It’s important to limit the amount of waste you produce. It’s impactful to stop eating animals and their secretions. It’s a good thing to replace aspects of your lifestyle with more sustainable alternatives. It’s also a privilege. But it shouldn’t be.
When I first became interested in living a low-waste lifestyle, I wanted to be like the white women on Instagram who perpetuate the elitism of zero waste. Honestly, I still sometimes fall prey to the aesthetic appeal. But that image of zero waste living is inaccessible to most of us and excludes BIPOC and low-income individuals in particular. Gentrifying sustainability bars communities of color from participating in it, even though it is they who most acutely feel the effects of climate change. Additionally, many BIPOC and low-income communities have been utilizing the sustainable practices of reducing and reusing for generations out of necessity.
As the low waste movement and eco-consciousness, in general, have gained more traction, they have also become more elitist. Zero waste living sometimes becomes more about the aesthetic than the environmental impact, which often means making unnecessary purchases, and is therefore out of line with the aim of the movement. It doesn’t have to be expensive to be low waste, but if you want to fit in with the low waste influencers on Instagram who wear $800 Stella McCartney shirts, buy fresh bread from artisan bakeries every morning, and make smoothies in Vitamixes that cost half a thousand dollars, it is.
This is not to say that white people should not implement low-waste practices into their own lifestyles. They absolutely should. The problem is, the trendy zero waste movement frames these concepts as new revelations and gives communities of color zero credit for already practicing them. It frames the conversation around young, white heroes trying to ward off the effects of climate change, when in reality, marginalized communities are already feeling those effects, yet are ignored by the movement.
To conclude, I want to take a moment to address my fellow white environmental activists. Let’s ask ourselves: are we making space for people of color in this movement? Could the money we might be spending on ethically made clothing be put to better use by donating to Intersectional Environmentalist, Philadelphia Urban Creators, or Urban Habitat? Are we actively incorporating environmental justice into our activism? If we aren’t, let’s make sure we start.