #14: Life Below Water

The best application that we could expect from PineSorb is at the sea. PineSorb’s product objective itself has to do with the eco-friendly removal of oil spills, which when left without management can be detrimental to the marine ecosystem.

Goal 14 of the SDGs aims to sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems from pollution, as well as address the impacts of ocean acidification [6]. In order to further understand how PineSorb could be attribution to this goal, our team decided to visit Taean, a coastal area in Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea which suffered a disastrous oil spill on December 7, 2007 where 10,500 tons of oil thoroughly covered the coastline of Taean [3].

Taean’s oil spill was the biggest oil spill in Korean history, which happened because of a collision between the Samsung crane barge with the MT Hebei Spirit boat. MT Hebei was carrying 260,000 tonnes of crude oil and among that, 10,500 tons of crude oil spilled into the Yellow Sea [1].

The effects of this oil spill to the marine ecosystem was of course devastating. A large number of fish and shellfish in nearby fish farms died as the oil spill caused turbidity in seawater and reduced dissolved oxygen. The devastation of fishing grounds also affected local livelihoods and even the local economy. Some predicted that it would take about 10 years at the earliest to normalize the local economy, and 20 to 30 years at the longest. It is also expected that it will take up to 100 years for the marine ecosystem to return to its original state.

This kind of effect is in direct contrast with Target 4.1 and 4.2 of Goal 14. Target 4.1 aims to reduce marine pollution and Target 4.2 aims to restore ecosystems [6]. Tragedies such as oil spills can completely reverse the efforts and progress of these targets that were in action for decades by one incident that happened only in minutes.

The reach of this disaster did not only affect marine wildlife. The livelihoods and sustainability of the fishing industry at Taean (which is the main source of income for a great majority of the people living there) were also greatly threatened and left destitute by the spill. Considering how Target 4.4 aims for a sustainable fishery, the effects on the fishing industry to Goal 14 surmount the effects of the wildlife.

The South Chungcheong Province, which suffered the most damage, suffered negative effects in 97% of their fishing industry, with 23,088 households in Boryeong and 13,839 households in Taean being at a loss of income source just in a day [9].

In order for our team to contribute to these goals, our team aimed to fulfill Target 14.b (support small-scale fishers) and Target 14.a (increase scientific knowledge, research, and technology for ocean health) through this project.

At Taean, we visited the Taean fishing community by interviewing and meeting local sea cucumber and abalone farmers. These farmers were the first eyewitnesses of the Taean oil spill and told us the devastating effect the event had on their livelihoods and their hometown’s nature.

The farmers mentioned how they volunteered to clean up the shores, manually, as they participated in a 1 year clean-up. The process started out with no specialized types of equipment at first, and they attempted to do what they could by removing oils with bowls and buckets they brought themselves. Only a few days after the accident more physical and human supplies arrived.

However, even after this clean-up, they experienced extremely low production quantity for the next 5 to 6 years.

When we introduced PineSorb to them, the farmers reacted on a positive note, mentioning how if used during the incident, PineSorb (if mass-produced) would have helped immensely during the clean-up. Contrary to buckets and bowls that have to be used to physically scoop up and remove the oil, our product would only need to be sprinkled across the shore, left to absorb all the oil, and used as energy afterward, thus leaving a positive cycle in the process.

Other than this interview, throughout the months that we spent on our project, we had time and again conducted educational sessions regarding our product and also the effects of oil spills to various audiences (children, students, companies and more). The activities that we had conducted is further elaborated in the Education part.

Conclusion

The Sustainable Development Goals were extremely useful as guidelines for our product, Pinesorb. The SDGs constantly reminded our team to look at the environmental benefits of Pinesorb over common oil sorbents such as polypropylene [10]. By referencing the goals of the United Nations in creating these 17 goals for all nations of the world, our team was able to continuously make connections between our own project and our vision of helping the world and introducing an environmentally friendly solution to an environmentally detrimental issue.

The Pinesorb project originated as a project inspired by the efforts made during the 2007 Taean Oil Spill Crisis, which was a local issue that many members of our team were already aware of. Through expanding upon our project, however, we opened our eyes to other oil spill crises, as well as the environmental detriment that such disasters pose. The Seoul_Korea team strives to take inspiration from the local issue and convert the same energy and passion into developing our project into a solution for both local and global oil crises.

For our team, the Sustainable Development Goals section was more than just a small subsection of Human Practices. It was a way for all parts of the team to come together and collaborate on a clear set of humanitarian goals that we were able to connect to everything that we did, from educating international students about synthetic biology to interviewing first-hand witnesses of the Taean Oil Spill Crisis. All of these efforts compiled led to Pinesorb, a product that lessens the negative effects of oil sorbents on climate change through responsible consumption and production, while also preventing extensive damage to marine life below the water.