Environmentally-friendly Geneva!

After encountering numerous instances of environmentally-friendly activities here, I thought this topic deserved a blog post. This is not to say that such activities don't exist in the US, but at least from my experiences, they are much more extensive and established here in Geneva.

1) Motion-sensitive lights
Not a particularly new concept I suppose, but these lights are everywhere! Take the WHO bathrooms for example. If no one has been in the bathroom recently, all of the lights are off. And each individual stall (they are enclosed) also has motion-sensitive light bulbs. And of course, all of the light bulbs are fluorescent!

But be careful! Once I was using the mirror in the restroom to fix my eye makeup (yeah, yeah, I know…) and I guess I wasn't jumping around enough for the motion detectors to realize I was still there -- all at once, the entire room was pitch black! Let's just say that my eyeliner definitely had to be redone afterwards…

2) Motion-sensitive escalators
Admittedly these are becoming increasingly common in the US as well, but over here, I don't think I've seen any escalators that aren't motion-sensitive. OK, granted I've only seen a total of 3 escalators over here (Geneva is such a walking city…jeez, take the stairs!), but still, 100% is worth something. (OK, excuse my blatant use of faulty statistics with little significance to support my overarching point…just trying to replicate drug companies' methods of data analyses…haha only kidding!, sort of).

3) No plastic bags at grocery stores?
As I approached the front of the line to pay for my groceries, I looked around for where the plastic bags were stored. A preliminary scan yielded no success and the lady at the cash register asked me to pay. As I swiped my card, I asked her for a bag. She pulled out a medium-sized paper bag and asked, ¨this one?¨ Sure, any bag would do. ¨20 cents,¨ she responds. And I pay again.
No wonder all the other shoppers were walking around with large cloth bags…and well, now I do too!

4) WHO's work on Environmental Health
Besides the WHO, of course there is UNEP and tons of other organizations with offices in Geneva, working on environmental policy. Just to show the WHO's involvement in climate change and health, here's an excerpt advertising for a lunchtime seminar today:

¨On Tuesday, 16 June, the Public Health and Environment Department will host a lunchtime seminar entitled 'Climate Change Prospects, Risks and Opportunities: Mainstreaming Human Health' in Salle G, at 12:30hrs. An open dialogue with Dr Tony McMichael, President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology will give you an opportunity to discuss population health risks due to climate change. Professor McMichael is one the world's leading experts on climate change and health. He has served on three rounds of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and authored numerous scientific papers, books and reports on climate change and health including several on behalf of WHO, over more than 20 years.¨

5) Tap water = really good-tasting drinking water
The tap water is definitely drinkable and in my opinion, tastes better than it does in NJ where I live. I went to school in Philly and I would not have drunk the tap water there without first having passed it through a Brita filter. I can't go into all of the percentages of impurities, etc in the water in both places (mainly because I don't know the stats at all), but it doesn't take a brilliant observer to notice the accessibility of clean drinkable water and the bright blue waters of Lake Geneva.

I've also read that Geneva has one of the lowest rates of air pollution out of all the OECD countries!

OK, well, that's it for now…I'll write more if I stumble across any more interesting environmentally-friendly activities in Geneva :)

Shazia Mehmood is a participant in Duke University's Global Health Fellows Program. She just finished her first year at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and is very involved in domestic and global health policy.