Our “sustainability” isn’t sustainable
As pollution levels rise and extreme weather conditions develop, sustainability has never been more top of mind. But, the environment isn’t the only thing at stake, our health is deteriorating too — and it’s not being felt equally. The consequences we’ve faced as a result of the pandemic have made this very clear. We’ve been so busy trying to save the planet that we’ve failed to acknowledge that the protection of the environment is meaningless without the equitable protection of its people.
In the past few years, scientists have warned us that our time is running out to save the world. Headlines caution that “civilization itself is at risk” as the United Nations calls attention to the imminent famine, disease, and refugee crises that will occur if we don’t make “transformative systemic change.” Sustainability has become the focal point of our society because, well, our future depends on it.
In an era of hypersensitivity to public opinion and rising demands for transparency, brands have a newfound responsibility to take part in shaping these new sustainable systems. Younger generations are holding them accountable for their participation in environmental sustainability and broader social justice. Wunderman Thompson found that 90% of consumers say that brands have a responsibility to take care of the planet and its people. NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business found that consumers are standing behind their values, fueling 5.6x faster growth of sustainable products versus non-sustainable products. Unilever’s Sustainable Living brands grew 69% faster than the rest of their business and delivered 75% of their overall growth in 2018. You get it.
Many corporations are answering the call, delivering solutions that can shape the future of environmentally conscious consumerism. Innovations that can rein in wasteful consumption or even begin to reverse the effects of greenhouse gases with net-zero production processes are front and center. Other, less groundbreaking, brands promise vaguely “greener” operations and internal “values” that align with the modern, socially conscious consumer to meet the current movement.
Sustainability in our culture has largely been defined by a brand’s impact on the environment, or lack thereof. Sustainable brands are the ones who promise “ethical,” “organic,” “transparent” processes and products with less waste. But, some of the same brands who proudly display sustainable practices, like fully recyclable packaging or ethical sourcing, and champion inclusivity with posts of solidarity to BLM just weeks ago do so with corporate cultures that drastically break from their social-good campaigning (cough, Everlane, Reformation, Vogue).
So here lies the problem with sustainability: against the backdrop of a culture that has made social justice a social media tactic, brands can hide behind greenwashed marketing campaigns and “ethical” practices, while they foster toxic work environments and exploit BIPOC workers and creators. As Maxine Bédat, founder of the New Standard Institute, said in a recent Vogue interview, “[Until now], the response to the climate crisis from brands has been, ‘What can we do to show that we’re doing something?’ as opposed to addressing the fundamental issue.”
Accountability is an issue here, but going further, the real problem is that brands are ignoring a core tenant of sustainability–protection of people. They have conveniently separated people from planet in their sustainability efforts, advocating for one without the other.
But, as we’ve seen in a few short months, things are changing.
“Change is happening as the Black Lives Matter movement shifts social attitudes, power brokers respond to those shifts, and callouts audit the sincerity of those responses — leading to tangible, not merely rhetorical, concessions.”
–Spencer Kornhaber, Writer at The Atlantic
The pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests have called for a new mandate of accountability from brands to addresses this fundamental idea of people plus planet. The current sustainability model isn’t sustainable for everyone, making us ask, what does it mean for a society to even be truly sustainable?
Embracing the future of this space means moving beyond environmental protection, beyond environmentally-conscious consumerism for a more inclusive approach that advocates for protecting the people and the planet. That means learning to deeply understand how the environment and people are intertwined. We have to pivot towards something larger, more multifaceted, more inclusive, more intersectional. Leah Thomas, founder of Intersectional Environmentalist and @GreenGirlLeah, explains that Intersectional Environmentalism is a more diverse, inclusive version of environmentalism that advocates for all and “identifies the ways in which injustices happening to marginalized communities and the Earth are interconnected.”
Intersectionality might be a word you’ve heard a lot recently, and there’s a good reason for it. It’s a framework for understanding how multiple inequalities or disadvantages stemming from someone’s identity (sex, race, religion, etc.) compound themselves across interconnected social structures. In other words, it helps us understand how the convergence of different stereotypes plays out in our world.
Many social justice movements, environmentalism, feminism, etc., are well-intentioned to make a positive change in society and governmental policy, but intersectionality considers that the creation of solutions to one problem might leave certain groups behind. Jane Coaston wrote for Vox, “Intersectionality is intended to ask a lot of individuals and movements alike, requiring that efforts to address one form of oppression take others into account.” It means, for example, fighting racism would require examining other prejudices, like anti-Semitism, and eliminating workplace gender disparities requires looking at how women of color experience bias differently from white women. It’s a method of “observing and analyzing power imbalances” and, as Coaston describes, “the tool by which those power imbalances could be eliminated altogether.”
Taking this back to sustainability, an intersectional view starts by acknowledging the impact of oppressive systems in place that reside over our society. Structural inequalities that currently exist intensify the effects of climate change on health deterioration in Black, brown, and indigenous communities and lower socioeconomic classes. That is a compounding effect.
When the Earth burns, so to speak, BIPOC communities are the first to inhale the smoke and feel the ground shake. And, although most disproportionately affected by climate change, least responsible for it, and well-positioned to tackle it because of their historical contributions to sustainability, they are left out of the conversations that can most impact change. There’s a common thread in the environmentalism space that although Black and Indigenous activists have led environmental campaigns for decades, their voices go unheard, experiences deemed as unimportant because their realities don’t exist within the dominant in-group–white people. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson pointed out in her recent Washington Post article that despite these facts, BIPOC are still more concerned about climate change than white people and Vice contributor Nylah Burton explained that BIPOC experience more intense climate grief.
When examining issues like climate change, deforestation, or the extinction of animal species, it’s never just about the environment. It’s necessary to consider issues that evolve alongside environmental sustainability movements like lack of access to solutions, overgeneralizations, and exclusivity amongst privileged groups. An obvious example is the barrier many low-income populations face to obtaining organic, vegetable-heavy diets, living in areas identified as food deserts, in which access to supermarkets or affordable produce is heavily limited. Or perhaps, the barrier that same population faces to obtaining adequate preventative care. Both might lead to chronic health conditions later in life that make them more susceptible to disease and the negative effects of pollution.
It’s clear now, as we face a global pandemic, how deeply these inequalities run. Ed Yong wrote for the Atlantic that the coronavirus was not a “great equalizer,” but “found, exploited, and widened every inequity that the US had to offer… taking advantage of injustices that had been brewing throughout the nation’s history.”
As we look to the future of sustainability and what it looks like, it’s crucial to consider the interweaving effects that both environmental deterioration and embedded structural inequalities have on people’s health. It’s not just about protecting the natural world, we also have to consider how our actions will affect different groups’ physical and psychological wellbeing.
