ATLAS
Fall 2019
The Unearthly Issue
IN THIS ISSUE CAMPUS Grow Through What You Go Through by Jordyn Vasquez // page 14
Is Emerson College Actually Composting? by Carly Thompson // page 16
Environmental Activist at Emerson by Paige Shapiro // page 18
CITY
Let’s Talk Trash: Where Does All This Litter Come From? by Abigail Amato // page 29
The Cost of Cannabis Usage in Boston by Belen Dumont // page 32
The Impacts of Vegetarianism and Veganism in Boston by Dani Ducharme // page 35
IN THIS ISSUE GLOBE
The Temporary American Dream by Maya Gacina // page 48
“Plastic China” Decides to No Longer be Plastic by Xinyan Fu // page 56
The Economics of H2O by Diti Kohli // page 60
HEALTH
The Price of Plastic
by Dana Gerber // page 65
How to Appraoch Sustainale Skincare? by Emma Mari // page 68
Climate Anxiety
by Abigail Michaud // page 72
STYLE
Fashion’s Friendly Faux-Pas by Clarah Grossman // page 78
Shopping Sustainably
by Faith Bugenhagen // page 80
Thrifted Threads and the Price of Trends by Kaitlyn E. Joyner // page 85
Editor-in-Chief
Dear readers, When the editorial staff decided our theme was going to be “Unearthly,” I was excited, but, quite frankly, I was also nervous. Sustainability, living consciously, and being mindful of the environment are very prominent themes for my generation and the current state of the world. This semester alone, there was a global climate strike and people younger than me were taking charge. With this edition, I wanted to make sure we were giving the movement justice while being as sustainable as possible in the process, even though we are a print publication.
Along with the feature articles, for the first time, Atlas added in one-pagers and side bars as well as front of the book and back of the book elements to make the magazine more dynamic. We wanted to make the magazine more engaging and have a place for a dialogue surrounding the environment. These conversations have moved me and my staff to analyze our own impact on the planet. Personally, I’ve been trying to be more aware of my carbon footprint, and I’ve taken the initiative to decrease my single-use plastic intake and be more conscious of what I am purchasing. I hope the contents of this issue sparks a discussion and that you enjoy this carefully crafted issue. With much love, Shafaq Patel Editor-in-Chief
Dear readers, Environmentalism is something that is very much at the forefront of everyone’s minds these days. Especially for college students who find themselves preparing for a world that is rapidly headed towards the ecological unknown. Our idea of Earth is no longer cemented in the peaceful forests of the past; instead, nature is reacting to the depletion and misuse of resources—redefining itself before our eyes. This shift may seem unearthly to us but in this issue, we raise the notion that perhaps humans are the unearthly element in the equation of our planet. I have had a love and appreciation for the Earth throughout my life. My mother made sure of it by taking my siblings and me to as many national parks as possible, every school break we had we would pile in the minivan and head the next park on our list. As I have gotten older I realized how much I depend on nature, though here at Emerson we live in a more urban environment, I have always been able to find it around me. Though I feel connected to it, I—like most—am at a disconnect with it based on lifestyle habits that are ingrained in our culture. Our creative teams have worked to create an image of our relationship (connection and disconnection) with the Earth. It’s future, past, and how we strive to be better. We prioritized environmentalism throughout the issue. Our fashion team worked with sustainable, reused, and upcycled materials; our makeup team created many environmentally inspired looks; our art team united the vision; our photo and editorial teams brought it to life. Many others worked behind the scenes to make it all possible and create a truly Unearthly experience. To see more about sustainability on set check out our BTS on our website. XX, Emma Cox Creative Director
art by Olivia Cigliano
Creative Director
I’m proud of the editors and writers for finding various angles that delve into the environmental issues. Inside these recycled pages manufactured in a facility operating on renewable energy, you’ll find a compelling story of how TPS holders may be affected by the current administration and climate change in the Globe section. In Health, you can dig through the detrimental effects of plastic on the planet and your own body. Amongst several other insightful stories, you can read about what the littered trash in Boston signifies.
CREATIVE
Design Director: Kristen Cawog Layout Team: Xinyan (Eliza) Fu, Reagan Allen, Marianna Poletti Reyes, Gianna Gironda, Paige Shapiro Fashion Director: Elise Sanchez Assistant Director: Brynn Rhodes Stylists: Claire Ashby, Olivia Cigliano, Faith Bugenhagen Art Director: Micaela Dix Assistant Director: Natasha Arnowitz Art Team: Olivia Cigliano, Yichen Lin, Reagan Allen, Kate Herrick Photo Director: Stella Drews-Sheldon Photographers: Kaitlyn Joyner, Graham Wheeler-Nelson, Elaine Tantra, Somari Davis Beauty Director: Lexi Leap Hair and Makeup: Marissa Palmejar, Chloe Leung, Sam Silveira, Morgan Holly, Kendall Bruner, Laura Frometa Editorial Director: Grace Cosgrove Editorial Team: Tripp Rams, Jordyn Vasquez, India Varma, Marianna Poletti Reyes Marketing Director: Molly Goodrich Marketing Team: Diana Holiner, Lauren Quan, Adrianna Bohman
EDITORIAL
City Editor: Grace Griffin Writers: Dani Ducharme, Abigail Amato, Belen Dumont Campus Editor: Carly Thompson Writers: Jordyn Vasquez, Paige Shapiro Globe Editor: Hannah Ebanks Writers: Diti Kohli, Maya Gacina, Xinyan Fu Health Editor: Monica Petrucci Writers: Dana Gerber, Abigail Michaud, Emma Mari Style Editor: Lily Bump Writers: Faith Bugenhagen, Clarah Grossman, Kaitlyn Joyner Copyediting Head: Anna Moon Copyeditors: Abigail Michaud, Kyle Eber, Katherine Powers, Claire Christensen
ONLINE
Editor-in-Chief: Shafaq Patel Managing Editor: Allie DiGennaro Creative Director: Emma Cox Blog Director: Victoria Stuewe
OUR STAFF
Head Copyeditor: Lily Doolin Copy Editors: Sydney Logan, Kayla Randolph Writers: Isaiah Anthony, Samantha Anderson, Emma Mari, Tom Garback, Gianna Gironda, Clarah Grossman Poetry: Will Percarpio, Sydney Logan Head of Online Visual Content: Tripp Rams, Somari Davis Creative Team: Joseph Cuccio, Chloe Leung, Elaine Tantra, Will Percarpio, Haley Apicella Web Developers: Rishona Michael, Nadia Hibri
Unearthly
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Editorial staff holds ourselves accountable:
How we will live more
SUSTAINABLY art by Natasha Arnowitz
Grace Griffin
I’ve been a vegetarian for over three years now, but I recently made the switch to eating almost fully vegan! I’ve been more conscious of what I’m eating and where it comes from, something I found myself not doing once I fell into a diet-routine surrounding vegetarianism. Veganism has also has forced to start cooking more at home instead of eating out, which means I’m using more tupperware and less disposable containers or utensils.
Stella Drews-Sheldon: Like many others, I always try to limit my environmental footprint. I’ve stopped using plastic bags, straws, and I’ve been a vegetarian my entire life. I do still see this pursuit as an ongoing one, and I think there’s always more we can be doing as individuals to do our part, however, I also think that the biggest perpetrators of climate harm are large corporations. The most environmentally conscious thing anyone could do is to advocate for change, to spread environmental mindfulness, and to educate yourself before voting for people or policies.
Monica Petrucci: I already cut out meat, recycle, and bring my reusable tumbler pretty much everywhere I go. But there’s so many other things that I don’t even think about! Ordering Lyfts, using plastic cutlery, eating cheese—my weakness—are all things I should be limiting. To practice sustainability, the most important thing is to be aware: how much plastic you buy at CVS, where your food comes from, how much energy you use. Being mindful is the key to adopting more sustainable practices, and I think we can all make that change.
Hannah Ebanks:
I made the switch to not eating red meat as a New Year’s Resolution in 2018, so I am a pescetarian. I don’t eat fish often, usually only when I’m out for a fancy dinner, but I feel like I need to pay more attention to where my fish is coming from. Going forward I’m going to make sure the restaurants I’m dining at use locally caught fish/seafood and use the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch app to identify restaurants that meet specific sustainability standards.
Elise Sanchez:
To me, sustainability is all about the little things you do. I have been trying to hold myself accountable to take a little extra time to be sustainable. It starts by just taking the time to recycle your water bottle or box that you got from Amazon. Or making sure you unplug everything and turn off your lights before you leave. Something I have become really passionate about is sustainable fashion. This issue really opened my eyes to the severity of fast fashion and how hard it is to find brands that are sustainable and affordable. It is so hard to buy sustainable clothes as a college student, but one thing that we can do is thrift shop. In the future, I am striving to incorporate more thrifted clothes in my wardrobe and in Atlas magazine.
Lily Bump:
Like many others, I recycle and use reusable cutlery & tupperware — in situations where I can’t, I also save that plastic tableware to use in the future. I’ve also been slowing down my meat and dairy consumption, and avoid fast fashion companies after learning so much about how detrimental to the environment that industry is. In Boston, I used public transportation for 99% of my endeavors, but now that I’m in LA it’s pretty much impossible to not use my car, so I’ve regressed in that aspect. When my internship is over I definitely want to limit my mileage.
Carly Thompson: Right now, I try to be as mindful as I can be when it comes to throwing things away. Whether it’s food, a plastic cup, a paper towel I barely used, or a piece of clothing I no longer want, I try my best to find a way to use it again, recycle, or repurpose it in some way. I think what I’m going to try my best to do in the future is to be more mindful about my consumption and the waste that might result from things I buy and make. Do I really need that $12 top from Forever 21 or the prepackaged individual hummus servings? The answer is usually no.
Anna Moon:
Like most people, I’ve made the switch from plastic straws to metal and from plastic bags to reusable. The problem I usually have is forgetting to actually bring them with me when I go places. I’m trying to get into the habit of thinking ahead and bringing these items with me because I have them, so I should put them to good use! I also drink a lot of coffee, so I’m hoping to invest in a reusable tumbler very soon.
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Paradise (Almost) Lost Watching the Cayman Islands Lose its Charm
by Hannah Ebanks
I
grew rew up in paradise.The Cayman Islands, my home, has made international lists of best beaches in the Caribbean for years, but I never saw it as a big deal — it was my everyday. Only after leaving for college did I appreciate how fortunate I was to have white sand and clear blue waters water a 15-minute drive away from my house. It wasn’t just being surrounded by the ocean, having nature be consistently present changed the way I interacted with the world as I respected other species, especially indigenous ones, and tried to minimize the impact I had on their habitat. Until recently, every structure on the island had less than seven floors and the majority of roads were blanketed on either side by thick, green bushes of various species. But even paradise has its dark elements and now that I am an adult, I have a different perspective of my home. At school, we learned all about local wildlife and ecosystems by taking field trips to the mangroves and botanic garden. On Earth Day, we would do a beach clean-up — it was disheartening how many trash bags we would fill with litter left over from people’s beach picnics and trash that would wash up on shore. It was frustrating to realize that some things were out of my control, and even out of the government’s control — it would be impossible to stop the waste from washing up. The problem seems to have worsened in recent years despite locals best efforts to combat the litter. This October, local environmental groups collected 2,000 pounds of trash over two days as part of a beach clean-up on Cayman Brac, the second largest island. I have realized there is only so much I can do at a personal level. My family and I recycle, carpool, and try to be conscious about purchasing single-use plastic. But the island does not have a facility that is equipped to recycle some kinds of plastic, so those are shipped off-island. Waste management has been a national problem for my entire life as our landfill grows — it is the tallest point on the island and locally referred to as “Mount Trashmore.” My high school was located near the landfill and there were several occasions where the landfill would catch on fire and the smoke would fill our outdoor campus, which was a health concern, so we would get sent home. We would joke that instead of snow days we got “smoke days” and there was a certain thrill to leaving school early, but also a sense of dread about the reason why we were getting to leave. Right now, there is a debate surrounding a proposed cruise ship port that would increase the number of cruise ships and passengers by letting the ships dock instead of passengers having to take smaller tender boats to visit the island. The government says that port will increase the number of visitors and the island’s revenue; however, most people I know are against building the port as it will destroy the coral reefs in the area and cause overcrowding on the island since we do not have the infrastructure to support such a large volume of visitors. This issue is contentious and has led to the first people-initiated referendum after activist groups petitioned for several months. The referendum is on December 19 and I am timing my return home for winter break to ensure I am there to vote. The wider issue is that if large corporations and countries don’t address their CO2 output as an island nation, my home will be one of the first to face the consequences: stronger, more frequent hurricanes and rising sea levels. The Cayman Islands is fortunate to have financial resources and good infrastructure compared to its neighboring countries, but it would still be devastating for the island. It would be easy to dismiss reality and for me to blissfully lounge on the beach, even a littered one, but I want to preserve paradise. I am not the only one as in the past year local environmental groups, many made up of students, have been voicing their concerns to local government and engaging the public on issues like waste and recycling. This is fruitless if worldwide governments do not address climate change, especially large polluters like the United States, it is imperative for citizens to care and vote to mitigate the effects of climate change. If not, there might not be white sand and blue water for me to come back to and for you to visit.
How to Make Your Own Reusable Produce Bag: by Grace Griffin art by Natasha Arnowitz
W
e’ve all heard of, and probably already own one pro or two, reusable shopping bags. Whether they sport a brand name, supermarket logo, or just a fun pattern, shoppers bring these bags seemingly everywhere they go to cut down on waste from single-use plastic checkout bags and adhere to Boston’s newly-established plastic bag ban. However, how do we step away from using those pesky, thin plastic produce bags still present in grocery stores? One solution is to DIY reusable bags for carrying all your fruits and veggies home from the store.
All you need to make two produce bags is an old regular-sized pillowcase, a needle and thread, and some basic string (a shoelace works!) if you want to add a drawstring closure to the top.
1 2 3 4
Cut the pillowcase in half the short way, creating two equally sized rectangles of fabric. One should have the bottom seam still in tact and just have one side open. This will be the top of the bag.
For the part of the pillowcase with only two seams still in tact, take your needle and thread and sew one side closed, making it look the same as the other section of the pillowcase with three sides already stitched shut. No need to be a sewing expert for this—any type of thread with a simple over-under stitch will do the job.
These bags now function as-is for carrying produce or the like, but if you want a way to tie them shut, leave about an inch unsewn at the top of the bag (for the seams already intact you pay need to cut them).
Place the shoelace or other type of thicker string around the circumference of the top of the bag then fold the top unsewn inch over it. Sew these flaps down onto the bag being careful not to sew the string in place so it can be pulled and the fabric around it can bunch up to close the top of the bag.
And that’s it! Not only do these produce bags help eliminate waste from single-use plastic produce bags at the store, but they also upcycle an unused pillowcase or other article of fabric.
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Sustainable Switches by Kristen Cawog art by Micaela Dix
reusable co#on pads
makeup wipes
Help prevent hundreds of makeup-stained cotton rounds by switching to washable, organic cotton pads.
plastic ziplock bags
beeswax wrap or silicone snack bags
A really easy swap that helps your food stay fresh longer.
plastic toothbrush
bamboo toothbrush
The easiest swap on the list, a bamboo toothbrush is both compostable and cheaper in price than a plastic one.
shopping bags
reusable totes
Save both money and plastic waste by bringing your own reusable bag when shopping. Baggu sells durable, post consumer nylon bags that are both sustainable and adorable!
plastic straws metal, silicone, glass, or paper
The switch to metal, silicone, glass, and paper straws has increasingly become popular. Restaurants have started to adapt, so why not make the change at home as well?
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dryer sheets
reusable dryer balls
Switching from dryer sheets to reusable dryer balls helps reduce static in your clothes.
plastic bo#le
reusable bo#le
Help both the planet and yourself with the easiest switch, a lead and BPA free reusable water bottle.
tea bags
loose leaf
Although it takes a little bit more effort, the switch from tea bags to loose leaf also gives you the freedom to create your own flavor blends.
flowers
air purifying plant
A fun addition to any room, air purifying plants can remove toxins from the air inside your home.
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C A M
photo by Somari Davis art by Reagan Allen featuring Sunsetta
U P S
GROW THROUGH WHAT YOU
GO THROUGH
I
by Jordyn Vasquez art by Natasha Arnowitz
ncorporating nature into your everyday routine can be a straight shot of serotonin.
T
his past summer I turned my love of plants into a way to cope with my growing anxiety. I threw myself into YouTube videos, online forums, and Facebook groups. I ordered special pots and made frequent trips to Home Depot for fertilizer and proper growing media. As I cut away dead roots, threw out compacted dirt, and removed dead flower spikes, I felt a sense of relief. Instead of allowing my anxiety to feed off financial or work related stress, I gave it something productive to focus on. Returning to Emerson this semester, with seven plants in tow, I realized I might not be the only college student using plants to manage my stress and anxiety. “Because I can’t see real nature, I have plants,” says Marlee Mesarchik, 21, as she sits cross-legged on the floor of her single. Mesarchik’s suite is nestled in the back corner of the Colonial building at Emerson and most of the windows face dark brick walls. “I’m a very visual person,” Mesarchik says, “I know the air isn’t as dead because plants cycle it through.” Mesarchik’s room is minimal and neat, existing primarily in neutral tones. Her plants have been placed sporadically around the room; a fern on top of the wardrobe, a pothos on the bookshelf, and an aloe in the windowsill next to Samantha The Succulent who is barely clinging to life. “Last year I was so busy and that one extra thing of remembering to water my plants became less and less important,” Mesarchik says, looking anxiously at Samantha. “This year, I’m determined to prioritize them.” Stories like these are not uncommon for Lindsey Swett, owner of Niche Plant Shops. “It would be hard to own a business in Boston and not see college students,” Swett laughs. Niche is a boutique houseplant shop that specializes in tropicals. Niche Plant Shops is a local company, with one store in Cambridge and another in South Boston. Walking into one of Swett’s stores is a literal breath of fresh air, with ivy cascading down every wall and plants of unbelievable size, shape, and color covering every surface. Lindsey and her employees put an emphasis on education at their stores in order to dispel a lot of the misinformation surrounding plant care. “We pay close attention to which of our customers are college students to make sure they dont leave with something too
big or unmanageable,” Swett says. Niche’s philosophy is grounded in the idea that nature can improve one’s mentality. “Caring for plants gives college students a break from everyday stress,” Swett says. “They can bring wellness and an opportunity for nurturing into busy college life.” While these ideas may sound far fetched, they hold more truth than one would think. This correlation between the environment and health is common for ecotherapist Abbie Hausermann. “Mental and physical health are certainly not as separate as many believe,” Hausermann says. “I have had many clients note that practicing traditional therapeutic techniques in an outdoor office amplifies their ability to progress in their therapeutic journey.” Hausermann is an ecotherapist, which enacts the same practices as conventional therapy, but through the use of walk-and-talk sessions. “Clients often say that meeting outside helps them to feel comfortable because they are in a more natural environment,” Hausermann says. “We are walking side by side, and there is not as much direct eye contact as in an office setting.” Research has also shown that clients experience less of a power differential as opposed to coming to an office which may be perceived as the therapist’s “turf.” While Hausermann currently specializes in pregnant and postpartum women, her private practice originally saw teens and adults in an outdoor setting. “Other than certain clinical diagnoses or clients that are at higher risk, there are no restrictions on the population that this type of therapy could be beneficial for,” Hausermann says. Incorporating nature into everyday life isn’t as daunting of a task as it may seem. Start small. Pay a visit to a local store like Niche and find one plant that speaks to you, or pick your favorite tree in the Public Garden and make a point to walk past it sometimes. Focus on the changes you observe in your chosen plant and remember that no matter what stressors occur in daily life, there’s always something more meaningful growing behind the scenes.
Campus 15
Is Emerson College Actually Composting? by Carly Thompson
I I
n an era where waste management is a hotter topic than the latest celeb gossip, is Emerson doing its part to save the environment?
The other day, I walked into the Emerson College dining center and glanced at the chalkboard feedback wall out of curiosity. There, scrawled in bright pink chalk was a damning and demanding question: “Do we actually compost?” I stood there and stared for a second and I wondered, do we? I’ll admit it had crossed my mind before when scraping semi-edible leftover food off my plate and into the square bins by the dish loading station labeled “compost.” I always hoped that they weren’t misleading, hoped that the food being unceremoniously thrown into them ended up as worm food somehow, but I never actually took the time to do the research. Seeing that very same question thrown out there by a fellow Emersonian seemed to confirm that I wasn’t the only one doing some wondering. “Yes, we do actually compost,” says Campus Sustainability Manager Catherine Liebowitz with a knowing smile. She goes on to explain that Emerson pays a company called Waste Management to pick up all of the waste on campus, including compost. They’re a national company that works with many universities around the country. They take Emerson’s composting material away to their facility to process it through anaerobic digestion. Liebowitz continues to give a step by step through the entire composting process of Emerson food waste, all the way from when the food hits our plates to self-sorting bins to eventual disposal. Anaerobic digestion isn’t what you typically think of as composting with a big container of worms and dirt. It requires an oxygen free environment in which little microbes feast on all of the organic waste, producing energy through the process. The
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energy produced from the anaerobic digestion gets turned into electricity and contributes to powering the Waste Management processing plant. There’s still a little bit of typical composting byproduct at the end, which gets sold. “The best part about composting this way is that it actually offsets carbon use,” Liebowitz points out. However, she admits that while it has many benefits, unfortunately only 3% of Emerson’s waste product is compostable material. “That 3% comes almost exclusively from the dining facilities on campus. And they don’t sort any of it at the plant — if they get a bag that is majority non-compostables they just throw it away,” she says. Liebowitz says she tries to make the signs around campus as clear as possible. She’s referring to the graphics posted on or around almost every waste receptacle on campus giving you the information you need to throw your plastic Starbucks cup, banana peel, and class handouts in the right bin. Her determination comes through as she talks of personal responsibilities when it comes to putting your waste in the right place. “I do see people stop and think, and slow down, and read the signs which is nice,” says Jordan Mackenzie, the Customer Experience Coordinator from Campus Services. Mackenzie is always looking for ways to make the dining experience at Emerson more seamless, including how to dispose of your materials once you’re done. Just like the lack of knowledge about Emerson’s composting program on campus, Liebowitz and Mackenzie agree that they struggle to figure out the best way to get students’ attention and convey that information. Liebowitz recommends for students who are looking for specific guidelines to go directly to the source, the Waste Management website, where they have lists of what they consider recyclables, compostable, etc.
“
“I’m still looking for that magical answer of how do you get people to know that information?” Liebowitz admits. This year, Mackenzie and Liebowitz spent hours stuffing “eco-friendly bags” for the first year students that included a reusable bag, an eco clamshell container, and a reusable to-go mug. They hope that giving students the incentive of a discount (50 cents off any drink at the Backstage Cafe when you use your green to-go mug) or the convenience of taking food from the dining hall on the go will push students away from using single-use plastics or other containers that end up in the trash. “80% of Emerson’s waste is still trash, even with recycling and composting. In an ideal world, we would reduce everything first. The second would be to reuse it before we get to the recycling stage.” Liebowitz insists that the best way to reduce the amount of trash we produce at Emerson is to be mindful of what you’re consuming, purchasing, and using. “What you consume directly affects what you’re going to be able to recycle or compost. So be mindful,” she says. Her last piece of advice re-emphasizes the importance of educating yourself. The information is out there and accessible for those who want to find it, including the recycling programs Emerson offers (like textile recycling, who knew?). And lastly, “Make it a priority. Make it a commitment,” Liebowitz asks, “It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s an easy way to contribute to environmental stewardship. It doesn’t matter what your roommates’ doing. Doesn’t matter what your friends are doing. You can make that choice for yourself.”
Make it a priority. Make it a commitment. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s an easy way to contribute to environmental stewardship.
“
Campus 17
RAVEN DEVANNEY:
Environmental Activist at Emerson
by Paige Shapiro photo by Chloe Leung
I Take a walk with Raven Devanney, an Emerson student with a healthy obsession of bettering the environment.
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t’s’s 7:30 a.m. and Raven Devanney is brushing her teeth with her bamboo toothbrush. She quickly reviews the day’s schedule in her head. She has class at 10 a.m., but she has errands to run before that. She quickly runs her brush under the faucet for only a second before shutting off the water and storing her toothbrush to the side of the sink. For Devanney, the toothbrush is a quick, first-thing-in-the-morning reminder of her day’s motivation. It’s bamboo, and although it may seem like only a small frivolity, it’s her way of trying to live more sustainably. At only $5 from Eco Shop, her toothbrush does a lot in further quashing the need for plastic, which is a win in her book. Devanney, a senior journalism major at Emerson College, is proud to say that she only uses plastic in emergencies. This is her rule. No longer does she associate a clean environment solely with recycling plastic waste. Rather, she tries to eliminate the use of it entirely. By not using small throwaway plastic items like toothbrushes, she’s that much closer to eliminating her
plastic waste entirely. The same goes for her yoga mat, which is made with recycled rubber. She goes to yoga almost everyday, and today it’s first up on her to-do list. At around 7:50 a.m., she heads to YogaWorks, a small yet welcoming studio situated conveniently on Boylston Street. Although you can rent or buy a mat in the studio, Devanney’s Rumi mat has the added benefit of being made with recycled materials. The yoga class is an hour, and by the time she walks back to her dorm, it’s almost time for Devanney to head out again. Living on campus is a life-saver when you’re running late, but she also is cognizant of the benefits that the Earth reaps from this, too. “In Boston, you can kind of walk everywhere, or at least take the T, so that’s cutting down on emissions. So, I never really take an Uber or Lyft,” Devanney admits, pointing out the not-so-obvious flaw of carsharing services. All she needs is to pack up her cloth tote with class materials and then she is on her way to her first class of the day— documentary photography. Devanney hopes to bring awareness to environmentalism as a movement through means such as documentary production, which is something she is passionate about. In Devanney, there is an element of ambition that’s hard to miss. With this ambition, she dreams of shining light on the social justice issues that lack representation, such as global devastation and the immense impact this can have on lower socio-economic communities. When class ends at 1:45 p.m., Devanney is ready for food. She doesn’t have anymore classes for the rest of the day, so she takes this opportunity to sit down for lunch at the Dining Center. Perusing through her food options, she stops at Root, the DC’s vegetarian station. In order to reduce the amount of food waste, she asks for small portions and only gets up for seconds if she knows she likes the dish. She explains, “If you take more than you need, you’re going to have to throw it away. People will load up on a plate of food that they then take a bite of and then be done with it.”
A small, bright orange pumpkin gives the area a festive look, and it sits next to a sizeable jug emblazoned with the Colorado flag. She’s from Boulder, which is notably ranked one of the nation’s healthiest cities, and so she is no stranger to environmentalism. “Composting and recycling is just part of our blood, there are more recycling bins than trash bins. That’s just like a huge part of the culture out there.” She was shocked at first to come to Boston and see first-hand its near polar contrast to a city like Boulder. But it is here that inspiration arose, and Devanney is more and more invested in bringing the healthy habits that were so commonplace in Boulder to the noticeably more polluted streets of downtown Boston. Devanney’s short break is over at 7 p.m., and she is due at 172 Tremont for an extracurricular meeting. She is a member of the original environmental group here on campus, Earth Emerson. Sound familiar? They should. Earth Emerson is a highly progressive organization here on campus that has a stellar record of efficiency. When Devanney first joined two years ago, Earth Emerson was leading the movement to divest from fossil fuels. They passed out orange pins and stickers, a small yet strong symbol for the urgent action that needed to be taken by students and staff alike to petition against Emerson’s use of dangerous fossil fuels. Last year, the club focused on food waste, an issue that has been prominent for years, not only at Emerson, but at countless colleges across the nation. By informing students and staff of proper disposal techniques, Earth Emerson was able to reduce the amount of food waste that the dining hall produced daily. The immense success of these initiatives inspired the group’s further efforts and this year Devanney is excited to accomplish similar heights.
“Don’t ever sell yourself short and think that you are just one person. Because if every single person on this planet thinks, ‘Oh, I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference,’ then we’re screwed.”
Satiated and cheerful, Devanney returns back to her room. She is a Resident Assistant in the 2 Boylston dorm. She thinks forward to breakfast tomorrow, planning in her head the idea of a strawberry flax smoothie she could enjoy on the way to tomorrow’s early class. “I’ll make myself a smoothie in the morning and throw it into a mason jar to take with me. And I try to use produce that I’ve gotten from farmers markets.”
The meeting is brief and Devanney is back in her room at 8 p.m., prepping tomorrow’s lunch. She has a class that runs right through noon, so she plans on packing herself something she can snack on during the teacher’s lecture. From her home in Boulder, she uses small squares of hemp cloth coated in beeswax. With these, she is able to wrap up sandwiches or bagels, or mold them into little baggies to hold pretzels or other munchable snacks that keep her energized throughout the day. Tonight she packs up a homemade sandwich of hummus and veggies, and props it up next to the flax milk in her fridge. The cloth wrap keeps the sandwich fresh and yummy, and Devanney is thankful to have such a cute and useful gadget. Although hers come specially from Boulder, environmentally mindful organizations such as Grove Collaborative sell Bee’s Wraps for no more than $15.
The local produce at Haymarket is the next item on Devanney’s plate today. At 3 p.m., she is off towards the North End, vying for a carton of fresh strawberries from her favorite vendor. “They take produce that grocery stores don’t take. And so you’re cutting back on food waste by shopping there. And it’s also way cheaper, but just remember to bring your own bags, because otherwise they’ll give you plastic bags, that’s no good,” she explained.
Finally after such a busy day, Devanney is able to enjoy a late dinner with friends at her favorite vegan hotspot nearby, Life Alive Cafe on Boylston Street. She fell in love with the restaurant the moment she first tried it and she has been a fan of its warm atmosphere and knockout organic cuisine ever since. Her day was packed with productivity, but Devanney is happy to finally arrive back to her dorm on campus. She, much like you, has a full schedule of classes, extracurriculars, and social events that always keep her on her toes. But Devanney prioritizes what she deems crucial — keeping the environment healthy and happy.
It is nearly 5 p.m. by the time Devanney returns, and she has an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies to her name. She excitedly brings them back into her room, storing them in her fridge for later enjoyment.
“Don’t ever sell yourself short and think that you are just one person,” Devanney reminds us. “Because if every single person on this planet thinks, ‘Oh, I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference,’ then we’re screwed.”
For the first time all day, Devanney is able to take a breath and relax for a bit before heading off to her next event. She sits at her desk, which is organized neatly and seasonally decorated.
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RAVEN’S
topten! TIPS ‘N TRICKS
for college students
one
Bring reusable bags for your trips to the store (if for no other reason, do it because the bags cost extra money).
two
The age-old “Don’t run the faucet when you brush your teeth” rule— even if you’re in a shared bathroom, it all adds up.
three
Always do your research! If you are looking to buy, look for brands like Rumi and Eco Shop to get what you need.
four
Take smaller portions of food from the dining hall. You can always go up for more if you’d like, but you don’t want to add to the amount of food waste.
five six seven eight nine ten
Take notice of the signage! Be careful what you compost, recycle, and throw away.
Try to avoid fast fashion brands and instead explore the many thrift stores that Boston has to offer.
If possible, avoid taking Ubers or Lyfts. The T is almost always an option and if not, a walk will help you get your steps in!
Get involved! Look into the many green organizations Emerson has to offer or attend local rallies and initiatives to educate yourself. Think ahead. If you think you might be in the mood for a quick coffee later, bring a reusable straw and tumbler.
Don’t forget that you have the power to do something. Stay positive and spread the earth-loving energy!
SU SE N T TA
B Tips on How to Be Sustainable on Film Sets
eing sustainable is not only a trend these days, but a necessity. When our planet is staring a national climate catastrophe in the face, thinking about any a way to try and prevent it should be the immediate reaction. Emerson is no stranger to this, we’ve got compost and recycling bins in every room on campus and so many environmentally-driven organizations you start to lose count. But what about those crazy kids running around with cameras and building sets behind closed doors? Are they being held to the same standards we hold each individual too? What’s their version of a plastic straw?
by Carly Thompson
A 2006 study done by researchers at UCLA found that the California film industry produced 8.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year, and the U.S. film industry as a whole produced 15 million. And that was in 2006, so I think it’s fair to say it’s only grown since then. In 2018, Broadcast Now reported that BAFTA (a British film organization) estimates that one hour of T.V. content produced in the U.K. generates 13 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s about as much as the average American produces in a single year. And it’s not just carbon emissions we should be worried about. Film productions are traversing areas of sensitive nature to grab the perfect shot and dumping toxic waste in the local waters of Australia (I’m looking at you Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales). Yes, here at Emerson our productions are much smaller scale. Yes, we don’t have the money or capability to even pretend to dump toxic waste in the waters off the coast of Boston. But there’s still lots that can be done to cut down on the waste our productions produce and the impact they have on the local, and global environment. I sat down with Frank Frascella, the president of Emerson’s National Broadcasting Society, and discussed how sustainability is addressed on sets and the methods he uses to make sure his crews leave as little of a film-shaped footprint as possible.
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Carly: So, Frank, tell me briefly about your role as president of NBS? Frank: I kind of describe my role as “creative director”. If you think of NBS as a production company, I sort of lead the creative direction of what we do. So I’m never just making executive decisions, I’m more leading the discussions and guiding them, along with my vice president, the way we see fit.
C: So how do you lead the discussion surrounding sustainability on film sets then? Or do you discuss it at all?
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F: I wouldn’t say we discuss it so often in board meetings explicitly, but we do think about it and that’s mostly do to other board members who are very conscious about sustainability. Like when it comes to ordering food and managing waste we are very conscious of it. For example, on are recent fall project, we didn’t buy the crew water bottles. Often sets will bring a big thing of plastic water bottles, but instead we asked the crew to bring their own reusable water containers and fill them up at the water fountains. Or we had paper water cups and only bought so many of them and gave people markers so they could mark their cups and reuse them.
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C: Would you say that thinking about the waste you create on set usually intersects with providing food for the crew?
F: Yeah, I would say so. At least, at Emerson and on student sets. Actually, over the summer I worked on a film that was shot at Acadia National Park. Part of the discussion we had primarily to be able to shoot there was about all the codes we had to abide by to avoid damaging and disturb the wildlife there. I distinctly remember having to lead the crew through very special paths in the park during loading and unloading so that we didn’t touch any of this super special moss that grows there. So, it definitely depends on the set.
F: On every set that I work on I try to instill a “No Trace Policy” into my crew and the people I’m with. Like don’t bring anything and leave it there, don’t leave garbage. Like even if it isn’t your trash, pick it up. We spent an hour after set had wrapped picking up trash in Acadia Park. Like everyone was on their way home and we were picking up trash with headlamps on. Whatever it takes. We also try to reuse everything we have at NBS. We don’t buy anything new if we don’t have to, mostly to save money, but it also has the added benefit of being better for the environment. We repurpose and store as much as we can and we try to buy stuff we know we can use for more than one set.
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C: If you were to give other people involved in the film industry advice on how to be be#er leaders when it comes to sustainability on set, what would you say?
C: Going beyond Emerson, as someone who’s tuned into the greater film industry, do you see an effort on big ticket productions to be more environmentally aware in their practices?
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F: I know there’s a lot of discussion going around right now about how ethical it is in general on many fronts. The industry itself can be pretty excessive. Like why is Amazon spending a billion dollars on a Lord of the Rings show? What do you need that money for? Transportation, probably, mostly. But also fully catered meals in fancy white tents for the crew. The culture and industry itself is wasteful. I think that’s one of the ways we as students and as people entering the industry, can change that is by changing the culture.
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4
the BEST
PLANTS
COLLEGE STUDENTS
by Jordyn Vasquez
Snake Plant These plants sport a modern look with their rugged, vertically striped foliage and they thrive in any lighting situation.
Pothos Plant Pothos have beautiful, sprawling foliage and they can thrive off low or even fluorescent lighting.
Pilea Peperomioides I call these Pilea Pepperoni because of their unusually round leaves. I recommend repotting right before move in so you can watch this unusual plant grow all year.
ZZ Plant ZZs are almost impossible to kill, their stems can hold water for weeks and they’ll tolerate almost any lighting situation.
photos by Graham Wheeler-Nelson art by Reagan Allen
CITY
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Let’s Talk Trash: Where Does All This Litter Come From? by Abigail Amato
D
unkin’ Cups, food wrappers, and cigarette butts litter the pathways and green space of the Boston Common. The hustle and bustle of students, commuters, and tourists trekking through the park daily produces an amount of litter difficult for the city to keep up with. This is not unusual for Boston. Parks and neighborhoods across the city are faced with the same problem. Though most people are taught from a young age that littering is wrong, a simple walk through the city reveals that choosing not to litter is not a universally adopted mindset. It’s safe to say that most, if not all, cities in the world experience litter in some way, affecting the livelihood of their residents and tourists. What sets Boston aside from the rest of the world? To answer this question, it helps to look at what is being littered as an indication of social issues present in the city.
Keep Massachusetts Beautiful, a chapter under the umbrella organization Keep America Beautiful, works toward fixing the issue of litter in areas across Massachusetts, with several individual city chapters. Executive Director of the Massachusetts chapter Neil Rhein feels that the types of things littered most often demonstrate the real problems. “Littering is a symptom of bigger problems, for example the needles,” Rhein says, referencing a Boston Globe article published in early September that stated the city collects approximately 14,000 discarded needles a week around the city. “The fact that they’re picking up 14,000 needles means we have a drug problem, it’s not that people just like to litter needles.” With the opioid crisis running rampant throughout the United States, an epidemic of discarded needles in the city can provide a full
picture to what the Boston specifically is dealing with in terms of the crisis. Litter is also often an indication of class. While many of the tourist attraction areas in Boston are kept up with routinely by the city, residential neighborhoods are not. Rhein notes that neighborhoods lower on the socioeconomic ladder often have the most trash. While the responsibility ultimately lies with those residing in the area, Rhein acknowledges that those living in poverty or struggling to pay rent don’t place neighborhood litter high on their list of concerns. “It really boils down to community pride and getting people involved,” Rhein said. “How do we educate or incentivize people to not litter in the first place? And that’s frankly the hardest part.”
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“There’s a lot that needs to be done in Boston, we’ve only taken the first step with plastic bags.”
Rhein says that his organization focuses on “taking action” to prevent waste from littering the streets of Massachusetts cities. According to its website, the organization mainly centers around litter prevention and cleanup, waste reduction and recycling, beautification and community greening, and environmental education. As with any issue, education is critical in understanding the core of the problem. As invasive as the issue of environmental concern is in the media, single-use plastics and other unnecessary waste continues to litter the streets. Litter does more than just deplete a city’s beauty — it harms the city’s inhabitants, both human and animal. Litter left on the streets or in parks finds its way to waterways, making cities like Boston surrounded by bodies of water at a particular risk. Clint Richmond, a member of the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts chapter of the Sierra Club, is the point person for issues regarding solid waste and plastic. His work revolves around litter and working to keep waste off the streets and out of waterways through his work at the state house and with legislators. Things like the Boston plastic bag ban, which went into effect in December of 2018, give the fight against litter a more tangible success story. “I don’t think I’ve seen a plastic bag in a tree since we passed the ban,” says Richmond.
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While the plastic bag ban was a step in the right direction, litter doesn’t end with plastic bags. “The next step in Boston needs to be a polystyrene ban,” Richmond says. “There’s a lot that needs to be done in Boston, we’ve only taken the first step with plastic bags.” One major issue to address is the forms of packaging that most frequently find their way to city streets. In recent years, many companies have committed to using greener practices in regards to packaging. Many corporations have pledged to make their packaging more eco-friendly, or to reduce the amount of packaging all together. Dunkin’ Donuts, whose waste accounts for much of the litter in Boston, announced their plan to phase out styrofoam by 2020. While this is a progressive step as styrofoam is not biodegradable, Dunkin’ made a similar promise in 2012 pledging to remove all styrofoam from their businesses in 3 years, a goal that was ultimately never attained, according to a Vice article. While a company can’t be held responsible for where all of their waste ends up, acknowledging that they produced the waste to begin with is a start to abolishing it. “I think that there’s a narrative to try to blame the consumer,” Richmond says. “People can’t and shouldn’t be responsible for all this litter as there’s more litter than we can pick up.” Richmond argues that better packaging from companies would ultimately result in
less litter. “Littering is a symptom of packaging.” However, finding a solution to littering does not entirely fall to the corporations. Consumers hold a great deal of responsibility as well. In most cases, Rhein says, the act of littering is deliberate, citing a 2009 Keep America Beautiful study that found 81% of littering was done with “notable intent.” “Typically people know what they’re doing and just don’t seem to care,” Rhein says. “Or they think that someone is going to clean up after them.” This is where environmental education comes into play once again. Rhein argues that showing people the impact of their actions and behaviors is a possible way to stop it. This leads to the question of what can the citizens of Boston do to help? Luckily, getting involved is easy. One key way would be participating in cleanups around the area. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful is planning a “Great Boston Cleanup” for April of 2020. Until then, join other organizations sweeps or simply go outside and pick up any trash you see. Reduce the amount of waste you use as a consumer and be mindful of where your trash goes once you’re done with it. One thing is clear, when it comes to cleaning up our cities and our earth, every little bit helps.
,,
“Littering is a symptom of bigger problems, for example the needles,” Rhein says, referencing a Boston Globe article published in early September that stated the city collects approximately 14,000 discarded needles a week around the city. “The fact that they’re picking up 14,000 needles means we have a drug problem, it’s not that people just like to litter needles.”
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art by Reagan Allen City 31
THE COST OF CANNABIS USAGE IN BOSTON by Belen Dumont art by Olivia Cigliano
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n a sunny weekday it’s common for cannabis users — students, Boston residents, and tourists — to sit around the public park or roam the Downtown area smoking. Although it’s illegal to smoke anything on federal or public property, green areas in Boston area are known for their community of cannabis users and the lingering scent of pot, according to an article in the Boston Globe. In 2016, recreational cannabis was legalized in Massachusetts for individuals 21 and older. However, it is illegal to smoke, inhale, exhale, burn, or carry any cannabis products in public spaces or on federal property, according to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ website. Jeff Morris, the former assistant director of Off Campus Student Services, was the chairman of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MASSCANN) since 2015. “I will say that since legalization happened a few years ago you can definitely smell cannabis more, spe-
cifically in Downtown,” Morris said in an interview. “I’ve noticed an uptick in that although it is still illegal to smoke in the Common.” Morris said he’s not aware of what the impact of cannabis smoke might have on the environment. And he’s not the only one. There has been minimal research and studies done on the effects of second-hand cannabis smoke and whether it contributes to air pollution because of marijuana’s federal illegalization. According to a 2017 article titled, “Health effects of exposure to second-and third-hand marijuana smoke: a systematic review” published on CMAJ Open, individuals subjected to second-hand smoke can experience psychoactive effects. The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation also published a second-hand smoke fact sheet in 2019 that tied secondhand smoke to possible lung irritation, asthma attacks, and an increase in one’s chances of respiratory infections. Boston resident Anton Pronichenko,
24, said second hand smoke in public doesn’t impact him personally, but he does have some concerns. “You can see roaches thrown on the ground [in the Common], same as cigs,” Pronichenko said. “When you walk around, [you] get a whiff of smoke and see people smoking. It doesn’t have an impact on me, but I wouldn’t want my kids to see that.” Pronichenko said he doesn’t mind people smoking privately, but believes an issue arises in regards to air pollution and exposure to children when large amounts of cannabis smoke come from crowds in public. Boston University sophomore Zacherhy Letson said he noticed more alcohol bottles and cigarette butts polluting the area than cannabis roaches. Letson and his friends argued that cannabis users also use bowls and pens to avoid leaving pollution behind. BU sophomore Martina Saade added, “There are natural papers, and in the end, it’s a plant that if you threw out [the remaining cannabis] would have no significant impact.”
Morris said the 2018 Boston Freedom rally produced the most litter and trash yet, which led Friends of the Public Garden to submit a formal complaint to the city of Boston. This began months of conversation between Friends of the Public Garden and MASSCANN, a volunteer-run non-profit dedicated to educating the public on Cannabis Sativa and establishing “moral and rational” public policies according to the group’s website. “They don’t necessarily only work with cannabis-specific things, but they do like to be a part of the community and show that we aren’t a bunch of stoners that sit behind a door and smoke weed all day,” Morris said.
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Discussion among MASSCANN, Friends of the Public Garden, and the Parks and Recreation Department started in October and November 2018 regarding the Boston Freedom Rally’s environmental and community impact. “I think those conversations from a group like the Friends of the Public Garden really drove MASSCANN to be a little more evolved and acknowledging the impact a three-day festival like this can have on a community,” Morris said. “And it’s tough because I think the festival itself has grown every year and has gotten bigger and bigger, so with more people you’re going to create more trash.”
Morris emphasized that MASSCANN comprises volunteers and cannabis activists, not professional festival organizers, so challenges can arise when planning.
MASSCANN held an Earth Day trash cleanup at the Public Common on April 22, 2018 — two days after 4/20 — for group members and residents of the community.
“Most people have a mindset with cannabis that you can ‘give it back to mother nature’, but just be mindful where you unpack your product and what you do with that packaging,” Kinsella said.
“For the group, it was a community bonding experience, but also a community engagement experience,” Morris said. “Again, it adds to the whole perception that ‘yes, we are here, we’re a part of the city, we’re your neighbors, we’re your community.’”
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Morris said the Boston Freedom Rally organizers primarily heard positive feedback on the event this year and the cleanliness of the park afterward. Emerson College senior Hayden Stills went to the Boston Freedom Rally this year, her second time attending. “I know I was just handed a bunch of different papers from vendors that I did not want and I did end up throw-
ing them in the recycling bin,” Stills recalled. “But even aside from trash, I can’t imagine how many hundreds of people they handed out pieces of paper that were then literally thrown away or thrown on the ground.” Stills said the biggest change since her first experience was the size and attendance of the festival, which she attributes to the legalization of cannabis. “I didn’t notice smoke while I was there, but the second you walk away from where all the stuff was, you could look back and see a kind of cloud surrounding the Common,” Hayden said. “It didn’t affect me, but I’m sure someone with asthma or something would not have enjoyed that.” Boston residents can take steps to be a more eco-friendly cannabis user, such as properly throwing away butts, or using bowls or glass filters to avoid using papers and creating trash. MASSCANN Press Secretary Maggie Kinsella recommended two ecofriendly brands dealing with cannabis products and promoting environmental awareness. Cannabis users can put glass pieces on moodmats, which are completely made out of recycled material, and stash cannabis flower in re:stash jars that contain no plastic, with lids made of 30 percent farm waste. “Most people have a mindset with cannabis that you can ‘give it back to mother nature’, but just be mindful where you unpack your product and what you do with that packaging,” Kinsella said.
Eating Ethically:
The Impacts of Vegetarianism and Veganism in Boston by Dani Ducharme
A
recent pollconducted by Gallup polling found that only 5 percent of Americans are vegetarian and 3 percent are vegan. Despite its small population, the food-based movement has taken the world by storm. In this current climate — where information is accessible at the click of a button — veganism has exploded from philosophy to a common lifestyle choice, frequently the topic of media conversation. It’s easy to hop on platforms like Twitter and find a thread of people offering diverse opinions on the topic. Nil Zacharias, the founder of One Green Planet — an online publication that adver-
tises itself as a guide to making conscious, vegan choices — claimed that the voice of the vegan movement has changed over the past few years. Not only is information about veganism more accessible, but now vegan dining options are just as widely-dispersed. A Forbes article from August 2019 reports that there are 24,000 vegetarian-friendly restaurants in the United States, with 1,474 being exclusively vegan. In addition to this, popular fast-food chains are making alterations to their menus to accommodate their vegetarian and vegan customers: Burger King introduced an Impossible Whooper and Del Taco added Beyond Burritos to the menu.
While vegan restaurants seem to be popping up all over Boston, the state of Massachusetts itself is making strides in the sustainable farming movement. New Entry Sustainable Farming Project is an initiative put on by Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy among others to strengthen local food systems by supporting new farmers. Its goal is to “produce food that is sustainable, nutritious, and culturally-appropriate and making this food accessible to individuals regardless of age, mobility, ethnicity, or socio-economic status,” according to the organization’s mission statement.
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By making the choice to go vegan or consume meat more ethically, you could help lower these staggering numbers and help make our planet a healthier place.
Art By Natasha Arnowitz 36
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Jennifer Hashley, the director of New Entry, says that not a lot of people grow up on farms anymore, so New Entry provides those who may not have experience with the necessary tools and information. “We walk people through the process by hosting regular explore farming workshops where we help people assess their skills and capacity for starting a farm business and what it means to be a part of the food system as well as business management courses that help with learning how to market and begin a successful business,” Hashley says. The program offers support to all areas of the farming industry, but mainly focuses on crop farming. Even after participants leave the onsite incubator, New Entry is still involved in the farmers’ journey. “We have an on-site food hub where we aggregate and distribute our farmers’ products and we also buy products from our graduates,” Hashley says. “So once they leave the incubator to start farming, they still feel connected to us.” While veganism is more present than ever, not everyone is willing to give up meat. In a 2016 article published in “The Independent,” experts emphasize that meat has been cheap for so long that a large majority of people have forgotten how it is produced. This horrific production
mentioned features animals crammed together in spaces that are far too small, forcibly fed grain, and then slaughtered in masses. While these facts won’t stop people from eating meat, the idea of ethical meat consumption has been a force to be reckoned with. According to “The Independent,” the way to consume meat in the most ethical manner is to eat smaller portions — 50 percent of what you would consume usually — and choose to eat better quality meat. The meat industry has a forceful environmental impact with 30 percent of land being occupied by livestock, contributing to 30 percent of the United States’ water footprint, and emitting 15 percent of greenhouse gases. By making the choice to go vegan or consume meat more ethically, you could help lower these staggering numbers and help make our planet a healthier place. Boston exists as a home to a plethora of vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Within a mile radius of Emerson, you can find a variety of Thai food to comfort food to extremely health-conscious choices. Located on the cusp of Chinatown, My Thai Vegan Cafe offers Thai food tailored to rid itself
of any ingredients that come from animals. The cafe serves Thai classics like bubble tea, curry, pad thai, and vermicelli bowls. Just a couple blocks past Emerson, you will find by CHLOE. This 30-million-dollar restaurant chain was founded by Chloe Coscarelli and Samantha Wasser in New York in 2015. According to its mission statement, the founders “are committed to maintaining a sustainable and vegan lifestyle and actively contribute towards lowering our carbon footprint and preserving our planet’s water supply through our animal-free menu, mindful ingredient sourcing and eco-friendly packaging.” Their menu offers everything from burgers, sandwiches, brunch, salads, and, of course, desserts. They even feature a selection of vegan dog treats. Just a block past by CHLOE. stands the newly opened Life Alive cafe. This health food hotspot offers fresh-fruit-and-vegetable-orientated food in a cozy and relaxing environment. The menu comprises a selection of coffees, fresh juices, smoothie bowls, salads, grains, and noodle bowls. Life Alive’s mission aims to, “renew your energy and connection to life by soulfully serving you the most fantastic, vibrant, organic, therapeutic, whole food you could ever imagine in an inspiring environment that honors local artisans, the community, and our global ecology.”
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How-To:
Compost in Boston! by Grace Griffin
R
oughly 30 percent of food produced globally ends up being wasted, making food waste a large contributor to the mass amounts of trash occupying landfills across the world. While Emerson provides composting bins in all facilities that serve food on campus, off campus students who do not eat in the dining facilities are left without access to composting bins. However, composting off campus in an apartment is less daunting than it may seem. There are a few different ways to go about composting in an apartment, but all work toward reducing food waste and giving back to the soil and the environment. Services exist in and around Boston that do all the composting work for you. One example is a company called Bootstrap Compost. After signing up for their services, customers receive a five-gallon bucket delivered to their door by the company which they fill with food scraps through the week or bi-weekly period before it is picked up again and a new bucket left in its place. For weekly pick up, Bootstrap Compost charges $10 per week, but only $12 per week for bi-weekly pickup. For as little as $24 per month (split between roommates if you have them too), you can have your compost outsourced and eliminate household waste all in the same process. Bootstrap Compost is one example of many companies who offer similar services, so do some research and find the best option for you! If you’re more of a DIYer, tutorials regarding how to create your own compost bin (some designed specifically for apartments) populate YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and virtually any other social media platform. This option ensures your bin will be affordable, customizable, and able to fit into any small space you have in your apartment. To start, all you need is a bin with a cover. This can be a trash can, a bucket, or a metal bin. Punch small holes in the bottom of the container and a few around the upper rim near the lid — this allows your compost to breathe in the space. Because of the holes on the bottom, you’ll want some type of tray to sit below it to catch any spills. Next, add some soil to the bin. Don’t fill it all the way, just a layer deep enough to cover the bottom and a few inches up from it. Add some shredded newspaper on top of the soil then your compost bin is ready to use! When adding food scraps to the bin, try to make them as small as possible so they can decompose easily, and try to keep the wet to dry ratio fairly equal by adding more shredded newspaper every time you add food scraps to the bin. Once a week, add another scoop of soil to the bin and mix your compost to stimulate the decomposition and combination process. After the food has composted, you can use the enriched soil for potting house plants or fertilizing a personal garden. If you don’t have a use for the soil, many community gardens have their own compost pile that community members can add to, so you can find somewhere outside of your house to empty your bucket too.
art by Olivia Cigliano
art by Natasha Arnowitz
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Upcycle Be a Concious Consumer
photos by Stella Drews-Sheldon
Globe photo by Graham Wheeler-Nelson art by Micaela Dix models Jamal Thompson Soleil Easton
Globe 47
The Temporary American Dream by Maya Gacina
Temporary Protected Status recipients may be forced to return to countries experiencing the perils of climate change
H
ouses made of mud and adobe brick scatter dry land in rural El Salvador while 480-square-foot structures of aluminum sheets, plastic, and cardboard attached side by side line the country’s densely populated urban areas. When Jose Palma brought his 14-year-old son to Usulutan, a southeastern city in El Salvador, for the first time, he packed several kinds of medicines and a nebulizer machine for his son’s asthma. Palma, knowing access to medicine in the country was limited, worried his son would get sick from from the homes, unpaved streets, and dry lands that produce dust in the air. “The funny part is, he didn’t get sick, I got sick,” Palma, who came to the United States from El Salvador when he was 22 in 1998, said as he chuckled. “The other thing that happened, too, is the weather. It’s so hot. He was sweating so much he was like ‘Papa, papa, can we move the flight for a few days before? I really want to leave.’” The dust and high temperatures Palma and his son referred to may only get worse in a matter of years as the smallest, most densely populated country in Central America faces the brunt of climate change. Palma and his wife have lived and worked in the U.S. for more than 20 years under Temporary Protected Status. They built a home for themselves in Massachusetts and had four children — the oldest, his son, is now 18 years old. Palma and his wife may face deportation because of President Donald Trump’s decision to end TPS benefits for about 318,000 immigrants by Jan. 4, 2021. Many TPS recipients fled to the United States from ongoing armed conflict or an environmental disaster that made it unsafe for them to return home, according to the Pew Research Center. This number does not include the 279,000 U.S. citizens under the age of 18 born to family members with TPS, an immigration policy that does not offer recipients a pathway to citizenship or lawful permanent residence — a green card. If the next U.S. president-elect carries out Trump’s decision, it would result in the deportation of 98 percent of current TPS holders, many of whom are from the most vulnerable and least prepared countries in the world for climate change. El Salvador and Haiti are among the poorest in the Western hemisphere with natural resources very rarely regulated for environmental protection — opening the door to overexploitation and pollution. Palma said he can’t imagine the infrastructure in El Salvador receiving that many people. Gang activity, chronic
unemployment, and water shortages contribute several times throughout his presidency. to Salvadorans’ migration to the U.S. In El Salvador, more than 600,000 people have “Would you send your own people to those no access to drinking water, and even more have places, where people in those countries are leav- limited access due to the country’s small land ing by thousands?” Palma said. area in relation to population size — about 6.4 million in a country the size of New Jersey. AcSalvadorans were among the first groups of cording to the El Salvador’s Ministry of Enviimmigrants to receive TPS, a policy estab- ronment and Natural Resources, 90 percent of lished by Congress under the Immigration Act the country’s surface water sources are contamof 1990 that provides limited protection from inated. Severe deforestation due to poor landdeportation and a work permit. Former Presi- use practices have also increased the country’s dent George W. Bush granted TPS to El Sal- vulnerability to climate change. About 85 pervadorans for 18 months when a series of three cent of forest has disappeared since the 1960’s earthquakes killed 1,100 people and displaced mainly due to the agricultural industry that fuels 17 percent of the country’s population in 2001. 20 percent of the country’s labor force which is Landslides caused by the earthquake destroyed deteriorating due to land scarcity and limited hundreds of thousands of homes, along with resources. thousands of schools and other public buildings. Palma was living in the United States before Rainy seasons repeatedly pummel Haiti with the earthquake occurred and was able to receive tropical storms that destroy the country’s crops TPS despite planning to stay in the U.S. for just and infrastructure. In 2008 alone, four hurria few years. canes struck the country within 30 days destroying 60 percent of agricultural crops and killing “You always know it’s temporary, but you never more than 1,000 people. According to the know when it’s going to end,” Palma said. “It Earth Institute at Columbia University, climate has always been the hope that previous TPS change can potentially increase the occurrence communities eventually became permanent res- and severity of extreme weather events such as idents. TPS is not just a document that impacts flooding and hurricanes in Haiti, a country that TPS recipients, it’s a document that impacts the already experiences high levels of deforestation whole family.” and a loss of rainfall-absorbing topsoil.
ily to go to. So it’s like you’re sending someone to a deserted island and you’re asking them to survive,” Gabeau said in a phone interview. “We are fighting very hard for them not to go back.”
Former President Barack Obama’s administration granted Haitians already living in the United States permission to live and work under TPS when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near Haiti’s densely populated capital, Port-auPrince, in January 2010, killing 300,000 people and leaving one million people homeless and displaced.
When Geralde Gabeau, a Haitian immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and the executive director of the Immigrant Family Services Institute in Roslindale, Mass., heard about Trump’s decision to send Haitian TPS holders back to Haiti in 2018, she asked herself, “Send them back to what?”
Gabeau decided to move to the U.S. when gangs arrived at her home and held guns to her and her six-month-old daughter’s face. She said her neighborhood community gathered at her door and intimidated the gang members to leave one by one, but only with the promise that the gang members would come back.
“They don’t have a place to live, they don’t have Obama extended the status for both countries a job, and most of them don’t even have a fam-
“This was all over the place in Haiti at the time. People would go to people’s houses and killed some, raped others. It was a nightmare,” she said. “Things have not progressed in any way, shape or form. As a matter of fact,
Gabeau and her husband, also a Haitian immigrant, brought emergency medical supplies including band-aids, cotton pads, and rubbing alcohol to Haitian communities in the weeks following the 2010 earthquake. “Even when you go months after, you could still feel the horrible pain, the horrible misery that happened there, and I lost a lot of people that I knew. It was one of the most devastating things that you can face,” Gabeau said. “It’s going to be 2020, almost 10 years, and we are still not at a level of being ready for anything.” In addition to exhausted natural resources, Haiti is in the midst of political unrest and intensifying protests due to widespread food and fuel shortages, a weakening currency, double-digit inflation and accusations that the U.S.-backed President Jovenel Moïse stole public money. Despite millions of dollars in aid given to the island following the 2010 earthquake, public services and infrastructure still remain in dire conditions. According to an article in the Washington Post in October, more than half of the population lives on less than $2.40 a month.
“They don’t have a place to live, they don’t have a job, and most of them don’t even have a family to go to. So it’s like you’re sending someone to a deserted island and you’re asking them to survive”
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every single week and month, it’s always bad news for Haiti.” Gang violence also continues to reach unprecedented levels in El Salvador. In 2016, the U.S. State Department reported that more than one in five families claim to have been victims of a violent crime. In 2017, the homicide rate was 61 per 100,000 people, making El Salvador the second deadliest of any country not at war, after Venezuela. “If we fight, I need to have hope,” Doris Reina-Landaverde, a TPS holder from El Salvador and an organizer for the Harvard TPS Coalition, said in an interview. “I don’t have time to think about the future because I’m so busy, to work, to organize. When the night comes I’m so tired, I just go to sleep. But I know it affects my family. I have a teenager, she’s 13, and she is asking me all the time, ‘Why do we have to go through this? Why can’t I have a normal life like other kids?’” Reina-Landaverde works at Harvard as a custodian for 40 hours a week to provide for her three U.S.-born children living in Massachusetts and support her parents in El Salvador. “It’s difficult to live [in El Salvador] now because even my family just lives with the money I send, because they feel scared to have a business because of the gangs,” Reina-Landaverde said. “We come here, we see this as a paradise — we can work, we can earn money. But when you educate yourself, and you put this on the floor and say, ‘wait a minute, what is this?’, you realize it’s not like a dream.” The United States contributed the most to the rapidly warming climate exacerbating environmental issues in places such as El Salvador and Haiti than any other country since the Industrial Revolution in 1750. According to the Carbon Brief, the U.S. produced two times more carbon emissions than Russia — the second-largest emitter — and three times more than China, a country with a much larger population than the United States. Atmospheric carbon is gradually absorbed by the ocean and plants, but a large fraction, about 20 percent, lingers for thousands of years. This means that a large amount of greenhouse gases emitted at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution continues to heat up the planet today. The United States is the only country to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation because Trump claims the accord would “undermine economy.” Class-action lawsuits alleging that government officials illegally diverged from how all previous administrations had interpreted TPS law to decrease the number of nonwhite immigrants living in the U.S. put a hold on the TPS terminations that would have originally been put into effect in July 2019. Reina-Landaverde and Palma traveled to California this summer with 28 other TPS holders living in Massachusetts as plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, Ramos v. Nielsen. The lawsuit extended TPS for immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan until Jan. 4, 2020 until Trump announced in November that he would extend it for one more year. “Taking TPS is not just like ‘Okay, we gave TPS to Jose, now it’s time for him to go home.’ But the lateral consequences that you are affecting four U.S.-citizen kids that will be here no matter what. The question is, are you going to help your citizens to prepare for the future or are you going to put them at a risk that eventually you will have to deal with?” Palma said.
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Things have not progressed in any way, shape or form. As a ma#er of fact, every single week and month, it’s always bad news for Haiti.
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“1.5 to stay alive”
What 4 countries are and aren’t doing following the Paris Agreement on climate change
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ithin the next year, President Donald Trump plans to formally withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, in which nearly 200 nations vowed to reduce planet-warming emissions. The move was expected from his campaign pledges to lead the United States into the future with corporations and not climate responsibility. This sends a powerful signal to the world about the country’s impact on climate change as the first nation to withdraw, and what certain governments are or aren’t doing to curb their carbon footprint. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 scientists from around the world, project that global temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10 degrees Farenheit over the next century. The Paris Agreement on climate change aims to reduce that rise to 2 degrees Ceslius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, by asking countries to adopt green energy resources. But small island nations urged the agreement to go further and limit the rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius as even a rise of 2 degrees Celsius would be devastating to their communities.
Agriculture accounts for 15 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, but farming still employs 40 percent of its workforce, according to The World Bank. Despite these sustainable steps, Morocco still plans to expand its coal industry and achieving the Paris Agreement goals requires phasing out coal for power generation by 2050, at the latest.
Argentina
The Climate Action Tracker gave Argentina its second-lowest rating — highly insufficient at holding global warming temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. If all government targets were in this range, the global temperature would rise 3 to 4 degrees Celsius.
Morocco
Parts of the Argentine government strongly promote exploiting national oil and gas reserves for domestic consumption and export, and seem to prioritize this over expanding renewable electricity installations and improvements in electricity grids. The Guardian filed a freedom of information request and found that the United Kingdom plans to invest more than $1.2 billion into Argentina’s controversial oil industry, including Shell and BP, that has caused irreversible damage to the ancestral homeland of indigenous people.
After committing to the Paris Agreement, Morocco put plans in place to stop its greenhouse gas emissions altogether under the ambitious National Energy Strategy that aims to generate 52 percent of the country’s electricity needs from renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, and hydro energy by 2030.
The government in Argentina did, however, announce a carbon tax on all fossil fuels in December 2017 and adopted policies such as the “Biofuels Law” and the “Renewable Energy Law” to shift the country’s focus to more sustainable practices after signing the Paris Agreement. But Argentina’s economic crisis, including increased poverty and unemployment predicted to reach 55 percent by the end of the year, encouraged an objective to decrease government spending which may include ministries dealing with climate change.
The North African country already experienced the effects of climate change after a severe drought in 2015 caused a bad harvest and drastically reduced its rate of economic growth. In response, Morocco launched Plan Vert, or green strategy. Conserving water using underground aquifers represents one of the strategy’s three parts to cope with the threat of climate change.
The Climate Tracker rated Canada as insufficient and not consistent with holding global temperature warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. If all government targets were in this range, warming would reach over 2 degrees Celsius and up to 3 degrees Celsius. Greenhouse gas emissions in Canada will remain above 1990
The global average temperature increased about 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Age in 1750. Morocco is one of two countries that the Climate Action Tracker gave a “1.5˚C Paris Agreement-compatible” rating.
Canada
by Maya Gacina levels by 2030. The government started phasing out coal-fired power plants, but faced strong opposition to climate policies from high-emitting provinces in Canada that challenged the mandatory federal carbon tax. Canada adopted sales targets for zero-emissions vehicles of 10 percent by 2025, 30 percent by 2030, and 100 percent by 2040. In early 2019, Health Canada released a new version of the Canada Food guide. It is the first time the guide has not included a meat category, instead choosing to focus on plant-based protein to reduce emissions from agriculture. The country’s Paris Agreement upholds their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 2005 levels by 2030.
USA
The United States is rated “critically insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker. The rating represents the lowest on the spectrum and if all government targets fell in this range, the global temperature would increase by more than 4 degrees Celsius. If the Trump administration successfully implements its series of climate policy rollbacks, greenhouse gas emissions projections for 2030 would increase by the same amount of emissions the entire state of California emitted in 2016. A weak replacement for the Clean Power Plan proposes to freeze vehicle efficiency standards after 2020, allow methane leaks from oil and gas production to continue for longer before they are located and fixed, and instruct government agencies change their climate methodology which was originally based in science and not economic drive. In 2018, the U.S. overtook reserves in Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil. Climate action has forcefully entered the political debate in preparation for the upcoming 2020 presidential election, including the introduction of the “Green New Deal” resolution in Congress. Though highly unlikely to pass under the current administration, the GND calls for economy-wide action to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Some cities, states, businesses, and other organizations are also taking action to reduce climate change.
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“Plastic China” Decides to No Longer be Plastic: The Country’s War Against Waste by Xinyan Fu
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n the months that Qinyun Fan was away from her home in Shanghai, simple things like disposing of an ice cream cone were no longer easy due to the new national waste-sorting policies. Fan, a sophomore at Emerson College, went home after four months for the summer. In her hometown, she purchased an ice cream cone and then went on an all-day hunt to find a trash can to dispose of the waffle cone. She had no luck and ended up bringing the cone home. Fan said that, since the start of the new waste-sorting policies, Shanghai residents have struggled to adjust to a complex system with strict guidelines and consequences since they came into effect on July 1, 2019. “For bubble tea, it’s even more complicated. Since the mall only has recyclable and ‘dry trash’ containers, I had to flush the boba down the toilet and then dispose of the packaging,” Fan said. The regulations classify household waste into four different categories: dry, wet, recyclable, and hazardous. Individuals who fail to follow the rules will be fined up to 200 yuan ($30). For companies and institutions, the fine can go up to 50,000 yuan ($7,150). Refusing to sort waste in accordance with the regulation may also result in a lower social credit rating that could make it hard to get a bank loan. “In my neighborhood, we have had posters about waste-sorting since early April and my sister is also having many waste-sorting classes in her elementary school. In spite of all that, lots of people, including me, still have their heads in the clouds,” Fan said. The Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau released Shanghai’s first official domestic waste-sorting and dumping guidelines on July 12 to help citizens. For example, vegetables, flowers, and food leftovers should be dumped as wet trash, while cigarette butts, napkins, and earth are defined as dry trash. Plush toys, plastic bottles, and window glass should be dropped into recyclable wastes, while expired medicine, hair dye, and batteries belong to hazardous wastes. People have also created different innovative methods, such as songs and jingles, to help each other understand the policy better. The categories might be clear, but Shanghai residents find themselves floundered with instances where trash that seems to belong in the same category is sorted differently. Pork ribs should go into the wet waste bin, but pork thigh bone is considered dry waste. Cell phone batteries are hazardous wastes, but older batteries go into the dry garbage. Citizens also need to follow certain hours in the morning or in the evening to take out their trash under the supervision of neighborhood volunteers. “In my neighborhood, we have a scheduled time for each household to dump their trash. There are always volunteers helping and supervising us to sort our waste. Other than the scheduled time, there wouldn’t be trash bins available around the area,” Fan said. The complex rules and heavy penalties have frustrated
“There is also a lot of waste being generated when facilities are processing the trash and cause lots of contamination to the soil. So I think it is good that the government is forcing the residents to sort the trash.” many citizens. Some have given up cooking at home and others flush all the leftover food down the toilet. An extreme example of this frustration is a case where a woman throttled the volunteer who was trying to help her with the sorting, causing the volunteer to faint. The woman was detained for three days. Yijun Zhong, a sophomore at Emerson student from Xuhui district in Shanghai, thinks that the compulsory policies are intimidating, but not that effective. Zhong said that her community started with following the rules, but ended up giving up altogether. Instead of sorting their waste accordingly, residents dump their trash along the streets. “These policies are absolutely necessary, but for now, they’re ineffective because they’re unclear. People need to be educated about waste-sorting more,” Zhong said. Many think that the waste-sorting regulations are complicated, overly strict, and hastily implemented. Nevertheless, Chris Cui, the director of the Closed Loop Partners’ Asia Program, thinks that the regulations are beneficial and necessary. “In China, it is mostly the informal waste pickers that are doing the collection of trash. The way that they collect the trash, including plastic, is harmful and dangerous for those pickers. There is also a lot of waste being generated when facilities are processing the trash and cause lots of contamination to the soil. So I think it is good that the government is forcing the residents to sort the trash,” said Cui. The Chinese government has started the “war against waste pollution” since 2000, where it identified eight trial cities for setting waste management regulations. Nineteen years later, the public still doesn’t know the exact process of waste recycling. According to a survey conducted by the Vanke Foundation and data consultancy Dataway, nearly three-quarters of urban residents were unable to identify how to sort their trash correctly.
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The survey, with approximately 3,600 participants, involved 102 residential communities in 17 cities. One reason behind this might be that most of the local regulations were more suggestions than binding rules. The lack of oversight mechanisms and provision for the proper handling of sorted waste led the public to overlook the issue of waste sorting. China’s zeal for recycling has been growing stronger and stronger. In recent years, the Chinese government decided to speed up the compulsory waste-sorting policy by issuing the National Sword policy in 2017. As a part of the policy, the world’s largest importer and recycler of scrap metals, plastic, and paper have banned the import of 24 types of recyclable materials since the start of 2018. According to China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) filing, “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous waste are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” which, “polluted China’s environment seriously.” The filing says that “to protect China’s environmental interests and people’s health, we urgently adjust the imported solid wastes list, and forbid the import of solid wastes that are highly polluted.” Now, as part of the National Sword policy, Shanghai, home to about 20 million people, has become the first in a nationwide push to raise China’s recycling rate, one of the lowest in the region at under 20%. By 2020, China hopes to bring that rate up to 35% in 46 Chinese cities, and by 2025 to implement a nationwide urban waste sorting system. As one of the most populated countries and one of the biggest waste producing countries, China’s act towards waste management has had huge implications all around the world. Countries in Southeast Asia have become a new favored dumping ground for exporting countries. As a result, countries such as Thailand and Malaysia have also been planning to ban imports of plastic waste after being forced to take over China’s place. “The National Sword policy would push the world to develop better recycling capability for sure. But most importantly, it would force brand owners, like the beverage companies, to think about their design and the kind of materials they should use when they are doing their packagings,” Cui said. Except for the changes in the recycling industry and branding companies, agreements have also been made recently. An amendment has been made to the Basel Convention during the Basel Conference of the Parties in 2019, which limits the global flow of plastic waste. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal was adopted in 1989 in response to a public outcry following the discovery of deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad to developing countries. The amendment has added most types of plastic waste to hazardous wastes. It also tries to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated, ensuring safer management when dealing with plastic waste. As the global plastic crisis grows more and more intense, countries around the world are reckoning with their inability to manage their plastic waste. “In European countries, what they really lack is the collection of the wastes,” said Cui. “They still have many wastes that are being generated in their own countries. I think the changes in China will push the world to change quickly to adapt to the recycling crisis.”
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The ofH2O: H20: The economics Economics of Water pricingReform reformWorldwide worldwide Water Pricing By by Diti Kohli Kohli art by Windy Lin
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eople recognize Chennai, a humid city in southeastern India, by its soothing Carnatic music, its cricket team aptly named “The Super Kings,” and its collection of pyramid-esque Hindu temples mounted with colorful deities. The world also knows the coastal haven for being a water desert — almost entirely depleted of potable water.
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The city fell victim to factors plaguing regions around the world: poor urban planning, excess water consumption, and unpredictable rain patterns from climate change. Reservoirs in Chennai now resemble unseemly ink stains on maps of the city. Residents sustain themselves by filling brightly colored, plastic pots with imported water from trucks and tankers. Daily showers have become a luxury. With no system in place to efficiently collect rainwater, monsoons come and go without consequence, unless they ignite floods like the one that rampaged the city in 2015. In 2003, the government of Chennai tried to take action. In the hopes of mending the catastrophe threatening its seven million residents, the city council raised the price of water, regulated the number of wells, and banned excess groundwater extraction. But soon it became clear that the legislation, titled the Tamil Nadu Groundwater Development and Management Act, would not work. Since enforcement was lax and difficult, illegal extraction and unrestricted use continued. Cities around the world that are edging towards Chennai’s fate toy with water pricing reform similar to the plan at the beginning of the century. Global governments opt out of their current pricing systems entirely and shift the way water is rationed and consumed. But in trials worldwide, including in Sao Paulo, China, and Iran, plans that raise water prices and implement rebates have failed. Jon Honea, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Emerson College, said this legislation is enacted with the lofty goal of conservation. “The goal is always to change people’s behavior — to get them to conserve water without hurting themselves,” Honea says. Objectively, the solution seems simple: Charge more for water. To increase the price of the life-sustaining resource would ideally encourage people to conserve water and save the world from its shortage. Despite their efforts, environmental scientists and public officials are far from finding the ideal way to approach the pricing to restructure. In small pockets globally, communities have adopted tiered water pricing systems that, out of any water reform systems, harbor “the greatest chance of being successful,” Honea said. This system sections off different “blocks” of water usage. With it, households’ basic water needs are either cheap or free. When people use more water, their level of consumption jumps to the next block—which comes with a modest price increase. Heavy users in the industrial or agricultural sectors end up bearing the brunt of the financial burden. Bos-
ton utilizes a tiered pricing system, as do a number of other cities in and out of the country. Nowhere are the possibilities of tiered pricing more apparent than in China. “China arguably started the world’s most ambitious water pricing reform, at least in a country that big,” says Scott Moore, a political scientist with knowledge of Chinese environmental policies.
“The goal is always to change people’s behavior — to get them to conserve water without hurting themselves.”
The growing global powerhouse is flush with water supplies, but its stocked reservoirs are centered in small and unevenly spread parts of the country. Because of this, a large percentage of the 162 cities in China that house more than one million residents exist far from a reliable water source. Regardless, China charged the lowest water prices among 19 major economies in 2014. After seeing low prices drive up the country’s consumption, the Chinese government switched some urban localities to a tiered pricing system, according to the Global Water Intelligence Agency. Water consumption in these areas dropped. But Moore said the downturn hasn’t been significant enough to make an actual difference in the country’s practices. “Are you generating enough revenue that you’re covering the cost of water supply? Are you charging a high enough price that you’re encouraging conservation?” Moore says. “The answer to the first question in China is yes, but to the second question is no. ” This decrease in water consumption also came at the expense of consumers’ satisfaction. Households in China resisted the price increases and worried that the change would exacerbate income inequality, as reported by Peterson Institute for International Economics. Industrial users, already burdened by electricity price subsidies, posed another set of issues. Chinese reforms did not even impact the agricultural sector, easily the country’s heaviest users of water. The government “limited the reform’s applicability to the wealthier areas that can afford it,” explained Moore. This means the initiatives did not touch the biggest perpetrators: poor farmers. Iran took a different approach to combat domestic water consumption in 2011. The local government in Mashhad, a site of religious pilgrimage, offered rebates to households
that conserved the most water. Alternatively, they fined those who used the most for excess usage. The suburbs of Mashhad are home to a hearty huddle of low-income communities who jumped on the opportunity to get money back for lowering the amount of water they used. In their efforts to conserve, these families often went thirsty and ignored their basic needs for the pennies that they would receive in return. Iran’s attempt failed because it ultimately hurt the poor while making little to no impact on the rich, who were willing and able to shoulder the fee, explained Moore. Honea said rebates like this are only possible if legislators play around with the price of the returns and the amount fined. “Those kinds of systems require constant monitoring,” Honea said. “And a lot of consumers aren’t comfortable with this kind of ‘adaptive management.’ It makes it seem like governments don’t know what they’re doing, which is a little true.” Few other water pricing options are being explored. Some countries are experimenting with cap and trade systems for water, where governments set a maximum level for consumption and buy and sell allowances of it to individual users. Parts of Singapore and Israel are only disturbing a pre-set limited amount to users, said Moore. New technologies — water-cleaning sponges and filtration systems — also show promise. For now, global governments remain in limbo with their water pricing systems. Honea said it’s likely that water pricing reforms will continue to fall short until legislators understand how essential water is. “Water is not like most commodities,” Honea said. “Most of these systems fail because they don’t account for the fact that water is a necessity. Everyone needs it to live. That’s also why we need to figure out how to fix the systems in place right away.”
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Health
photo by Kaitlyn Joyner models fire Reina Garcia water Hannah Ebanks air Chloe Wiesburg earth Jay Zimmer
The
PriceOf Plastic by Dana Gerber
Plastic has hurt our bodies, our environment, and our culture for decades, and some people have had enough. How do you take the plunge from plastic to power?
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lastic is sort of like a first date with a guy from Tinder: It’s hard to define, d you know it’s bad but you don’t know why, and you have a sneaking suspicion that it’s probably worse for your health than something permanent. So why exactly do we keep swiping right on plastic, when all evidence points to swiping left? Well, plastic is extremely convenient. The use of plastic in everyday materials really didn’t explode until World War II, when an alternative had to be devised in place of precious natural resources. After the war, people were still attracted to this disposable lifestyle, and soon, everything had a single-use plastic option: packaging, cutlery, bags, everything. Throwaway culture was born, and we haven’t looked back since. However, as we now know, this transition was not actually a sign of progress. Plastic is a huge contributor to the climate crisis—from the harmful extraction of fossil fuels to make it, to the particles that end up in our bodies, to its long-term pollution of our environment—plastic is garbage in more ways than one. And the worst part is, it doesn’t biodegrade for 500 years—even if we stopped making plastic today, we’d still have to deal with its long-term effects. Luckily, there are many individuals out there trying to throw away plastic once and for all. Julia Burrell, who created and runs the @crazynoplasticlady Instagram page, explains that she began her no-plastic journey after learning about the dangers of microplastics, which are tiny pieces of plastic debris that do not get processed by water treatment facilities, and can therefore end up just about anywhere. When they find their way into the ocean, marine life often mistake it for food. And that’s not only bad for the fishes—when we eat this marine life, the very same plastic we carelessly threw away might very well end up on our dinner plates. “The fact that we are eating, drinking, breathing them—freaked me out, and I just had to do something. And that thing was completely eliminating single-use plastic from my life,” Burrell said. “The process has been this beautiful journey of mindful consumption, and feeling empowered, like I can make a difference in a small way.” Burrell says that since January, she has cut out more than 95 percent of her plastic consumption from grocery shopping by making much of her own food, buying bulk foods, and always bringing cloth bags and tupperware to stores. Although she has made huge strides in sustainable living, Burrell admits that she understands it’s not an easy transition. “Everything is in plastic, your cheese, your hummus, even your vegetables,” she says. “Everything that you thought was healthy and good, it’s all prepared and it’s all wrapped in plastic.”
Despite its difficulties, Burrell’s journey to a no-plastic lifestyle has allowed her to make even healthier and more mindful food choices—and she has lost fifteen pounds as a result. “I still eat all the cookies I want,” she laughs. The difference is, she must make the cookies from scratch instead of tearing open a package of them. “You better believe—those chocolate chips that I get from the bulk bin? I value them so much more than that box of cookies I was able to mindlessly just consume in five minutes,” she says. Others are turning their passion for sustainability into thriving businesses. Max Goldberg, who co-founded the L.A-based company Steel Straw, began the business after a discussion with his now-fiancee at a cafe, when they were discussing the climate crisis: “As we were talking about it, we were served glasses of water that had plastic straws in them that neither of us asked for,” he said. Without even trying to, he realized that he had become part of the problem, hurting his body and the earth with plastic. Goldberg believes that the only way to reverse the plastic culture is to offer a counterculture — which is exactly what his business is doing by selling reusable metal straws. “When you’re faced with the illusion of convenience of a plastic utensil, you can be prepared to not contribute to the plastic pollution crisis,” he says. “We need millions and millions of people to stand up and do the right thing.” Janelle Nanos, a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote an article about ‘breaking up’ with plastic, a relationship she says was surprisingly difficult to end. “It’s like a codependency,” she says. “It’s really easy for me to make these purchases and to fill my shopping cart with these items and not really think about their impact.” In fact, Nanos believes that ignorance is at the root of the plastic problem. The mindset of “‘I threw it in a recycling bin, so it’s not my problem anymore,’” she says, just doesn’t cut it anymore. “We don’t really know today how much is actually getting recycled, and how much is being burned and how much is being piled in a landfill,” she says.“I think if you start to think about it as a relationship, you really start to think of your role in ownership of this stuff. It doesn’t go away.” Although Nanos isn’t entirely plastic-free, she says that she now has a heightened awareness of every item she chooses to buy and use. “It’s been eye opening for me. I mean, it’s been a real game changer in so many ways just to have that cognizance,” she says. “It’s certainly not easy to do, I’m not there yet. I don’t know that ever will be, to be honest.”
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“The simple intuitive things, and it just becomes habit,” she says. “So I’m trying to show people who are very busy and already have chaotic, hectic lives, that they can do it, too.” Goldberg agrees, encouraging people to be proactive and reject plastic products before they’re given to you. “It’s always free to say ‘no,’” he says. “You’re not only consciously practicing rejecting the culture of single use [plastic], you’re training the market to react.” Nanos also recommends investing in sustainable businesses, such as Plaine Products, which sends you shampoo in a plastic-free behavior, and then refills it for you (Bite does the same thing with toothpaste pellets, and Common Good does the same thing for cleaning products). Voting with your wallet, Nanos says, is one of the most powerful things an individual can do. “As a consumer, we do have power,” she says. “We have power in the choices that we make in terms of consumption, and companies that we choose to support.” If you don’t buy plastic bags, perhaps someday, businesses will start investing in alternatives.
“I grapple with that every single day,” says Burrell. “You know, I’m just a regular mom. What the hell am I going to do to save the world?” But by raising awareness in her community and teaching green behaviors to her daughters, Burrell feels confident she is doing her share. And she believes everyone else can, too. “I just want people to know that they don’t have to do it overnight, and it can be done incrementally,” she says. “And honestly, when you start making those changes, and you see the adaptations in your life, it’s a bit addictive.” Goldberg has a similar outlook. Above being a responsible consumer, he encourages everybody to educate themselves on laws regarding plastic bans, call representatives to encourage them to support these bills, and vote for climate-focused politicians. And even more than that—tell your friends and family why you’re choosing to skip your plastic straw at dinner. The only thing a movement truly needs, after all, is people. “Ultimately, being a climate warrior isn’t about buying things,” Goldberg says. “It’s about being something.”
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However, it’s pretty clear that we have a massive hill to climb. A 2018 National Geographic article estimates that we have produced 9.2 billion tons of plastic since the 1950s, and that’s not all from throwing away drinking straws; the biggest offender in the plastic epidemic is, undeniably, the corporations that produce it. “It’s inappropriate for the culture to expect consumers to clean up the messes caused by manufacturers who produce these products that poison the sea and the air and our bodies,” says Goldberg. And yet, we have to try.
“
Beyond doing some research and finding out what products have plastic sneakily hiding in them (beer cans and paper coffee cups are two unlikely culprits), Burrell recommends bringing reusable products—silverware, straws, water bottles, cloths, etc—everywhere you go, so you never have to even consider using a plastic product.
The fact that we are eating, drinking, breathing them—freaked me out, elimiand I just had to do something. And that thing was completely eliminatnating single-use plastic from life,” Burrell said. “The process ing single-use plastic from my my life,” Burrell said. “The process hashas been beenbeautiful this beautiful journey of mindful consumption, and feeling emthis journey of mindful consumption, and feeling empowered, powered, like I can make a difference a small way. like I can make a difference in a smallin way.
Perhaps that is the solution to the plastic quandary — not becoming a hardcore guru or a guilt-ridden consumer, but simply being aware of the problem and taking small steps to be part of the solution. Although making individual choices might not save the planet, it will help to make sure your body isn’t a glorified recycling can.
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Sustainable
Skincare
by Emma Mari art by Natasha Arnowitz
What is it and how do we approach it? ruelty free, clean, recyclable, non-comedogenic, vegan, USDA organic, Ecocert. The labels stare you in the face every time you pick up a foundation in CVS. How can they fit so many on such a small package? What do any of these t words mean?
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“We recently did a whole rebrand of the company. The whole mission of it was to be more transparent and introduce the plastics we use in our containers. But a big part of it was pushing the ingredients that we use and why we use them,” explains Filipe Inacio, the founder of Firsthand.
“I feel like right now there’s so many buzzwords in the industry—sustainability, clean, non-toxic, all natural. But what does that mean? We all need to agree on something to give it a standard or threshold,” says Josh Hester, co-owner of Firsthand Supply, a local hair product company.
Inacio first created the company after formulating his own hair product using only ingredients he could find in his grocery store. That idea has stayed true to the company.
As of right now, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sustainability as, “of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.” However, the word “sustainable” has become much more over the past few years. There is a push for companies to take a unique approach to becoming sustainable. Lush has a commitment to reducing, reusing, and recycling. True Botanicals uses strictly environmentally friendly ingredients. Local company Firsthand Supply looks at sustainability in a different way.
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Firsthand Supply prides themselves on using “honest ingredients.” This means that they are transparent in what they use and they will not use any ingredients that may be harmful to customers. “You could eat our products, it wouldn’t taste good, but we’ve never thought about not testing on ourselves,” says Hester. The company is trying to get certified by the Environmental Workers Group, which created an encyclopedia of every cosmetic ingredient used by companies. Each ingredient is given a number 1-10 (1 being the safest). All of Firsthand’s ingredients are in line with EWG’s standards.
“We aren’t doing anything magical or special, we are just making sure everything is fine to use,” says Hester. However, their products are building credibility in the hair industry, and that is because of the clean and honest products that they use. Many barbers have told them that their products are the only ones that don’t make them break out in eczema. One barber even wrote to them saying that her client who has lupus always gets a horrible pain in his chest when she uses a certain product on him, but when she used Firsthand’s product, he felt no pain at all. Firsthand Supply is also environmentally conscious. For their containers, they use HDPE PCR, which is pretty much just recycled milk and water jugs. They also produce in microbatches, which is when companies produce small batches of a product to reduce waste. “Every single thing that we wanted Firsthand to be about had to do with people—caring for people, valuing people. It’s a massive thing that’s lacking across every single industry. Stuff like sustainability, it wasn’t the end, it was the means to an end. If you are going to care about people, you have to care about the environment,” says Hester. Consumers like Emerson College student Claire Kong appreciate when companies have a mentality like Firsthand Supply’s. Kong has been an avid supporter of cruelty free and sustainable skincare brands since she found out about animal testing in her junior year of high school. “As I dug deeper into research, I found that animal testing has become completely irrelevant with our modern-day technology, and multiple sources say that animal testing doesn’t provide results with 100% accuracy in relation to how it reacts on human bodies,” says Kong. Some of Kong’s favorite companies are Lush and Glossier, which are both cruelty free and climate conscious companies.
Sustainable Brands Pact: Manufactures clothes following organic guidelines Everlane: Focuses on ethics and transparency and shows markup process fro each garment People Tree: Promotes good working wages and working conditions for the clothing makers Elate Cosmetics: One of the only zero waste brands made possible by refillable packaging, as well as being cruelty free Milk Makeup: Vegan and leaping bunny certified Farmacy Beauty: Cultivate its own plants and manufacture products using natural ingredients
“Lush is one of the most pro-active companies — they recently participated in the Climate Strike a few weeks ago and closed their store for the whole day, posting a sign explaining why there were closed and why it’s important to be involved in climate change,” explains Kong. Lush also created their Charity Pot program which highlights certain charities. “We believe it’s our responsibility to advocate for the environment, animals and people in need, as well as giving back to organizations locally and around the world,” Lush claims on their website. Kong also gave a list of drugstore brands that are cruelty free and sustainable so that you don’t have to break your bank to find decent products. Some of those brands are: CoverGirl, YesTo, Love beauty planet, Ardell, Physician’s Formula, Wet n wild, and BareMinerals. “I don’t think that you have to spend more money to go cruelty-free and sustainable, CVS has a surprising amount of healthy brands and all it takes is a Google search to make sure that brand checks out! Even just a few changes to your routine can help the planet, like using less water when you wash your face, or buying a makeup washcloth instead of disposable wipes,” says Kong. Some companies even sell reusable cotton pads, so you can save on restocking and produce less waste. “College-aged students can absolutely switch to sustainable/cruelty-free, it’s really just a small inconvenience to change a couple habits and find the brands that work for you,” explains Kong.
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Living
the Lap of
LUSHury
At the core of the LUSH Cosmetics mission statement is, “Do It With Heart, Always.” A simple motto that envelopes everything LUSH as a company and its employees enact. Since its inception, LUSH focused its efforts on protecting and preserving our environment, providing not just quality skincare, but quality ethics. At every tier, here is what LUSH as a company, and I, as an employee, promise you:
by Allie DiGennaro art by Kate Herrick and Emma Cox
Charity Pot
We do not pocket any of the money made by buying the Charity Pot Hand and Body Lotion. LUSH works with grassroots charities across the globe and has made over 40K for select charities since its introduction to stores. On every pot, there is a sticker for a charity.
EcoSticks and Returns
As for our ethical practices in every day, employees at LUSH take steps to ensure sustainable and conscious choices. The popsicle sticks we use for testers and our paper towels are compostable, not recyclable. As well, employees take extra precautions at closing by doing “trash checks,” gloves on and everything.
Black Pot Program
All black pot items are eligible for our In-Store Recycling Program. Bring all your leftover pots into a store, and we send them back to our factories in Vancouver and Toronto to be refitted into new black pots.
Campaigns
LUSH, as a company, undertakes campaigns in stores. Over the summer of 2019, I was introduced to the Shark Campaign in a staff meeting where we all took out our phones and pledged to protect sharks from being killed for squalene, a prominent ingredient in Korean beauty. We carry these campaigns out in-store with signage and exclusive products like our Shark Fin Soap, with all proceeds going to shark conservation.
Cruelty-Free, Vegetarian, and Handmade
Our promise to ensure we never test on animals is made possible by using safe synthetics, allowing us to test on humans—where skincare belongs. It’s important to note, we are NOT organic and never claim to be. For a product to be labeled organic, it must be bought from the government and would prevent LUSH from paying our fair trade suppliers of aloe vera, extra virgin olive oil, and more, a fair and livable wage.
Typically, returns in retail are thrown away or destroyed. Any returns or products “unusable” in-store are offered among the staff, and if not taken, get donated to a shelter alongside our biannual product roundup to the LGBTQ+ homeless youth. As with anything, it is our choices that define us, and LUSH’s decision to be a people-forward company that cares makes a much more significant impact than I initially believed. Changes are being made in the skincare industry, fashion, culinary arts, and more to become ethical and resourceful, and it’s a movement I’m glad to say that I am a part of.
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Ditching Meat Without Ditching Flavor by Monica Petrucci
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e all know the meat industry is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and that minimizing our meat intake could result in major environmental benefits. The good news: Becoming a vegetarian or vegan (or at least adopting those practices regularly) isn’t as hard today as it was decades ago. Now, we have so many meat-alternative options at grocery stores and restaurants that compare pretty closely to the real thing. No matter what your favorite meat dish is, you won’t be missing it much with these alternatives.
Sausage — Beyond Sausage
The Beyond brand has also been making major strides in the meatless industry, with their meatless burger comparing closely to the real thing. They also sell meatless sausages in most grocery stores, which is made from plant protein. They offer an original and Hot Italian flavor—perfect for any dish or topping.
Bacon — Tempeh
Oftentimes, bacon is one of the hardest things for omnivores to let go; Its smoky, comforting flavor is a breakfast and sandwich staple that people can’t forget about. Tempeh, made from fermented soy beans, is commonly used to fill this void. Fry some at home by seasoning it with herbs and liquid smoke. Or, try out Lightlife’s organic tempeh “Fakin’ Bacon,” sold at grocery stores and online.
Steak — Portobello mushrooms
A healthy alternative to steak, portobello mushrooms have the meaty texture and flavor that is easily comparable to meat. Season it with steak sauce and char it on a grill to achieve a barbecue-style meaty entree without the guilt.
Beef — Impossible meat/pa#ies
Arguably the most popular product to rise from the meatless industry, Impossible Meat deserves all the hype it gets. It’s easy to mistake this plant-based product for the real thing, because it’s made from chemicals found in real meat. You can find Impossible Burgers at lots of major and local restaurant chains—like Earls, Wahlburgers, and even Burger King.
Pulled pork — Marinated jackfruit
This miracle fruit has a very similar texture to pulled pork and chicken when cooked right. And once you’ve marinated it with your favorite sauce, it even tastes like meat. You can purchase pre-marinated packages, like Upton’s Naturals brand, at grocery stores and chef up your favorite sandwich or entree at home.
Chicken — Seitan
Seitan, made from wheat gluten, is used to make plenty of meat-alternative products, but is most popularly used as a replacement to chicken. Use it to make chicken nuggets, chicken parm, or any other dish you might be craving. Or check out local restaurants like Veggie Galaxy, who have mastered its manipulation as a true meat look-alike in multiple delicious menu items.
Turkey — Tofurky
For traditional holiday meals and everyday sandwiches, turkey is a major part of the American diet. Luckily, most grocery stores offer a meatless replacement for all turkey forms—everything from deli slices to turkey “roasts”—so you can keep your habits and traditions alive.
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Climate Anxiety by Abigail Michaud
I
magine taking a hike through the woods. You come across an empty plastic water bottle. You’re conscious about the state of our deteriorating environment, so you pick it up. You continue c to walk and spot more litter, so you fill your arms with trash. Then you see a mountain of trash in the middle of the woods. The clean up is too much for you to do on your own. You rack your brain for solutions. Leave it there and take back what you already have? Come back later and clean it up yourself ? Bring friends to help? Alert your community? You can feel yourself wasting more time by thinking about solutions, which increases your stress levels. Sound familiar? These feelings are a part of a much larger conversation on social media. The fear of the future goes hand in hand with the lack of action from adults’ inaction today. The younger generation, who are going to be hit by these looming issues by the time they come into power, are already panicking. Amongst the constant sound of alarm in the age of the internet, how does one keep from derailing or giving up onover this looming issue? Climate change’s visibility in the media is a growing issue that has been shown to increase feelings of anxiety, depression, and helplessness through a loss of control, according to a report posted by the American Psychological Association in 2017. Despite the fact that this knowledge only increases “eco-anxiety,” I think that many would rather be informed than ignorant. “I am not the only one that is scared and fighting for this to stop; so many of my peers are as well,” says Nicole Hester, an Emerson College student. Wyatt Oswald, an Emerson College science teacher of climate change, believes that we can cope with this stress by “think[ing] about what we can do in terms of individual and family levels, collectively as a society. We all ought to be taking individual measures to reduce our environmental impact.” He and his family have made efforts to live more purposefully in regards to the environment. This involves eating a local, plant-based diet that avoids a lot of packaging, sticking to public transportation, and investing in a more efficient heating and cooling system in his house. While Oswald has the privilege and access to resources to be more environmental, there are still other ways to adopt a more mindful lifestyle. “One of the biggest personal changes I’ve made in my life in an effort to be more sustainable is deciding to no longer eat meat and to reduce my consumption of dairy,” says Hester. She also has tried to think about “sustainability” when shopping; she brings reusable bags and avoids items with more waste in the packaging. Reusable coffee cups are a good purchase to make as well.
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As for mental health coping skills, the APA has provided a few tips in its report, “Mental Health And Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance.” The report stresses trying to build more of a sense of self-resilience and optimism, to adopt coping and self-regulation skills, and to promote connectedness to one’s community. Specifically, you could join a club or community group advocating for climate change, opt to live more environmentally consciously, orand take a hike and pick up litter along the way. Despite these personal efforts, some may feel like their individual efforts are not enough. Oswald underscores this by stating that we, as a society, need to work together toward economic and political changes to reduce our environmental impact. Hester agrees with this, stating, “I try to remember that I can’t singlehandedly change the world. Keeping that in mind has helped me to think reasonably about what I can do on different levels and avoid becoming so overwhelmed and angry.” To combat this isolated feeling, there are many climate crisis groups that are welcoming to new members. There is a #climatestrike movement, started by then fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg in August 2018, that remains steadfast. Maya Meisenzahl, an Emerson College student who has participated in the recent September 20 climate strike march, has found solidarity and a sense of community. Her eco-anxiety was rooted in a feeling of helplessness as an individual. That feeling changed when she surrounded herself with like-minded people who created more attainable goals regarding this issue, like the march toward the state house. “The people around me were all so different, all vastly different ages, races, backgrounds, and creeds. But we were all standing together for something. It was the most powerful sense of community I had ever felt a part of,” Meisenzahl says. Even with the inducement of stress involved with this continuing coverage, it is important to hear it and understand that there will be barriers against climate change. As Thunberg has stated in front of the US Congress in Washington DC on September 17, 2019, “you must do the impossible. Because giving up can never ever be an option.” You can choose to become more involved, which will make climate change more tangible and real, but the collectiveness of the community will make it that much easier to tackle. That mound of litter in the woods will be faster to clean up if everyone pitches in. Eco-anxiety is something that a lot of people share, and buty working together to clean up the earth, it with a common goal might alleviate some of that stress. The earth has provided for us, so we should do our part and sustain her.
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Style style photos by Elaine Tantra models honey bee Jalyn Cox tiger beetle Rosana Pena monarch butterfly Sylar Figaro thrift art by Reagan Allen photo by Stella Drews-Sheldon model Meg Aubrey
Fact or Fiction:
Fashion’s Friendly Faux-Pas by Clarah Grossman
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reen is the new black — in the sense that fashion’s next trend needs to be environmentally friendly. When thinking about the main causes of pollution on Earth, most people don’t think of the fashion industry despite it being the second-largest waste producer in the world. Due to high demands and ever-changing trends, sustainable clothing has become difficult to find. From production to sales, there are tons of myths surrounding sustainable, eco-friendly clothing.
Vegan Leather
The idea of respecting animals and looking stylish appeals to everyone. But watch out — vegan leather isn’t what it seems. Polyurethane vegan leather, or pleather, is made from petroleum, which is basically plastic, according to The Cut. While leather is a sub-product of the meat industry, which is bad for the environment, plastic and petroleum aren’t great for the climate either. Petroleum has been connected to climate change by increasing greenhouse gases and through the transport and consumption of the chemical and its toxicity. It is hard to figure out which is ethically the correct one to choose, but looking for upcycled or vintage leather is one way to solve the problem.
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Toxic Dyes and Fabrics While many people have the illusion that they are helping the planet by buying certain clothes and following certain trends, such as conscious labels at H&M, many labels disguise their production practices. As Peter Kalmus writes in his book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, “The word [green] has no precise meaning in an environmental context, yet it strongly signifies vague environmental virtue… in the US there’s no regulation of green advertising. Corporations that do great damage to the biosphere regularly brand themselves as green.” Examples of this damage are evident in the types of dyes used to produce supposed ethical clothing. Many popular dyes contain chemicals and materials that are toxic for the environment and drain off into bodies of water and surrounding ecosystems.
Tote Bags
While tote bags generally seem more environmentally friendly, as you’d think it would reduce the amount of plastic bags being used, some tote bags are made from materials that can actually be more harmful. According to a Quartz article, canvas tote bags might be less eco-friendly than using plastic bags because they take up more energy and plastic to produce — so you’d have to use the tote bag thousands of times to have the same cumulative environmental impact, including water and energy use, as a classic plastic bag would. So, if you are going to use a tote bag, use one. Don’t buy 10 because they’re trendy. You can also get crafty and make your own tote bag using old garments, T-shirts, or jeans.
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$
hopping
Sustainably
The Impact of Fast Fashion on the Fashion Industry
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by Faith Bugenhagen
T
he earth is in an unprecedented environmental crisis. From 95% of the global temperatures rising to the glaciers disappearing in the Alps, Himalaya, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and regions of Africa, there are countless records being set for the most extreme conditions. With all the scientific proof from data collected or satellite observation done, people still choose not to believe that they are impacting the natural balance of the world. Society has conditioned the individual to transform into the consumer, resulting in an overabundance of desire, but not need. This at its core is the main problem when coming to an individual’s carbon footprint, or the waste that they leave behind. Within this article, the impact of the culture of consumerism relating to the fashion industry and the carbon footprint consumers from this industry, leave behind, will be explored. The fashion industry is one of the largest power players when looking at it’s drastic impacts on the world balance today. In Asia, the heart of textile production and fashion factory work, over 70% of rivers and lakes are contaminated due to dyes that flow into the water during production. This factory production impacts the lives’ of the workers too. These workers are more susceptible to heart attacks or infertility because of the chemicals they are exposed to while on the job. These risks are made by the workers on a day-to-day basis, and they are not even compensated minimum wage, nor do they experience ethical working conditions. Companies within the fashion industry that use such production practices as mentioned above are considered to be under the sect of the industry referred to as fast fashion. Fast fashion operates based off of the seasons and trends within the industry. Fast fashion uses cheap materials and faulty production practices in order to keep up with each season and produce new collections for consumer satisfaction. This cycle of the seasons is the main issue that contributes to this industry slowly eating away at the earth’s natural resources. There is so much waste and no recycling of the clothing which piles up due to being obsolete for the new seasons. This problem only increases with each micro-season that falls in between the major seasons. The company’s that use these practices such as Forever 21, Charlotte Russe, and H&M, have made no efforts in venturing into more sustainable options as their primary concern is keeping up with the consumers’ needs. They do not choose to ac-
“The fashion industry is one of the largest power players when looking at it’s drastic impacts on the world balance today.”
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knowledge the changes that need to be implemented to produce products consciously.
“If consumers care about sustainability, but do not have the means to purchase, what should they do?”
Although the Fast Fashion industry has failed to recognize the changes needed to manufacture garments sustainably or create work environments that operate ethically, the “Slow Fashion” movement has. This movement, implemented by certain clothing companies, has gone through the process of making their companies more environmentally-friendly, while also establishing ethical working guidelines for factory workers they employ. These companies often have certain goals in mind pertaining to using organic fibers for their textiles, reducing the water usage during production, or simply decreasing the amount of one product produced. All of these practices allow them to create clothing with the impact it has on the ecosystem in mind.
This trend of manufacturing both ethically and consciously has caught on with many companies, however there is a downside: the expense behind manufacturing. Using sustainable fabrics, cutting down on water usage, and using less-damaging dyes full of chemicals cost more for the company. This increase in cost leads to an increase in the cost of the garment for the consumer. Although the consumer is choosing the sustainable choice, often times this sustainable choice is not beneficial to the consumer because of this. Brands like Reformation and Amour Vert are two clothing companies that are known for their sustainable manufacturing. The issue within these companies is that are their prices which range in the upper hundreds. This poses a question, if consumers care about sustainability, but do not have the means to purchase, what should they do? There are many brands, other than Reformation and Amour Vert, who are attempting to implement environmentally-conscious clothing lines for conscious consumers. Companies like Birkenstock, Alternative Apparel, and Pact are more affordable and use biodegradable materials in order to remain eco-friendly. Overall, the fast fashion industry is detrimental to the course of climate change and must recognize that changes need to be made in order to produce clothes sustainably. If these changes are implemented within the fashion industry as a whole, and the redundancy of season culture is discarded, the industry will have the ability to make up for all the damage it has caused to the environment.
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Thrifted Threads and the Price of Trends by Kaitlyn E. Joyner
T
hrift shops are supposed to be just what their name implies — thrifty. However, urban areas overrun with a new breed of secondhand shops are proof that this may not be the case anymore. The curated fronts of trendy “thrift” shops lure in crowds of college students with the promise of vintage items, staple pieces, and prices that won’t interfere with tuition payments. However, upon checking the price tag of a donated T-shirt, one is likely to find a price rivaling that of a shirt at Urban Outfitters. Marketed as “vintage stores” or “exchange shops,” these contemporary versions of thrift stores have caught on to the mania that has infiltrated popular youth culture. The internet has been flooded with before and after shots of rehabilitated clothing items: large sweatshirts cropped and hemmed, baggy jeans cinched at the waist, XL T-shirts made into tube top and skirt sets. High school students hit up Goodwill on the weekends and return home with hauls of “vintage” oversized turtlenecks or denim jackets, and their parents mull nostalgically over the old becoming new again — a new life lent to what had supposedly been retired in the ‘80s. Thrift shopping inspires consumers to reinvent themselves, expand their closet and be bolder and more eco-friendly by buying secondhand.
“Upon checking the price tag of a donated T-shirt, one is likely to find a price rivaling that of a shirt at Urban Outfitters.”
Stores like Thrive Exchange are profiting off of the revival of trends and streetwear nostalgia. Its foot traffic is mainly due to younger generations, but Ryan, who has been with Thrive since the beginning, cites their seventy-year-old regular customer, who rocks the freshest streetwear, as evidence that all generations can find inspiration. Thrive began as a consignment shop in Somerville and functioned as a donation-based thrift store comparable to Salvation Army or Goodwill. After numerous successful pop-up events featuring vintage finds, Thrive evolved into what Rob, the owner of Avant-Garde Vintage and partner of Thrive Exchange, describes as a “curated vintage store.” According to Rob, Thrive aims to cultivate a collection of items that pay homage to “hip-hop streetwear, nostalgia and artistic society.” The items sold by Thrive are sourced through donations, as well as through sold or exchanged vintage collections. The store’s items are either “post-consumer or dead stock.” Although “people can’t always afford vintage,” Rob says Thrive “tries to have something for everyone.” The items in the store range from brand names to more obscure, and the prices range from anywhere between $10 and $200. “We want to price our things at a point where it’s compatible with what fast fashion brands are doing, but a little less. We don’t undercut ourselves too much, but we also don’t try to charge more than your average retailer,” Rob explained passionately.
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Upon skimming the store, I found vintage pieces, but also many pieces I felt did not quite fit the description, such as obscure high school spirit apparel and funky graphic tees. I struggled to decide whether certain pieces could be qualified as vintage. Though I would much rather spend $25 on a secondhand item than a fast fashion one for the sake of the environment, I found myself wondering whether some of Thrive’s pieces would feel more at home in a Savers. Though stores like Thrive help consumers to decrease their environmental footprint, they also drive up the prices of items that could clothe people in need. After all, who gets the final say in deciding what is vintage and what is not? How can we know for sure that the pricing of an item reflects its value, when some old things are worthless and others are deemed priceless? Wouldn’t it be simple to claim that everything in the store is worth more than it is?
“Because everyone is going for a vintage look, the prices have skyrocketed and secondhand stores have become more selective about what they put on display.”
As “art kids,” Emerson students play an important role in observing and influencing youth culture, fashion trends, and the ethical implications of consumption. An Emerson student who wished to remain anonymous says that “Upon moving to the city, [they’ve] noticed that the prices reflect the trends in youth culture here. Thrifting has become all the rage amongst Generation Z, and because everyone is going for a vintage look, the prices have skyrocketed and secondhand stores have become more selective about what they put on display.” Freshman Nadya Ryan says that “The attitude towards thrifting has changed. It has shifted from a shameful to a trendy thing, so thrift stores have gotten more expensive, and there are lots of ‘high-end thrift stores’ now. But the fact that thrifting is ‘cool’ now is good for the environment, whether or not that is the consumer’s motivation.” Evidently, Emerson students have complex feelings surrounding how we interact with the fashion industry and how it impacts our planet. Thrifting has only grown more popular as time has progressed — and for a good reason. Trends from past decades have resurfaced and thrift stores have become the primary contender for finding classic pieces, no matter the consumer’s unique taste. Some consumers are most attracted by the prospect of reducing their environmental footprint while others are drawn by the allure of vintage items. Awareness of the harmful environmental impact of fast fashion has grown more widespread. Thrift shop-
ping is infinitely more sustainable than buying clothes new, but as more affluent people have hopped on the trend of thrifting, secondhand stores have discovered that more customers are willing to pay higher prices for used clothing. Thrift shopping is open to people of all socio-economic statuses. However, thrift shops are intended to provide lower-income citizens with access to clothing for cheaper prices, so despite our motivations, our decisions to thrift impact both the environment and those struggling financially. As consumers, empaths, and art school students, it is crucial we explore the impacts of the thrifting trend on the world and on those around us. In his 2016 journal article “Hipsters on Our High Streets: Consuming the Gentrification Frontier,” Phil Hubbard, a professor of urban studies at King’s College in London, acknowledges the connection between shopping habits and subsequent shifts towards more gentrified secondhand shopping. “Whether consciously or otherwise, when any middle class incomers establish themselves on the ‘gentrification frontier,’ they fundamentally change the character of place, inducing displacement pressures that can have long-term consequences for those working class residents they co-locate with,” Hubbard asserts. If it were not for the willingness of consumers to shell out big money for secondhand finds, places like Thrive Exchange, quite literally, would not thrive. Those used items are meant to be accessible to those who cannot afford the department store prices, but our willingness to shell out the cash for clothing items that are not vintage, not designer, just used, prevents low-income shoppers from attaining used clothing at fair prices. If we encourage the growth of trendy and overpriced thrift stores, they will continue to crop up around the country in the place of genuine thrift stores, preventing people in need of cheap clothing from the accessibility they need.
“If it were not for the willingness of consumers to shell out big money for secondhand finds, places like Thrive Exchange, quite literally, would not thrive.”
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Next time you go out thrifting and pick out a killer piece, consider not only the impact of its price on your wallet, but on the availability of resources to others. Though our interactions with the fashion industry are complicated, if we take steps to remain conscious of the effects of our shopping habits on society and the world at large, we can live more sustainably and with more consideration for those to whom thrifting is more than just a trend.
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“An Alternative Department Store”
by Olivia Cigliano
An employee’s take on the thrift destination
I
count thrifting as a hobby and one of my strongest skills (subtle brag), so applying to The Garment District this September was a natural choice. They posted that they were Th hiring on their Instagram and I immediately sent over my resume in the back of a Lyft.
As a consistent shopper, I was worried the excitement of the store would be ruined by working long weekend shifts, but I was pleasantly surprised. I work with good people, get to organize beautiful vintage clothing all day, and get paid. What more could you ask for? For those who don’t know, The Garment District is a massive thrift store in Cambridge that operates inside a warehouse that dates back to 1883. It has a massive inventory of over 40,000 donated items from every decade since the 1950s. It labels itself as an “alternative department store,” evident in its bubble-gum pink walls spread throughout every nook and cranny of the building and its eclectic vintage decor, not to mention the beloved lifesize silver horse on the first floor. Under the Garment District’s umbrella is Boston Costume providing any costume or costume accessory you can imagine, from latex makeup to animal mascot heads. Sharing the first floor is the “by the pound section,” a mound of clothes and accessories that invites customers to dig for treasure. Customers’ hauls are charged two dollars per pound, except for Fridays. when its marked down to a dollar. This section of the store is popular among the city’s homeless as it allows them to afford coats and blankets during the winter. College students also appreciate it, in fact, the biggest sale I’ve rung up was for a Boston student at a whopping 40 pounds.
“Producing a pair of jeans emits as much greenhouse gases as driving a car 80 miles.”
The Garment District has prided itself on being a “green” business since its opening, as a place where customers can give new life to valuable pre-owned pieces. Any vintage items that don’t sell are thrown in the “by the pound” pile and whatever isn’t claimed is found another usage. This practice of reusing and recycling keeps textiles from filling landfills and reduces the environmental damage that comes from manufacturing clothing. By supporting thrift stores you exercise ethical and conscious consumption which is necessary now more than ever. The fashion industry is one of the highest polluters and resource vampires on the planet and according to the World Resources Institution, clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years with the rise of fast fashion. In terms of water usage, it takes 2,700 gallons of water to make one cotton t-shirt, which could sustain the average person for two and a half years. Producing a pair of jeans emits as much greenhouse gases as driving a car 80 miles. Most fast fashion garments are made cheaply with the use of chemicals and will sit in landfills for up to 200 years. It’s about time we ditch fast fashion, donate, and thrift. Some may say that middle class consumers have infiltrated second-hand stores for selfish reasons motivated by trends, taking options away from those that rely on the likes of Goodwill and the Salvation Army for cheap clothing, but I’d argue there’s plenty to go around as long as people continue to donate. The Garment District is a great example of a thrift store that caters to all.
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Behind the Scenes by Chloe Leung
“Otherworldly” and “ethereal” are words that symbolize the vision behind the Globe section’s ‘Alien’ spread. The goal of the shoot was to imitate a “surreal” world, one where two people would be brought together in an Alien landscape, which is exactly what models Jamaal Thompson and Soleil Easton helped us create. Creating a visual spread is a collaborative effort. These photos give a raw behind the scenes look into the earlier stages of the process, where the hair and makeup, style, and editorial teams come together to physically bring the vision to life. With so many teams on deck, creative energies are always flowing, even more so with this shoot as it was one of the first print shoots of the semester. While the art team worked their magic to create imagery that made these photos look “unearthly,” these BTS photos represent the “earthly” side of the digital process.
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Nature. The Style section’s visual spread emphasized the beautiful simplicity of the earth, and how style inspiration can be pulled from mother nature’s offerings and creations. The inspiration for this shoot came from bees, tiger beetles, and butterflies. The Fenway Victory Gardens was the center location for our photoshoot. A space that once existed as a victory garden during the World War II era, now stands as fully operating community space with over 500 flower, herb, and vegetable gardens, which made this the perfect setting for our nature inspired shoot. “Going into the style shoot, my main inspiration was based on three distinct insects with varying bold color palettes: a bee, a tiger beetle, and a butterfly. I incorporated different aspects in each look, from making a butterfly headpiece with matching monochromatic orange makeup, to drawing honeycombs to emulate a bee’s appearance, and lastly focusing on a holographic scheme for the tiger beetle. We were heavily inspired by nature as you can tell from our setting, so my main focus was recreating earth’s beauty and delivering it through our models.” - Lexi Leap, Hair and Makeup Director.
WHAT’S IN MY BAG? by Grace Cosgrove
jojo mazza
cameron cruz
sarah gann
Freshman from Boca Raton, Florida
Sophomore from Roxbury New, Jersey
Sophomore from Birmingham, Alabama
“I use bamboo straws instead of plastic straws. They are better for the environment than plastic straws and super easy to carry with you. I keep them in my school backpack and my purse and use them all the time!”
“I use a reusable water bottle because it’s an easy way to reduce plastic waste. Plus it reminds me to stay hydrated while also keeping my water cold and yummy!
“ I try and buy items made from recycled materials as much as I can. So when I came across this notebook I had to get it because it’s recycled and because it’s super cute. I use it all the time for school.”
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STAFF SUSTAINABILITY FAVORITES RESTAURANTS
PODCASTS
by Chloe clover Mother Juice sweetgreen boloco
NPR’s environment podcast Outside/In Green Dreamer Parts Per Billion The Cutting Room Floor
BLOGS crueltyfreekitty.com simple-ish.com plantedinthewoods.com thecrazynoplasticlady.com
BOOKS
INFLUENCERS Aditi Mayar @aditimayar Jack Harries @jackharries Tolmeia Gregory @tollydollyposh Immy Lucas @sustainably_vegan Greta Thunberg @gretathunberg EcoTribe @theecotribe
More Plants, Less Waste by Max La Manna forage by Rita Wong The Zero Waste Cookbook by Giovanna Torrico and Amelia Wasiliev The Vegan Starter Kit by Neal D Barnard Mostly Plants by the Pollan Family The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley
DOCUMENTARIES Gasland The Cove Before the Flood Encounters at the End of the World Franca: Chaos and Creation Blackfish Dominion An Inconvenient Truth
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Plantain Chips A super easy, quick, vegan snack! By Emma Cox
There are about a million ways to use plantains. I have only recently begun using them in my cooking—they are readily available at the grocery store near me but weren’t at the one in my hometown. The plantain has been used all over the world, primarily in regions like West and Central Africa, Carribean, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. Recently they have surged in popularity in the US because many of their recipes are vegan. Though it has no botanical difference from the banana, plantains are generally starchier and are generally cooked before eating. Most plantain recipes call for green plantains when the fruit is more starchy leading to a more savory outcome. The only downside to working with green plantains is you need to cook with them directly after purchasing them so they don’t ripen. If that happens you can always just make fried plantains.
What You’ll Need: 1-2 Green Plantains ½ TBS Oil (Coconut, Olive, Avacado, whatever) Salt to taste (whatever other seasonings you like) My spice blend These are all estimates because normally I just eyeball it 1 TBS salt 1 TBS garlic powder 1 TBS Chili Powder 1 TSP paprika 1TSP Black Pepper ½ TSP cumin Pinch of cinnamon (optional)
How-To: Preheat Oven: 350 degrees Peel the plantains, this is the hardest part, try slicing lengthwise slits to help you get through the tough peel. Once they are peeled thinly slice the plantain, about ⅛ inch thick—the thinner it is the better it will bake. Many recipes will call for a mandolin here but who has one of those? This isn’t the BA test kitchen. Once the plantain is sliced toss the slices in the oil. This is where you add the seasonings. If you like a classic taste then just stick to sea salt. I like a bit more flavor and kick so I generally mix my own little spice blend, you should season it in whatever way makes you happy. After the slices are seasoned place them on a baking sheet, far enough apart so they aren’t touching. Bake for 15-20 min. Enjoy.
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Salted Caramel Apple Pie By Stella Drews-Sheldon What You’ll Need: 8 Granny Smith Apples 3 Tablespoons Lemon Juice ¼ Cup all purpose flour ⅔ Cup granulated sugar 3 Teaspoons ground cinnamon ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg 2 premade pie crusts, thawed if frozen 1 egg, beaten ¾ cup heavy cream ¾ cup light brown sugar 2 tablespoons honey 3 tablespoons unsalted butter Sea salt, for garnish
How-To: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Peel, core, and thinly slice all of the apples. I promise this will be the most annoying part of the whole experience. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius) In a large bowl, combine the apple slices, lemon juice, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Toss until the apples are well coated. Lay 1 of the pie crusts in a 9-inch (23-cm) pie dish. Add the apple slices to the bottom of the crust. Place the other pie crust over the apple slices. Trim any extra dough from the edges. Press the rounded edge of spoon facedown around the edge, making shallow indentations to crimp the crusts together. You can also use a fork but a spoon will make it way cuter. Cut 4 slits in the top of the pie for ventilation. Be creative! Make some fun designs! Or don’t, it’s pie either way. Brush with beaten egg and top with a little cinnamon sugar. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, or until you think it looks really good in there. Remove from the oven and let it cool completely. In a medium saucepan, combine the heavy cream, brown sugar, and honey. Cook over medium/high heat until the sugar is dissolved, about 2 minutes. Wisk in the butter and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the caramel reaches a thick consistency. Let the caramel sauce cool for 5 minutes, then pour over the pie. Wait another few minutes until the carmel has hardened a bit, and then sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Now BAM! You made a pie! Make some for your friends or just make it for yourself because you had a long week and you deserve it!
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