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One Instagram submit, podcast, and TikTok, at a time, Lauren Ritchie, CC ’22, is on a mission to redefine sustainability, amplify marginalized voices, and acquire traction for an inclusive local weather motion motion.
Ritchie is a Bahamian local weather justice activist whose platform, @ecojusticeproject on Instagram, has amassed greater than 50,000 followers. Rising up on Grand Bahama Island, an island significantly weak to the impacts of local weather change—together with the devastating 2019 class 5 Hurricane Dorian—Ritchie was keen to interact within the local weather dialog with different Bahamian natives. Over the summer season, Ritchie initially created her platform as a strategy to join with Bahamian folks throughout quarantine and to interrupt down the stigma that there exists a one-size-fits-all method on the subject of sustainability. Within the wake of George Floyd’s demise, Ritchie noticed a necessity for an environmental justice platform that understood how racial justice, social justice, and environmentalism are naturally interconnected.
“After I return house, there are not any thrift shops. It’s very, very arduous to get entry to vegan meals,” Ritchie mentioned. “We barely also have a recycling facility. So simply issues like that, that are so frequent right here in New York, weren’t obtainable there, so I wished to be as inclusive as doable on the subject of how we discuss sustainability.”
For Ritchie, a Black lady, the environmental motion has at all times been inextricable from tackling social justice. As Ritchie’s platform grew and her affect expanded past the Bahamas, she started to foster an inclusive on-line neighborhood of environmentalists inside a growingly unique sustainability motion: an area that amplifies marginalized voices and places social justice on the forefront of the local weather dialog.
“The prevalence of racism inside the world neighborhood isn’t nearly police brutality or discrimination inside the legal justice system. It’s all over the place. It’s within the high quality of our air and water. It’s within the segregated and poorly funded communities we reside in. It’s in our restricted entry to sources,” Ritchie wrote in an article for Brown Woman Inexperienced, a weblog run by Filipina-American environmental activist Kristy Drutman.
Ritchie tries to reclaim what sustainability means—a way of life that many low-income, BIPOC communities have been engaged in out of necessity, lengthy earlier than purchasing secondhand or being zero waste turned mainstream. She hopes to foster a nuanced understanding of sustainability, one which takes context into consideration when assessing how people take local weather motion. This nuanced understanding of sustainability is one thing Ritchie seen was lacking at Columbia, significantly when it got here to conversations surrounding sustainable style, akin to the dearth of reasonably priced and sustainable plus-size clothes.
“I keep in mind, there was one time, one among my associates was in an elevator in John Jay … and somebody had complimented her on the coat that she was carrying,” she mentioned. “And it was from a fast-fashion model. They usually form of shamed her within the elevator for being like, ‘Oh, you’re carrying quick style; that’s not good for the planet’—with out taking into consideration the nuance behind it, of that my buddy was plus measurement.”
However, Ritchie additionally began to see a type of sustainability that felt classist. Sustainable style has been capitalized on by firms and prosperous folks alike, remodeling right into a glorified aesthetic that focuses on fashionable, upsold Depop outfits, relatively than advocating for communities disproportionately affected by local weather change.
“There can’t simply be one strategy to be sustainable, as a result of everybody has the capability to be sustainable in no matter that appears like for them,” she mentioned. “So saying sustainability is thrift shops and being vegan is grossly narrow-minded in what sustainability truly means at its core.”
In all of her initiatives, Ritchie is dedicated to creating platforms that share the tales of those that have been traditionally silenced in issues that considerably influence them—together with, however not restricted to, the local weather disaster. As an intern at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Ritchie labored on advancing range and fairness by aiding the event of Columbia Local weather Conversations, a panel sequence that invited well-known activists to talk on matters starting from intersectional environmentalism to incapacity consciousness.
As a co-host of the weekly podcast “Black Woman Blueprint,” an area made by and for Gen-Z Black ladies, Ritchie and her co-host Makeen Zachery, the activist behind the Twitter deal with @blkgirlculture, amplify and rejoice the achievements of trailblazing younger Black ladies. They invite particular visitors, which have included dressmaker Kyemah McEntyre, actress Zolee Griggs, and 14-year-old social justice activist Naomi Wadler, to seem on their podcast to honor their work and focus on what it means to be a Black lady inside the areas they inhabit.
“I believe I’ve positively seen a problem—when it comes to what I’m studying in my courses—with academia being held [as] the very best commonplace of schooling or data,” Ritchie mentioned. “I believe due to that, we are likely to belittle expertise as a type of data or as a type of information.”
Usually the one Black lady in her sustainable growth courses, Ritchie has needed to confront areas the place marginalized voices are sometimes not included within the local weather dialog. She emphasised the significance of allyship for privileged people to amplify the voices of these from marginalized backgrounds in an effort to additional the local weather motion.
For Ritchie, taking local weather motion consists of being prepared to be taught and listen to extra. Nevertheless, this message applies to not solely people but in addition highly effective establishments, like Columbia, which have the means to create a long-lasting influence on each marginalized communities and the planet as a complete.
With regards to taking motion, the local weather disaster can oftentimes really feel like too huge a problem for a person’s actions to have a significant influence. That’s exactly why Ritchie is captivated with redefining sustainability in a means that doesn’t deter folks from being environmentally aware. Ritchie’s inclusive and nuanced definition of sustainability doesn’t scrutinize people for the local weather actions that they’re unable to take. As a substitute, she invitations all folks to include sustainability into their lives in a means that’s proportionate to their sources and asserts the significance of holding bigger firms accountable for his or her disproportionate influence on the setting.
As a substitute of feeling daunted by sustainable residing, Ritchie desires to encourage her friends to take motion by any means doable—even when the actions appear insignificant.
“Don’t really feel such as you’re a foul environmentalist or [like] you don’t care concerning the planet as a result of you’ll be able to’t match into what the mainstream, glamorized kind of thought of sustainability has grow to be— as a result of that’s not true,” Ritchie mentioned.
For Ritchie, being sustainable has by no means been about being good, however about making progress.
With regards to consuming extra sustainably, for instance, in case you are not able to decide to veganism, Ritchie suggests as a substitute reduce one thing possible out of your food regimen.
“You don’t should be full, quote-unquote, vegan, no matter which means … simply reduce out no matter feels proper to you,” Richie mentioned. “Even when which means perhaps not consuming meat on Mondays, or one thing like that, or no matter works into your schedule. However nonetheless, it makes an effort, [which] I believe, is basically, actually necessary.”
In a latest @ecojusticeproject TikTok submit, Ritchie spoke concerning the dilemma of reconciling the significance of particular person local weather motion given the discovering from CDP and the Local weather Accountability Institute that solely 100 corporations are the supply of greater than 70 % of the world’s greenhouse fuel emissions. Nonetheless, Ritchie finds worth in doing one’s half to make an influence on the planet.
“On the finish of the day, we’re nonetheless going to maintain making an attempt, we’re not going to let it make us hopeless and make us hand over, nonetheless do the most effective that we are able to, with no matter we are able to,” Ritchie mentioned. “And typically, that offers me hope, in these moments, particularly seeing mass mobilization of social and local weather justice actions, it makes me really feel like there is likely to be hope. And that’s feeling.”
Employees Author Daniela Miranda could be contacted at daniela.miranda@columbiaspectator.com. Comply with Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec.
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