This was an email interview since Alicia was not in Zurich. This interview was conducted by Ashoka Vardhan Manchala, Lead Team Member of NHWZ / Sustainabilty Week Zurich in October 2025. This is the first in our "Person of the Sweek" interview series on our blog, where we celebrate one person who has been part of our community.

Ashoka: Alicia, how it is going? Where are you now and what are you up to?

Alicia: I’m doing great, thanks Ashoka! I recently moved to Turin for my master’s thesis, and I’m super excited about pretty much everything: the research, my colleagues and supervisor, the food (of course!), the mountains just around the corner and all the incredibly friendly people I keep meeting!

Ashoka: Let's begin with this amazing thing called BikeCinema / VeloKino. Something you organised in April with us. There were these two big tents on the ETH Polyterrasse. The main tent had flickering lights from the film screening inviting people in. But, there was something unusual. There were two kinds of audience: a sitting audience and a biking audience. 10 people were biking while watching the film as if they are in a cycling class and there was a big battery in between connecting the bikes. Explain us how it works. How did you come up with this?

Alicia: I'm part of an organisation called Vélorution and we regularly organize film screenings with our human-powered bike cinema setup. The idea is brilliantly simple! Visitors mount their bikes on ten standard roller trainers, each modified with a dynamo. When they pedal, the motion is converted into electrical energy through electromagnetic induction, powering the laptop, projector, and speakers. The whole system needs only about 500 W, which is easily covered by ten people taking turns, so the buffer battery usually ends up with more charge than at the start!

I'm not actually a huge movie person, but I really like the idea of the whole cinema being human-powered and that I can get to ride a bike (at least if not a dozen other people are queuing to get to cycle).

Ashoka: No wonder it was a big hit. And was one of the most popular events of the Sustainabilty Week 2025. How was your experience organising the event? Who did you work with?

Alicia: It was tiring, but in the most rewarding way. Over three evenings, we screened films in collaboration with different organizations, each bringing their own perspective on sustainability and community.

We had popcorn from FLiK and on the first evening, we even served free vegan crêpes, thanks to my friend Violeta from Plant-Based Universities (PBU), which is a highly successful student-led movement across Europe promoting sustainable food systems within universities. The second screening featured a film by one of Zoé’s peers from ZHdK and for the third, Simon from Terran and I picked a bikepacking film. Before each screening, friends from VELOVE and the Sustainability Week team always came to lend a hand.

And then there was the small matter of transporting the bike cinema… with a cargo bike and a giant trailer from the Lastenradkollektiv (another Vélorution project where people can borrow cargo bikes on a donation basis). I’ll never forget the moment when I tried to restart uphill after a red light and started rolling backward! Thankfully, a few strangers jumped in to push. It was the perfect metaphor for the week: a little collective effort makes even the heaviest load move forward.

Ashoka: Once we ran into each other at the ETH Sustainability Summit in November, where you had a big poster of VELOVE. Till then, I did not know you could just repair your bikes for free right in the UZH Zentrum. Please tell us more about it?

Alicia: Sure! VELOVE is a student-run bike collective that I’m really fond of. We’re a group of cycling enthusiasts running two DIY repair workshops in Zurich, one at Hönggerberg and one at Zentrum. Students can come by to learn how to fix their bikes (and avoid going bankrupt at a repair shop). That’s also where I met some of my closest friends, the ones I would join for anything from a quick spin after class to week-long bikepacking trips.

Ashoka: Where can we get the best bike helmets in Zurich?

Alicia: Honestly, I have no clue. But if you’ve got bike-related questions or are looking for cycling buddies, You are welcome to join the VELOVE WhatsApp community. It's full of passionate bike nerds who will happily overwhelm you with recommendations.

Ashoka: You are actually part of other organisations too. I ran into you once at Hönggerberg and you were selling sausages in front of another film screening. And you also did another event about sustainable travel during the week. Can you tell us briefly about other organisations you worked with?

Alicia: Maybe I’ll just mention one, the most relevant for many readers here, assuming poor and hungry students who care about reducing food waste. It’s called Foodsharing. The organisation allows volunteers to rescue perfectly good food from supermarkets, bakeries, and restaurants that would otherwise end up in the bin. Out of curiosity, I once tried and managed to live almost entirely on saved food for a semester with close to no expenses! You can do the same, just check out https://foodsharing.de

Ashoka: What drew you to sustainability in the first place? What does it mean to you?

Alicia: For me, it's a matter of principle and maybe a bit of ego.

Right now, we’re like the ultimate bad flatmates: we eat all the food, steal the furniture and set the apartment on fire, but somehow expect the next tenants to fix the mess. Sustainability is just about being decent flatmates: taking care of the place so everyone, including future tenants, can live well.

Also, it would be kind of embarrassing if some extraterrestrial life form ever decided to categorize intelligent species in the universe and humanity ended up in the "pseudointellectuals" section for being smart enough to invent AI but not wise enough to keep their planet livable.

Ashoka: Can you tell one thing that you find hard or frustrates you about sustainability or related stuff? Or is there something you cannot wrap your head around?

Alicia: Yeah, sometimes it feels like being caught in a dull game, stuck in a positional deadlock. Most players are waiting for someone else to make a bold move on the climate front, scared of losing ground and claiming their own action wouldn’t matter anyway. When everyone hides behind that logic, the board stays frozen. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking… same one for all of us, by the way.

Maybe the real breakthrough comes when we stop waiting for the perfect move and just start playing ourselves, others will follow.

Ashoka: Can you give us one life hack? It could be anything.

Alicia: I’d say foodsharing is already a pretty good life hack. It saves both money and food.

But on a more down-to-earth (literally) note: if you’re inflexible like me, try rotating on the spot a few times. It makes your head spin, which somehow makes it easier to touch your toes while keeping your legs straight.

Don’t believe me? Well, you’ll have to try it yourself.

Ashoka: Thanks for all the work you have done and for being part of the NHWZ community!

Alicia: Haha, I could say the same to you! Thank you!

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