Sustainability: A Favor to the Environment or a Boost for Your Ego?
By Kaila Cherry
Over the past year, the push towards conscious consumption has been heavily promoted by individuals and brands alike. Realizing that the planet is facing irreversible environmental damage, more and more young people are moving away from supporting industries such as fast fashion and meat production due to wasteful and excess consumerism, as well as ethical concerns. Instead, they are focused on living sustainably. This can look like dumping Urban Outfitters for the thrift store, switching to a plant based diet, and buying reusable period products. Nowhere is the image of sustainability more prevalent than on social media. Whether it’s the pretty twenty-something influencer out of New York City or Los Angeles on Youtube, or the Instagram algorithm giving you ads for the hottest sustainable skincare line, it is nearly impossible to go a day online without seeing the buzzword used at least once. However, to what extent are these influencers and brands truly sustainable, and who is included and left out of the mainstream movement towards green consciousness?
The word “sustainable” was coined in the late 1970s with the advent of environmentalism and has shot up in popularity for the last several decades. The first time I learned about the concept of sustainability was in 2016. A young woman by the name of Lauren Singer had gone viral after she claimed that all of the trash she had accumulated over the course of two years could fit in a single mason jar. In an interview with MSNBC, Singer explained that she is able to live this “zero waste” lifestyle by shopping in bulk, using mason jars as cups, and making her own cleaning products among other things. Four years later, the ethos of Singer’s mason jar of trash speaks to a larger movement of people who aim to decrease the negative impact they have on the environment.
Today, there are a myriad of brands and influencers documenting their journeys towards sustainable living online. From bloggers to Instagrammers to Youtubers, there seems to be a collective interest in “saving the environment.” Yet when I searched the word “sustainable” on Youtube, the majority of the faces were of White and Asian women. Although many Black and Indigeous people are engaged in some form of sustainability, whether that be through choice, tradition, or through unjust economic circumstances that cause them to consume less in general, they are nowhere to be seen in the forefront of the movement.
Additionally, sustainable brands are less affordable than their not sustainable counterparts. Although this is in part due to the fact that the labor practices and materials used by these companies are more ethical and of a higher quality that drives the price up, the business model excludes low income folks regardless. For example, I recently decided I was in need of a sports bra and went to the website Girlfriend Collective to see what they had to offer. The price range of the bras were $38-$42 a pop, plus shipping. A few days later, I found myself in Target and purchased a sports bra for half the price. It may have not been a sustainable purchase, but when you are twenty years old trying to save up to pay for your own college education and living expenses, things like sustainable fashion are a luxury, not the norm.
Due to the sameness of the faces of sustainability in tandem with its elitist tendencies, one must wonder; Is sustainability still a lifestyle or is it simply an aesthetic for one’s Instagram feed? How radical is your “sustainability” if it does not include poor people and BIPOC? Or if it includes buying from brands like Los Angeles Apparel and Everlane that disenfranchise their workers but are environmentally friendly? Or when you yourself begin to capitalize on it? Lauren Singer, mentioned earlier, has her own “sustainable” company called Package Free. There, you can buy products that are just essential to getting zero waste, such as a mason jar toothbrush holder, organic “unpaper” towels that are just washcloths, and a lint and pill remover. These products are overpriced and unnecessary. Ironically, a woman who said that she began her zero waste journey in an effort to get away from the modern “consumerist trash lifestyle” is directly contributing to it significantly.
This is not to say that people should not try to live a minimal and sustainable lifestyle. Instead, it is a reminder to stay critical of any cultural movement that prides itself exclusively on its moral high ground. Oftentimes, such movements become less about the cause and more about communicating to others, and in turn themselves, that they are good people. That is, in many ways, what is becoming of sustainability. However, the sustainable movement still has time to save itself from devolving into a circle jerk for white skinny elitists to faun over each other’s collections of metal straws. If the influencers are able to acknowledge the privilege they have to be able to invest in ethical and sustainable brands, only buy from brands who support the rights of their workers, and actively uplift BIPOC and their impact on environmentalism, there may be hope yet for the movement.