Why I began living sustainably
The following post is the written version of the featured video.
Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to do with my life. I considered myself a jack of all trades, always dabbling in one activity, then another. So once the time rolled around for applying to colleges, I settled on being a business major. It seemed like a safe, general route, and I ended up going to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for their business program.
At the start of my college career, I made a bit of a pact with myself. I knew that whatever job I landed in after graduation, I wanted to love others well and leave the world a little better than it was before. I didn't know what this would look like, but I presumed that a business degree would bring about some opportunity to do so.
Around my first quarter, by chance, I became part of a new business club called Net Impact that helped students discover how they could leverage business careers for good. It was through this outlet that I discovered the world of corporate social responsibility, and it resonated with my original vision of wanting to love others well with my business career. Becoming part of this club opened my eyes to various business issues, but I became interested in the broken world of fast fashion. Little did I know of its ramifications and the impact it had on the people who made my clothing. From there, I knew I wanted to do something in manufacturing and get my feet wet in the world of responsible supply chains.
Being a business major wasn't going to be the right route to get into the manufacturing world, so I spent a few months researching what major to switch to and ended up in the business college's Industrial Technology program. Within a month of starting my new major, I knew I had made the right move - it was a lot more hands-on than I had anticipated, with various labs that allowed me to understand different materials and manufacturing processes. I had a much more enjoyable time getting my hands dirty than sitting in a lecture hall. From welding to machining to learning how to draw 3D models of parts, I began to appreciate how much energy and effort are needed to make a physical product.
One of my first packaging courses was an introduction to plastic polymers and processing. For the most part, the class was pretty enjoyable as I loved to understand how things were made. Yet to my surprise, my professor imparted a piece of knowledge to our class that none of us expected that quarter.
He shared that after years of research and studying plastics, he was convinced that we didn't know the true implications plastics had on our health. Yet it's embedded in our food packaging, our cars, our homes, everyday products, and when it's thrown away, it doesn't degrade but breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. While more research is to be done, additives in plastics, such as heavy metals, will leach out of the plastic as products decay over several years, ending up in waterways or soil, which all leads to our food and drinking water.
I'll never forget the first lecture where he warned us about using Teflon pans, which tend to impart toxins into our foods, especially when heated. Right after that lecture, I dragged Peter into helping me buy a stainless steel pot, which I still use to this day.
Taking that plastics course was a huge turning point for me in realizing that everyday consumers like myself had very little knowledge about what they were buying and how it would affect their bodies and the environment. And the more I got into my other packaging engineering courses, the more fascinated I became with this hidden world of boxes, bottles, cans, and more...yet I knew the average consumer was entirely disconnected from it. Packaging was seen as trash and simply thrown away without much of a thought.
By the time my last quarter of college rolled around, I was mentally prepared to graduate and move on to a full-time tech job that was lined up for me later that summer. It had nothing to do with packaging, sustainability, or corporate social responsibility. Nevertheless, I decided to take one last packaging class for fun and was surprised to have a guest lecturer come one week to talk about sustainability. He worked at the local landfill in San Luis Obispo, and he opened up the lecture with this one particular fact.
“The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population but generates about 40% of the world’s waste.”
I think my heart skipped a beat when I heard that. I couldn't believe it. And as I walked out of that classroom that morning, graduated later that year, and went off to the workforce, the more I reflected on my studies...the more I observed how most consumers in the United States don't care to think about how products are made and where they will end up at the end of their lives. We believe our world that is plentiful and abundant because all we have to do is go to a store or click a button, and we can get the next best thing, the newest thing, and we do it again and again, and again. We've lost touch with understanding that every action we have has an impact on our planet and potentially our bodies, and many of us have gotten tied up in the unhealthy consumption patterns our capitalistic economy feeds us.
I started my blog shortly after graduating, six years ago, as a way to spread awareness and share my journey to live more consciously, which leads us to the present day, to this very video. I'm so grateful to be here still, and I am always humbled by how many of you have decided to tune in as I try my best to continue to try my best to continue learning about what sustainable living looks like in today's society. Whether that be through minimalism, low waste living, or food sustainability, I know there's so much to learn and share, as sustainability touches every area of our lives.
I hope my story encourages you to seek truth and purpose in wherever your passions lie. Don't be afraid to question your reality. We live in a broken world, but there is hope, and we can be agents of hope - changemakers that strive to make it better than it was before.
