My Sustainable Living Challenge- 2024 Edition

United Nations 2 years ago

Join 'My Sustainable Living Challenge' in its 2024 Edition and discover a fun and engaging online platform designed to help students learn about sustainability. ‘My Sustainable Living Challenge’  is an online gamified learning platform that provides a six-week interactive journey, offering valuable knowledge on the key sectors of sustainable living such as food, housing, and transportation. It is a journey in an immersive environment where a person can learn about sustainability, system change, the impact of your lifestyle, how to make better choices – in a FUN, interactive setting. Participants answer curated questions and engage in sustainable actions. Progress is tracked through the ‘treemagotchi’. For every question answered correctly and action that is shared, participants see how their tree grow and flourish, ‘nurtured’ by their intention to change. The platform is globally accessible and available in four languages: English, Spanish, French and Russian.  The 2024 Edition invites schools, organizations and communities to create teams and represent their campuses. Progress and achievements will be shared with teammates, the other contestants and through social media creating a sense of community and inspiring others to also take action. Over the course of six weeks, teams will compete with each other, earning points for their progress and innovation. Participants will be motivated to take actions that contribute to a more sustainable future, and encouraged to leverage their social media presence to increase the reach of their sustainable practices. The team with the most points earned will be announced as the champions of the challenge. When: The 2024 Global Edition of ‘My Sustainable Living Challenge’ will launch on World Environment Day (5 June) with a webinar presenting the Challenge. The game will run for 6 weeks starting on 19 August. What to do: Recruit a team of up to 10 members of the same university, college, institution, community. Register them on the UNSSC website. Teams are up to 10 members. Each institution can register up to 2 teams. Compete with other schools and represent your school spirit starting August 19!   Partners United Nations Systems Staff College (UNSSC) Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development (GO4SDGs) UNEP Sustainable Lifestyles team
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layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 7 hours ago



Sustainable construction is moving beyond efficient assets towards climate-resilient, resource-efficient buildings designed for fire, flood, heat and material scarcity. Wildfires that destroyed 38 homes in the Midlands, coupled with UK fire crews switching between wildfire and flood response, expose the growing environmental impact of construction decisions that overlook location, fabric, landscape management and passive survivability. UN warnings on rising seas, floods and drought across South Asia show that sustainable urban development is now inseparable from housing security, infrastructure resilience and migration risk.

For developers, designers and contractors, whole life carbon, embodied carbon and life cycle cost can no longer be treated as separate technical exercises.

A robust whole life carbon assessment must sit alongside lifecycle assessment, fire strategy, flood resistance, maintenance planning and insurance risk. Sustainable building design now demands non-combustible envelopes, defensible space, flood-resistant detailing, energy-efficient buildings and low carbon design that performs under real climate stress, not just at practical completion.

Circular economy principles are becoming central to environmental sustainability in construction. Plans for a wind-turbine recycling facility in the Scottish Highlands highlight a market for difficult composite waste, with clear relevance for circular economy in construction and end-of-life reuse in construction. Research turning plastic waste, including packaging and old CDs, into moisture-capturing polymer networks points towards future low carbon construction materials, green building products and renewable building materials that convert waste streams into useful infrastructure resources.

Policy and procurement remain decisive. Reports that UK rules restrict innovation in hard-to-recycle plastic film show that regulation must support circular construction strategies, resource efficiency in construction and sustainable material specification. Progress on net zero carbon buildings, net zero whole life carbon and carbon footprint reduction will depend on codes, insurance models and procurement frameworks that reward low embodied carbon materials, environmental product declarations (EPDs), eco-design for buildings and building lifecycle performance.

BREEAM, BREEAM v7 and emerging standards will increasingly be judged by their ability to connect sustainable design with resilience, circularity and verified carbon data. Green construction, eco-friendly construction and low-impact construction will matter most where they cut the carbon footprint of construction, improve climate adaptation and support decarbonising the built environment. The next phase of sustainable architecture is less about visible virtue and more about buildings that do not burn, flood, overheat or exhaust critical materials.

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