Environmental Racism

Lately I've been thinking a lot about zero waste’s association with privilege. Recently in my community I entered an old factory full of asbestos, stuffed to the rafters with trash. You have to climb a pile of garbage three stories high, with trees shooting up out of it, to even enter the building. One level was covered in e-waste, chemicals from which leached into the ground. Another housed treated wood, needles, and other biohazards. Sadly, illegal dumping wasn't limited to a single factory, threatening the nearby community's water supply and putting residents at risk for lead poisoning. Some were seriously injured stripping abandoned buildings of scrap metal and other materials for resale. The surrounding area appears post apocalyptic- bombed out-looking roads, homes with collapsing roofs and porches, deserted cars lining the block. A man slowly pushed a broken shopping cart full of aluminum cans down the street, picking up smashed ones rolling by. 

The trash comes from affluent suburbs within the greater metropolitan area, and waste removal companies were allowed to dump as they pleased- but if local residents were caught tossing anything, they faced fines among other, often more severe, penalties. This is but one example of severe racial disparity in proximity to hazardous waste sites and enforced environmental laws. Cleaning up these sites is difficult because some of the owners are imprisoned, or they owe back taxes, making them hard to track down. When you finally do reach them, liability provisions make owners unwilling to relinquish or assess contaminated land. Then there's the trouble of funding. Land use regulations limit prospective developers' flexibility. Discriminatory real estate, lending, and insurance practices put secure housing out of reach for most. Decaying urban areas with shrunken tax bases have no money for necessary municipal services like trash collection and disposal. Who wants to invest in an area literally overflowing with waste? How do you rezone a place like that? And how do you get residents to trust developers after decades of disinvestment, broken promises, and disappointment?

People talk a lot about how sustainable living is too expensive or impractical for the general population. But when I see people living like this- and there are a lot of illegal dumping sites and makeshift landfills in my area- it makes me think discarding trash and having it carted away is really a function of privilege. If I throw out packaging from a Daiya pumpkin spice cheesecake, I don't ever deal with it again. My trash gets shipped off to a lower income neighborhood, or a so-called developing country, where somebody my age, with probably the same aspirations and desires as me, literally gets buried alive in it. Their children will suffer from asthma and other low level chronic health threats caused by industrial chemicals I use and purchase- not mine (speaking hypothetically, I still don't want children). So it bothers me that zero waste efforts are associated with environmental racism, when garbage is so widely used as a tool of oppression.

I worked in sustainability for nearly a decade and saw many ideas to improve living conditions squashed by bureaucracy or political barriers. Zero waste is the only professional arena where I actually saw concrete change, where people actually told me they felt healthier and happier, like their quality of life improved. Almost anyone, regardless of income, can say no to a plastic straw or a paper napkin. Everyone benefits when they take care of their things and buy primarily because they need something, not simply because they want something new. The underlying causes of environmental racism are systemic and deeply entrenched. They are not going to be fixed with a social media post. They're not even going to be fixed by government! I was at COP21. The throwaway mentality causing humans to view things- and people- as disposable is essentially a spiritual problem requiring a spiritual solution, and you can't legislate people's attitudes. But you can influence them.

When you vote, you're accountable for whatever that politician does, because you put them in office. Shopping is voting, and we're accountable for everything we put in the trash. Corporations frequently ignore governments, but consumers often force their hand (look at how prevalent gluten free options are in restaurants and grocery stores now). Raw materials are cheap right now, but the costs associated with recycling, repair, and biodegradable goods are high. Anyone can demand better materials, and more recycling and repair options. Anyone can stop buying unnecessary items. If those who have access to unpackaged products take advantage of it, or use their means to repair instead of buying new, we can lower the cost of raw materials and increase accessibility to durable goods. That's why I think zero waste is a real way to mitigate the environmental evils people face now. And I KNOW zero waste isn't just an elite concern.

I regret writing that some people are so poor, and struggling so much, that they can't afford to care about the environment. That was the most disenfranchising thing I could have said, because, believe it or not, struggling people do think about things beyond mere survival. They imagine more beautiful, greener lives too, and assuming they can't do anything zero waste strips them of agency same as speculation and displacement. Historically a lot of urban programs fail when they focus only on housing, legislation, and zoning, but don't account for things like beauty and culture, which everyone- yes, even poor people and minorities- need. And zero waste is beauty and culture.

For every person that says zero waste is only for the privileged, the white, and the affluent, I have an email from someone who associates the behavior with frugality, ascetism, or Depression-era / wartime thrift. I mentioned this to a friend who suffered extreme racism growing up (she did not grow up in the US). At one point, as a direct result of prejudice and exclusionary legal practices, she scavenged streets for spare change just to afford enough for a single meal. To this day she saves every little scrap and wastes nothing. She thinks it's funny zero waste is perceived as an elitist trend, because, as she put it, "I was zero waste before blogging was even a thing, only we didn't call it that. It was called desperation then."

Dismissing zero waste as a marker of affluence won't combat our garbage problem. Drawing dividing lines between the privileged and not won't help, either. Based on case studies and my (admittedly limited) working knowledge of sustainability in urban communities, here are some things that can improve conditions now:

1. Follow the money. To tackle deeply entrenched problems, you have to move rich people. Show investors brownfields and abandoned industrial sites aren't liabilities, they're assets. Get them to see these places, not as health threatening eyesores, but as potential playgrounds and parks and spaces for homes and businesses. You can do this by eliciting stories from local residents and being strategic about use of media. Overcoming legal hurdles heavily depends on gaining clout with the media, since officials aren't going to do anything unless they think it'll benefit business and wealthy people, so highlighting inspirational stories from the local community can help them see reinvestment as a benefit to cultural and institutional arrangements.
2. Organize massive cleanups. It has to be extreme. Small scale cleanups are nice, but in reality you have to tow away tons of cars, scrap a bunch of shopping carts, literally strain rivers of cigarettes and plastic bottles, etc. Like decluttering or dieting, little steps won't help much, because it's just enough to make you feel deprived, but not enough for immediate gratification, i.e. visible results. Social media is a good way of mobilizing people- especially youth- to take part, but for long term sustainability, you need to get people off social media and away from their phones so they can actually work and help.
3. Involve everyone. Planning committees, trustee boards, and community volunteers must equally, not proportionally, represent all races and income levels to prevent infighting. Plus if you want tackle problems like absentee landlords or unfair zoning, if you want eminent domain delegated to low income communities, if you want development without displacement, you need all the lawyers and developers with all the cultural inputs and sensitivity you can get.  When building and institutionalizing civic capacity, it's especially important to get youth involved- in the long term, this ensures a well-developed economic base so longtime residents, not just incoming hipsters, benefit equally. This is why places like the Flats in Cleveland failed in the past. If the businesses and housing are too expensive for the existing community, you have gangs coming back, and it's going to go downhill again, same as it did when I was a kid, and again when my mom was younger... but places like Fairmont Creamery or businesses like Dave's Supermarket and Perfectly Imperfect, which reinvest in the community and provide fresh produce and healthy food to people in food deserts, will sustain growth in the long run.
4. Enable low income residents. This might mean teaching people to propagate their own plants from clippings, food scraps, and donated seeds; or establishing free classes and counseling on everything from zero waste to finance assembly. Prospective community members need confidence, skills, and knowledge to overcome long-established obstacles.
5. Landscape open space. A garden can fix any problem, be it societal or environmental, and it's a proven way to stabilize a community, restore unbuildable (is that a word?) land, and contain hazardous waste. A lot about a half acre large, depending on what you plant, can remediate lead-containing soil so it's clean enough to grow crops in as little as three years. Eventually these plots can be redeveloped for food production or value added food enterprises. In the meantime, urban gardens mitigate pollution and allow residents to affirm cultural identities. Public art (see The Heidelberg Project, House Poem) is similarly helpful in that it nurtures culture and fosters creativity, which is a hallmark of successful initiatives that transformed unlivable areas into vibrant ones.
6. Focus on what you can do, not what you can't. I know not everyone can afford fancy jars or has the luxury of driving all over the place to bulk shops. I've been there. Not everyone even has access to real fruits and vegetables- this summer I gave a toddler his first fresh raspberry and it broke my heart. He'd never had one that hadn't come in a can or plastic cup before. But everyone can say no to some disposables, or some animal products. Most people can use, say, knotted t-shirts or pillowcases instead of plastic bags. Use a rag instead of paper towel, or collect dishwater to flush the toilet, or turn the water off while brushing teeth, or use baking soda and bar soap instead of packaged toiletries. There's a gas station in my community that makes healthy, affordable sandwiches people can purchase with food stamps- but they only accept food stamps or SNAP cards for vegetable sandwiches, not meat ones! Everyone can make personal choices to consume as little of earth's resources and produce as little waste as possible according to their unique circumstances.

Recently a woman living in a low income community used a menstrual cup for the first time, and it was lifechanging for her, but she normally didn't have enough money at one time to invest in one- it was gifted. Right now, because everyone automatically assumes durable goods are too expensive without actually thinking about it, there's limited demand for loans for circular economy solutions. The infrastructure necessary for extended producer responsibility, recollection, and recycling can change business classification to include waste management, bringing a host of requirements and regulations many companies can't afford to take on until more consumers demand them. 

Instead of writing off zero waste entirely, why not take practical steps to get reusables into the hands of people who could not otherwise afford them? I already know women who are using the money they've saved by going zero waste (or the money they've made from blogging about it) to donate to womens' shelters, or provide reusable feminine hygiene products, or purchase seeds for inner city school gardens. There's a lot of sacrifice and hard work going on behind the scenes that people aren't seeing on social media. If you have an idea- a concrete, specific idea, not just an abstraction- about how zero waste can help victims of environmental racism, tell me! I want to hear if there's a school or an organization you know of that needs reusables or a garden or a business that needs crowdfunding or something. I want to know how to do better. But don't just say zero waste is expensive or unrealistic. I'm sick of hearing that from people who haven't tried it or who are too prejudiced to really look at the matter closely. And while I'm ranting, people can stop trying to guess my ethnicity too. You'll never get it right! I'm every color of the rainbow. I'm basically a Doug character!