Dominique Drakeford is a woman who wears many masks. First and foremost, she is an environmental educator, but she is much more than just that as she takes on the role as creative director and community advocate within her numerous spheres of work. Her passion project is her evolutionary platform, Melanin and Sustainable Style (MelaninASS), which addresses the issues and celebrates the triumphs of communities of color in sustainable fashion, green beauty and wellness spaces. She strives to inspire ecological, cultural, and social change as well as change the way people talk about sustainability in practice. She has done work with Urban Zen and Studio 189, written for publications, is partnered with global luxe sustainable fashion brands, and has been featured on the cover of Ethical Style Journal. This piece is from Issue №3 of The Regeneration Magazine:

The idea of sustainability has been around long before the term was adopted in the Western world. Traditional craftsmanship and modalities, such as being mindful of the Earth and treating communities with respect, have been rooted in the heritage and history of cultures of color for generations.

Much of sustainable fashion today is re-learning how to cultivate the ethical production methodology of indigenous cultures, while still adhering to modern Western ideology.

Today, the African diaspora is flooded with amazing sustainable designers who have adopted a cocktail of skills from their ancestors and other cultures of color around the globe. The pulse of sustainable fashion is founded on culture with a heartbeat of melanin.

Far too often, we see a lack of positive representation in a space that is inherently for and by people of color, pre colonization. So many amazing eclectic and luxury brands founded by people of color need to be elevated within the sustainable style realm. Bloggers, editors, creative directors, models and everyday people should be looking to more brands by women of color so that eventually those brands can simply be recognized as amazing sustainable fashion designers, period.

The following are just a few of my favorite black-owned sustainable fashion brands.

Studio One Eighty Nine @studiooneeightynine

Studio One Eighty Nine is an award-winning, luxury, ethical brand founded by actress and activist Rosario Dawson and fashion powerhouse Abrima Erwiah. The entire collection is handcrafted in Ghana using traditional techniques, such as hand batiking, to truly create uniquely luxe pieces while paying fair wages to local artisans.

Remuse @remusedesigns

This Australian-based brand creates handmade designed pieces inspired by Earth. Her collections have Afrofuturistic influences that have been a driving force for her cultural aesthetic. In particular, this designer explores the cosmic beyond — a worldly place which has informed the designs, silhouettes and use of colors.

Chan & Krys @chanandkrys

Chan & Krys is a collection of stylish and sustainable separates and accessories focused on texture and comfort. This brand is inspired by menswear and draws from elements of the Bay Area and New York, where each of the co-founders reside.

Printed Pattern People @printedpatternpeople

Printed Pattern People partners with artisans around the globe to provide printed leisurewear that complements women’s desire for exploration and world travel. With a plethora of oversized, draped pieces, the brand looks amazing on all body types.

Paige Dawkins @bypaigedawkins

Luna Soul is a locally made fashion brand that will definitely add chic, minimalist pieces to your wardrobe. Inspired by southern roots with a boho-chic vibe, this brand believes in slow, ethical production inspired by worldly travel.

Yemzi @yemzi

This London-based designer sources natural fibers, azo-free dyes and GOTS-certified fabrics for all of her products. Using paints and sketches to inform bold design, Yemzi digitally prints exclusive fabrics by West Africa and the diaspora. This brand also hosts design workshops to teach teenage girls design skills and help them to channel their creativity into a successful career in fashion.

Mixed Color @mixed_color_

This brand creates experimental collections of handmade textiles with all-natural textiles, such as raw silk, certified organic cotton, hemp and linen. Mixed Color pecializes in 100 percent natural dyes, such as madder root, cutch and osage orange, with an inspiration of culture and nature.

Chelsea Bravo @chelseabravo_

This unisex deigner based in the U.K. makes thoughtfully crafted pieces inspired by art, environment and abstractness. Believing in working alongside the environment, Bravo’s designs feature contemporary urban minimalism.

Sindiso Khumalo @sindisokhumalo

Sindiso Khumalo is a South African designer focused on creating modern, sustainable textiles using strong graphic prints that create the perfect pieces to stand out among the crowd. Her uniquely vibrant voice speaks to Zulu and Ndebele heritage and continuous African storytelling.

Tabii Just @tabiijust

Tabii Just is a women’s empowerment brand focused on much-needed zero waste basics with a subtle Trinidadian twist. With a mantra of responsible production, Tabii’s seasonless dresses are fun, flirty and great for any occasion.

Aliya Wanek @aliyawanek

Aliya Wanek is an Oakland-based label focused on handmade quality, craft and functional pieces for women who love American monochromatic classics. Wanek’s pieces have a hint of Japanese inspiration and a minimalist aesthetic that is simply beautiful.

Lemlem @lemlemnyc

Lemlem is a luxe, made-in-Africa brand focused on helping women artisans thrive. With a wide assortment of styles — such as dresses, tunics, jumpsuits and cardigans — investing in multiple pieces from this designer is essential.

This article is featured in Issue №3 of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

Don’t forget to clap if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

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Melanin and Sustainable Style was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bill Johnston is the co-founder and president of Recover Brands, an apparel and accessory manufacturing company whose mission is to create the most environmentally friendly and socially responsible products possible. Recover accomplishes this by maintaining complete control of their supply chain to ensure that all of their products are made from 100 percent recycled materials. An avid outdoorsman, Bill began his journey into sustainable business working for an outdoor adventure company after graduating from NC State. Here, he describes how Recover Brands came to fruition and shares some of the less obvious challenges and benefits of using 100 percent recycled materials.

Kyle Calian: How did you arrive here, working with Recover?

Bill Johnston: I graduated in 2008 from NC State, with a focus on supply-chain management. My dad was in the industry too (he has a knitting mill in Statesville), so I grew up around textiles. After graduating, I went to work for an outdoor adventure company called Moondance Adventures, where I guided backpacking and mountaineering trips for teenagers.

I had always been into outdoor activities, but in leading expeditions all over the world I realized what I really liked was the opportunity to educate kids about the environment. I loved it, but after the first season I started looking for other opportunities. That was when the economy absolutely tanked, so finding jobs in sustainability was not exactly opportunistic. So I stuck it out for four more years and took some time to really think about how I could turn my passion for environmental protection into a career.

After my second year with Moondance I connected with a good family friend, John Riddle, who had been selling yarn to my dad since the ‘80s.

John was a big cyclist, and I had always been really into mountain biking. I was in the market for some new wheels at the time, so my dad told me I should connect with John to get a new bike. I gave him a call, and we hit it off right off the bat.

We started riding together and kicking around ideas. I told him about my passion for sustainability, and he introduced me to the world of recycled textiles. I was taken away by his musings on the possibilities for using upcycled cotton and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

As our friendship blossomed through cycling together, I started to do more and more research on recycled plastic. Shortly thereafter, it became a no-brainer for us to try to start something. So we put our heads together and started a business.

Great, and when did you decide you wanted to start Recover Brands?

We had the idea in early 2010, but we didn’t have a tangible product until the end of that year. Once we started selling, we realized there was this huge void in the market in terms of bolt production and more wholesale scale. Some of our initial orders were driven between running races and different events, but then we shifted our model to focus more on wholesale.

Got you. Can you tell me a little bit more about your process?

We use both recycled PET and upcycled cotton in our core products. What we call the Recover Sport, which is made entirely from post-consumer plastics or recycled PET, is literally post-consumer waste. We collect water bottles, Coke bottles, Gatorade bottles — really any kind of clear number one plastics that are collected in curbside recycling bins or in industrial recycling bins. Those plastics are then sorted, cleaned, washed, broken down, shaved into flake, melted into pellets and then extruded into a new fiber. That fiber is the key ingredient for the Sport. The idea behind that product is that the world has a massive problem with plastic, particularly with single-use plastics, such that there is an enormous abundance of plastic in the world that most often ends up in landfills or in our ecosystems. So our product brings new life to something that would otherwise go to waste and/or harm the environment.

Our sport fabric is one solution for the world’s plastic problem. We also have a 50/50 blend, which is made from a combination of recycled PET and upcycled cotton that comes from post-industrial manufacturing scraps and old garments.

When a manufacturer produces a new garment they end up with loads of thin scraps in their cutting rooms that, historically, has gone to waste.

So we go in and collect those scraps, sort them by color and then blend them with the recycled PET to create a new 50/50 blended fiber, which gets spun into a yarn.

One of the coolest parts of that process is that the color in the shirts actually comes from the upcycled cottons, eliminating the need for dyes and chemicals throughout the entire manufacturing process. That saves a tremendous amount of water and energy. Our shirts use less than a tenth of the water needed to produce a conventional shirt.

That’s amazing. Because of the complex nature of the fabric, do you guys have a take-back program or repair program for damaged apparel?

We have a couple of different programs in place. The 100 percent PET products are more of a closed-loop product where those old garments can be broken down and put back into the supply chain, because they are 100 percent polyester. The 50/50 blend fibers, on the other hand, are a little bit harder to break down. So we have an upcycling program where we take those old shirts, whether it’s a defective shirt or just something that doesn’t have life anymore, and we actually upcycle those shirts into drawstring backpacks and tote bags.

Very cool. What have been some of the more difficult challenges you have faced so far?

When we first started up we were in the height of the recession, so people were not only spending less but many weren’t spending at all. We were launching a new concept in one of the worst markets possible.

The other aspect of that is that the general public is just so much more in tune to sustainability than they were in 2010. Sustainability and environmental issues writ large are on the forefront of people’s everyday thoughts and conversations. That’s really encouraging. That being said, there are definitely some serious obstacles ahead, whether you’re looking at government regulations or just catching people up to speed on the extent of the world’s plastic problem.

On the opposite side of that coin, what have been some of your proudest accomplishments?

Building something from scratch is something we’re as proud of as anything. It’s really encouraging when we can quantify our environmental impact from bottle diversion to water savings, energy savings, reduction in carbon emissions, all of those things. When we look at the grand scale since we started, the numbers are really significant.

It’s a real impact, and it’s been really exciting to see how excited our employees are about it. When they look at their company as a whole and the very impactful efforts that they’re contributing to in their work, the fact that we’ve been able to help facilitate that and really give them something they’re proud of is really exciting. The same thing goes for individuals. You can really see people get excited to know that they’re making an impact even if they’re just buying one individual product.

I saw on your website you have a couple companies you’ve collaborated with. What have been some of your most exciting collaborations so far?

A couple industries that we really focus on and have done well in are the outdoor sports world, which is a huge passion of mine, and the music world. We work with a lot of different touring bands and music festivals. One in particular that was just such a surreal moment for me was when we did shirts for Wilco’s tour a couple of years ago. We’ve continued to work with them, because wow, we’re making shirts for Wilco. You always have to pinch yourself a little bit on stuff like that. That’s one in particular.

Another really key partner for us that we work with on a daily basis is Sierra Nevada Brewing. They’re the pioneers of the craft beer world and have really revolutionized that industry. They are trailblazers in so many ways, and they set the standard for sustainability in crafting beer. To be a key partner with them is really exciting for us. We also work with a handful of nonprofits, such as the National Parks Foundation and Let Me Run.

That’s awesome. What are some trends that you’re seeing in the world of sustainability, just in general?

I think the political climate right now has people way more engaged than ever before. I think people are seeing direct impacts from climate change and different things that are happening to the world, whether it’s finding plastic on the beaches, or enduring extremely hot summers, droughts, wildfires — climate change is no longer this mystical idea. Its impact is very real. So there’s much more environmental awareness out there than there was when we started this business in 2010.

That being said, we have some serious issues ahead of us on an industrial scale. We have a great deal of work to do on improving recycling systems and infrastructure to make sure that we’re giving people the options to make sustainable choices on a daily basis.

What I just said is a little bit counter intuitive to the world we’re in right now where everyone is shopping online and buying things with excess packaging, which amplifies their carbon footprint.

We all need more education on these topics so that we can make sure we’re reducing our impact while offering people enough variety of products such that they’re able to make informed purchases. We also need to innovate, or in many ways return to making products that are durable and meant to be reused rather than simply thrown away.

Who have been some of your influencers along the way?

I’d definitely say the first person would have to be my business partner, John. He’s not really involved in the day-to-day operations, but since the beginning he put a lot of faith in me and he has been a great mentor throughout this process. I think for him, when we were first getting started, to put his time, connections and money into a 23-year-old who wanted to do something in sustainability — that obviously gave me a lot of confidence.

Nice. I’ve had some amazing mentors along the way, but I’m still looking for that financial support.

Yeah, for sure.

How do you shop for yourself, and what are some of your favorite companies to purchase from?

I am actually not a huge shopper. From a clothing standpoint, I wear Recover shirts every day — I’m in good shape there. I’ve got a rotation of four pairs of pants and then I’ve got shoes and underwear, so there’s not a whole lot to buy outside of that. But I do spend money on outdoor gear, whether it’s new bikes or backpacking equipment or climbing equipment. I always make sure to put a premium on buying nice stuff that will last a long time. That kind of quality is definitely key for me.

And do you have a favorite Recover product?

I wear our Recover Sport Polo pretty much every day. I love that shirt. I had an old polo that was one of my all time favorites, and I only had one of them. We kind of looked at that as a good model for how we wanted to build that product. I love it. It’s something I can wear to the office and it looks nice, I can wear it to meetings or at night. But on the flip side, it has really nice performance attributes. You can go for a run in it, you can go mountain biking in it, you can go surfing in it. It’s going to dry super fast.

It’s an extremely versatile product that is a staple for everyday use.

What do you do to reduce your environmental impact outside of
your business?

I’m kind of obsessed with waste on an individual basis. One of the things that I like to do, and I always encourage other people to do this as well, is to try to be more conscious about my impact. I like to make a game out of it, to see how little waste I can actually create. In my personal life, I think about my recycling bin and my compost bin, and then compare that to my trash bin.

I try to have zero to very little waste going into that trash bin to the point where I might have to take out a small trash bin maybe once a month. The compost, on the other hand, I’m clearing out once a week — same as my recycling bin. I really try to think about it as a game just to see how little waste I can actually send to the landfill and to make sure that what I’m buying or consuming is either 100 percent recyclable or compostable.

Yeah. I’m in the same boat. Is there anything else you want people to know about Recover?

Yeah, I think one of the big things we’re trying to get out there is just general awareness. We want people to know there are other options for sustainable products. Not just the apparel that we make, but we’re also expanding our accessory line with other new products. One of the things we always talk about and the way we review Recover is similar to what a non-profit would in the sense that we’re really trying to provide solutions to these environmental problems. And ultimately we want to get to a point where all this excess plastic is not a problem at all anymore.

We envision a world where we’ve got recycling rates at 100 percent, where there is no single use plastic out there at all. We’re working as hard as we can to try to get to that goal of helping solve that problem and educate and inspire people along the way with really nice products, so they can get excited about. In addition to building excitement about our products’ green attributes, we also want it to be our customer’s favorite shirt or hat or backpack or hoodie.

Something that’s extremely soft, extremely comfortable, extremely durable, such that they can feel good about it in every way.

Ultimately, if they like the product enough and they wear it all the time and they’re out there talking about it, it’s just that word of mouth like, “Oh, wow. That shirt’s made from eight plastic bottles.” And it has that trickle effect where more and more people will hear about it, get excited about it, learn about us, what we’re doing and help us grow in both an environmentally sustainable and socially responsable way.

Check out Recover Brands at:
recoverbrands.com

Follow them at:
@recoverbrands

This interview is featured in Issue №3 of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

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Interview: Creating an apparel and outdoor gear brand from recycled plastic with Bill Johnston. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Devon Leahy is VP of strategy at Futerra, a change agency dedicated to making sustainability so desirable that it becomes normal. She works with clients like VF Corp, Target and REI to build the business case for sustainability and social impact. She has an MBA and a master’s in environmental policy from the University of Michigan, and has led corporate social responsibility and sustainability work at Walmart and Etsy.

Laura Hunter is head of copy at Futerra where she specializes in finding the simple, compelling story that will get through. She works with clients like GEOX, C&A Foundation and Kering to develop brands and campaigns that get people excited about sustainable fashion.

Kyle Calian: How did the two of you end up at Futerra?

Laura Hunter: I started my career in the charity sector working on campaigns and branding projects. I was keen to move into an agency, but I wanted to use my skills to make a positive impact. I hope I don’t sound too much like a millennial, but that’s what I wanted to do.

And then someone told me about this creative agency that only works on projects and campaigns that make a positive impact on the environment or on people’s lives. Once I heard that, I was hooked.

And Devon?

DL: I’ve been at Futerra for less than a year, but I’ve been working in the corporate sustainability space for about 10 years. I had worked both in-house on the client side, with companies like Walmart, and also on the marketing, branding and communications side of the spectrum.

What was so appealing about Futerra was the blending of the logic of strategy with the magic of creative. We are able to bring our strategies to life and translate them into not just reports or websites that no one visits, but into campaigns that incorporate compelling ideas and movements around the strategies. That mixture is really hard to find. When you’re inside a company in a CSR or sustainability function, you aren’t usually sitting very close to the marketing folks that have those resources at their fingertips. So you are often fighting to break out of your silo. You have a lot of different stakeholders you’re trying to engage with, but you don’t have the right tools (internally) for compelling storytelling.

It’s such a treat to be in an environment where there are creative team members that just get the content. They get the issues. They get that we need to be talking about this stuff, but they can also help turn those conversations into behavior change campaigns or employee engagement platforms that can drive the impact we envision.

So this blend of logic and magic is really unique. I’d like to dive a little bit deeper into that. Devon, can you talk about the strategy or logic side of the work you do?

DL: The strategy base in corporate sustainability is pretty large. There are a plethora of organizations that focus on reporting and materiality assessment. In other words, they’re looking backward at the impact of a company.

That approach is very important, and it’s something we leverage in our work. But Futerra’s approach to logic is more about developing forward-looking strategies.

We do that by first understanding the impacts of that particular business, and then by looking across the industry to understand what broader critical issues the entire sector is facing.

And Laura, could you tell us a little bit more about the communication work you’re doing?

LH: Our subject matter can be complex social and environmental issues, so our job is to get sustainability off the page and into people’s lives. We’re working to make complex issues accessible, relevant and exciting.

So how do we do that? Well, the main thing that we do is answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” When it comes to the public, there is certainly a group of people who will go out of their way to choose the sustainable or eco-friendly option. But that’s just not the case for the majority of people. So when it comes to sustainable fashion, we need to help the masses see the value in it. Just saying it’s sustainable isn’t enough. Empathy and understanding what motivates people is at the heart of what we do. We meet people where they are and find creative solutions to deliver a product or service they can clearly see the value in.

That’s what we did with Geox, an Italian shoe manufacturer. They launched their first sustainable shoe a while ago, which used less than half of the normal components that usually went into manufacturing a shoe. But we didn’t just market the shoe based on its environmental benefits. We created a campaign called the art of simplicity. It was based on the idea that it takes confidence to strip away things that you don’t need, which tapped into a consumer desire for a more considered, minimal lifestyle.

You took a similar path with REI? How did you craft their story in a way that fits into their larger brand image?

DL: When you look at REI, as both an apparel and outdoor equipment co-op, they have a unique business model. They offer both products and services, like equipment rentals and experiential services, that work together to turn their customers into lifelong lovers of the outdoors. What’s really incredible about REI is that they’re a portal to the outdoors; they have this ability to remove barriers and increase access to the outdoors through the products and services they offer. So when you think about the strategy that they’re going to employ, the focus has to be around mending the relationship between humans and the outdoors, and explaining why spending time outdoors is so important for human health and the health of the environment. That’s what was behind the work we did around their #OptOutside campaign.

And for our readers, can you explain what it means to opt outside?

DL: #OptOutside is a campaign that REI has been doing for a number of years that encourages their customers to spend time outside on Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year — rather than spending time indoors buying stuff. So they actually close their store on that day and encourage customers and employees alike to spend that day outside. They also do some programs and projects with partners across the U.S. to make sure that actually happens. It’s not just a soft act. They put a lot of effort and energy behind it. This year, Futerra worked with them to develop athought leadership piece about why opting outside on Black Friday and on other days of the year is so important.

LH: That piece was called “The Path Ahead” and is the intellectual underpinning for why we should get outdoors. For me, it was so eye-opening to learn about the impact of nature on our well-being. It can help with depression, enhance child development, make our cities better places to be. “The Path Ahead” democratizes the knowledge around the benefits of a life lived outdoors.

We also created a short animation for launch. It starts with the fact that Americans spend 95 percent of their time indoors and that it’s time to choose a different path.

Awesome.

DL: Along with that, the amount of time we spend indoors is also increasing over time. Our research showed that this trend has negative effects on both public health and the environment. And if we’re not spending time outside, then we’re not as apt to fight to protect it. We don’t necessarily value it at the individual level. As a society, the environment is undervalued economically, too. That’s a key point.

Great. So to wrap it up, considering some of the trends you both see in the world of corporate sustainability, what are you and the Futerra team most excited to work on next?

LH: For me, definitely circular solutions.

DL: Same answer over here.

LH: Yeah, it’s all about circular. It’s really interesting, because when you go to any conference now, everyone is talking about circular solutions.

It’s wonderful and so exciting. But getting a mainstream audience involved in that conversation is a big challenge that we’re working to solve every day.

DL: On the strategy side, we are similarly interested and in circular and are doing a fair amount of work in the circular space on retail and apparel. For me, what’s exciting is trying to make it work financially and making the case that circular solutions can actually help businesses grow. But it’s not easy because there are ingrained patterns consumption and production that create real barriers to realizing a circular future.

There is a well established infrastructure and pricing and cost structure that companies have built around taking resources, making products and then sending them to the landfill. For the longest time, companies have operated under the assumption that once you purchase an item they don’t need to talk to you again. There needs to be a major culture shift before circular solutions can become the new norm.

Check them out online at:
wearefuterra.com

Follow them at:
@futerra

This interview is featured in Issue №3 of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

Find us on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Interview: Creating clear corporate sustainability strategies with Futerra. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From the Runway to The Garden: Model turned horticulturist shows it’s never too late to change.

A conversation with Summer Rayne Oakes and Hannah Phang on taking chances and following your passions.

As an entrepreneur with a background in botany, Summer Rayne Oakes has been working on creative solutions that address a number of different environmental challenges. For the last 11 years, she has been flexing her green thumb in her 1,200-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, where she grows more than 500 plants.

She’s also Kickstarting a project called: How to Make a Plant Love You, an online-audiovisual course + experience to help you demystify plant care, learn how to have a better relationship with your plants, and guide you to create the indoor jungle of your dreams:

We talk to Summer about horticulturist classes, the Foodstand app and her sugar-free detox workshops.

Hannah: So, I know you’ve kind of been at this intersection of sustainability with creativity, fashion, food, art and health. To start off, could you just give me an overview of some of your recent projects and tell us what you’re working on right now?

Summer: Of course. I think the main threads through my work have always been health, wellness and sustainability. I usually find my way to a project by thinking about the things that connect us on a daily basis. I think about what we eat, what we wear and what products we put on our bodies. Then, I think about how to incorporate sustainability into the picture. So, my work has been defined by focusing on those aspects of our daily existence that connect us as human beings, whether it be through health and wellness or fashion and style, all the while maintaining sustainability as a throughpoint.

I would say that the first good ten years of my life were really spent on that intersection of sustainability as it relates to fashion and beauty. Those two industries are very disparate, but they also overlap with one another in various ways. This intersection gave me the opportunity to do some interesting things. By working with companies as a consultant as well as the model for their brands, I found myself in a very unique position that not many people, even to this day, operate in.

As a female founder of Source For Style (a B2B marketplace, now called Le Souk), and then also writing a book on sustainability in fashion, “Style Naturally,” those things kind of helped jump-start the sustainable fashion industry. Then, about four years ago, I stepped more into the world of food. And it was like a new adventure for me. You have to always ask yourself, “What’s different? What’s new and exciting?” For me, the fashion world, in a way, ran its course. It became less challenging, or, perhaps, a little less interesting. I always felt like it was one aspect of me, but I didn’t see it as the only thing I would do for the rest of my life.

I welcomed a new challenge and entered the world of sustainability through food. I helped launch a couple venture-backed, startup food companies — some with less success compared to a few of the other things that I have done. But they still exist, and they’re still going. It was a lot of solid learning experience. I thought, naively, that I knew a little bit more about the world of food than I actually did. I found out that it was a much more isolated industry than I had originally believed. I thought there would be a lot more crossover from what we wear into what we eat, but they really are two different worlds. Not many people had worked between the two industries, so I kind of just found my own way.

The first project that I looked at was how to get more organic, local, farm-fresh food to people’s doors in the city. That allowed me to start thinking about food, and I took a closer look at what I was eating. One of the things that I always felt held me back from reaching optimal health was my sweet tooth.

If somebody says, “Oh, wow. You worked in sustainable fashion. And now, you’re the author of this book, ‘SugarDetoxMe?’ Those things feel very disparate.” But for me, it’s all connected. What we put into our bodies, what the industries are putting into our foods, how that then makes us feel — it’s all part of the greater whole.

Like I said, it’s just one piece of the many different interests that I have as a person. So, that really manifested itself as a website, sugardetox.me, where people could do a 10-day or 30-day guided cleanse. It also led to the book that I just came out with in March, called “SugarDetoxMe.” It’s really a recipe book and guide to help people on their journey reduce or eliminate sweet stuff, as well as become more active in the broader scope of their lives.

So, not just taking advantage of what they can do within their home, but becoming savvy enough and maybe even fed up to the point where they take action. Whenever I become angry about certain things, I usually try to get active about it. Otherwise, I just try to tune things out, because there are a lot of things that one can get angry about, but you can’t be shooting on all cylinders at once.

My book came out in March 2017. What I didn’t expect was for my house to go viral mid-last year. And it has been for a year and running. Due to the excitement of living with houseplants and what that kind of means to people, I launched Homestead Brooklyn, which is nothing more right now than a blog, Instagram and YouTube account to help people reconnect to nature through very simple things, whether that’s a potted plant or a walk in the botanical gardens.

Since February, I’ve written almost 60 blog posts and put out 22 YouTube videos, called Plant One On Me, where I just take people’s questions on plants and answer them. It’s gathered quite a bit of a following so far. It’s been exciting, launching that and seeing that grow.

It’s not a business yet. It may never become one. But a lot of these things start off as projects, and then you kind of throw spaghetti on a wall, and you see what sticks. Anyway, that’s kind of in a nutshell, what I have done in the last few months.

Q: Wow. I have so many follow up questions. Let’s start from where you just left off with Homestead Brooklyn. You said something really interesting about it being a way to talk about reconnecting with nature. As New Yorkers, we’re literally in the concrete jungle. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on how we got to a point of being so disconnected from nature, the value of reconnecting and your advice on getting started on that journey.

I think the place that I’m most comfortable in is not speaking for anybody else, but speaking for myself. You know, I came to this city because of opportunity. What I mean by opportunity is that I believe this city affords me the ability to become the person that I aspire to be. But I needed to have other like-minded people and energies around me in order to create that person.

When I was in university, I was kind of “playing around.” Seriously playing, but playing around with this idea of sustainability in fashion. And I had no idea where that was going to lead. In fact, my sophomore year of college I thought I was going to be working on large-scale, ecosystem-based management projects that maybe would involve multiple countries, or groups within countries, and trans-boundary issues — that type of stuff. I always felt like I was going to be working on big projects and navigating those waters.

There wasn’t language around becoming the “eco-model.” I didn’t know what that was. No one else knew what that was. I kind of equate it to the fact that most of the jobs that we’re going to be in haven’t even been created yet.

So, if I told someone that I was going to be an “eco-model,” I wouldn’t expect them to know what that means. But, I could explain, “Well, it’s somebody who has values and who models with those values.” It made sense to me.

Why would I represent a company or an organization that I didn’t believe in? I’m not an actress. I’m a person who’s representing a specific brand, and that should feel genuine and authentic to me. That’s how I feel everything should go, whether you’re using your face or using your talents as a mechanic, or as a person in advertising, or as a consultant, or whatever. I felt like New York was the right place for me to be able to exercise my creativity.

Q: Can you provide a bit of background about your education and how that led you to modeling?

I got a B.S. in natural resources from Cornell, but since then I think they changed the name to environmental science. People seem to understand that a little more. Natural resources is kind of an old term. I also earned a minor in entomology, which is the study of insects. About three years into college, I started commuting to New York to work in the fashion industry. I also proposed a couple of my own classes that dealt with fashion and sustainability.

I had a great advisor, and Cornell really gives that flexibility to be able to propose your own class. I had the freedom early on to be able to do that. My professors really responded to that, because they wanted to see me thrive in an area that was outside the box. I’m grateful for my time at Cornell. I was actually just up there last week researching for a new book. It was really wonderful to see some of my professors from the time of yore.

To answer your previous question, I think that New York was the place for me to be also because of the fashion industry. It really exists here. If you’re going to do something in fashion, you have to be able to do it in New York City, really nowhere else.

If I think about it, I was a kid of nature. Now, if I could have a backyard, of course I would take that. But that’s just not really an option here. Cities didn’t necessarily grow with urban planning in mind, and so you just kind of accept the situation that you’re in.

Luckily, humans are pretty malleable. But I really do think that we kind of came out of the Garden of Eden, so to speak, and our beautiful garden has now become four walls. And that’s very inhuman or inhumane. But because we’re flexible, and we’re resilient and we’re malleable, we can deal with it to a certain degree, but we’re not necessarily always thriving.

Even if you have a ton of money in New York, it’s very, very hard to have a high quality of life. Whereas, if you’re fairly well off in places like San Francisco, there is a sensibility that you could be near the ocean, or be in Muir Woods or be in the mountains very quickly. That might even be some of your backyard. But with New York, you have to get a little bit further up the food chain, I think, in order to have that.

Then, you realize that you stay here because of the way people think. You don’t stay here because of the buildings or living space or anything like that. What I’ve been able to create in my living space though is a place like an oasis that serves as a center of calm in a very hectic city. I often share with people that your lifestyle is what you surround yourself with and the people that you surround yourself with.

With Homestead Brooklyn, my goal is not to just get people to have house plants but to help them understand their relation to the broader aspects of the world. The mission that I want to create with Homestead Brooklyn is not just look at what you can surround yourself with in your home. It’s here’s how you can actually create a better community in which you live, and hopefully people around you will benefit from that. It’s a subtle message, but you always have to have a road in for people to understand, and sometimes that starts with a house plant.

The whole fashion thing, it was the hook that reeled people in. And I made very sure that people wouldn’t just take me or my ideas for face value, that I spoke up a lot. That benefited me most of the time, but not always. I’d rather speak up and share my vision of the world, than stay silent and do something that isn’t fitting to me as a person.

Q: Amazing. It sounds like that’s something you thought about a lot with your book as well — that connection between the personal decision to live more connected with nature and the larger impact, whether in your community or on an environmental, global scale.

What I find, and what I’m sure a lot of people who work in the world of sustainability and environmentalism find, is that what’s really challenging is making the connection between something like climate change and its impact on me, as an individual. It sounds like you’ve started to do that, whether through personal health with “SugarDetoxMe” or now with Homestead Brooklyn. I would love to hear your thoughts on continuing to make those connections between personal benefit and global change.

Well, I feel like people have to see a solution that can work for them. I try to always hook the greater thing to tactical solutions that people could do in the home or in their lives that really work for the modern day man and woman. I could speak about it through a very articulate example in “SugarDetoxMe.”

I started out doing this specifically for me. It was very selfish. You know, I had a sweet tooth. I wanted to figure out how to resolve it. I put up a blog for the idea that if somebody read it, it would at least keep me honest, because I’m a terrible journaler. Lo and behold, people did read it, and so it kept me a little more active. It did what it was supposed to do — it kept me honest.

When I realized other people were going through the same issues, I was like, “Well, this works for me, but let me test it on other people.” I really went into research mode. I’m a big believer in just testing, testing, testing, doing market research, seeing if this actually even makes sense. You might learn a lot along the way, but you don’t want to waste too much of your time, your precious time. Put in that work in the beginning versus just trying to, you know, do stuff right away.

An example that came to be with “SugarDetoxMe” was when I was working in the farm-to-fridge grocery delivery service. People had this assumption that local, organic food was more expensive. That was their perception, even though that wasn’t necessarily the reality. So, I would talk to those folks and say, “OK. Well, tell me what you typically eat. Great. Let me put these 10 items in your basket, and I’m sure you have these 10 pantry staples already in your homes, like onions, and garlic, and salt and pepper. I could teach you how to make eight or nine different recipes, and you’ll be spending less than $3 a serving on your meals. So, no more than 50 bucks or so in your grocery cart.” All of a sudden, you have local, organic, fresh food with recipe plans for less than what you could get at a fast food restaurant.

You have to break people’s perception that it’s prohibitive. You have to be savvy enough to understand that not everybody is going to be in the same place you’re at, whether financially, or psychologically or culturally. There’s all sorts of things that might prohibit that. Of course when you’re talking about food, especially local and organic food, that’s a particularly culturally and financially sensitive topic.

The book now features 10 Meal Maps. Meal maps are meal plans, recipes and shopping lists all in one. It was just the same premise that I shared with you earlier, whereby it says, “Here are the pantry staples that you probably already have. If you don’t, you can put them on the shopping list. Here are your fresh ingredients. There are like 10 to 15 of them. Go to the store. That’s all you’re going to get. Just take a photo of the lists that are in the book. Here are eight to 12 different recipes that you’re going to make out of it.” It tackles affordability. It tackles food waste. It tackles not having a plan. All those things that I think I’m personally passionate about.

It’s meant to be accessible to everyone. I don’t want anybody coming back to me and saying, “Well, I have a metabolic disorder, but I can’t afford to be healthy. I can’t afford that expensive meal delivery service.” If you can afford fast food and you can afford to spend 10 to 15 minutes in your kitchen, then you can afford to do this for yourself. Of course, that’s just one challenge. There’s also the behavioral shift. There is the psychological shift. There are a lot of different challenges that a person can be up against. But if you, as a creator of this program, start to think through all of those different things, then you will be better able to answer those questions.

I kind of equate it to starting a company. If you’re an entrepreneur, what’s one of the things you have to do in order to get investors? Well, you have to analyze the risks for those investors. You have to have answers to those risks before you actually present your company. You have to say, “Well, this company could actually release a product or a service just like mine, and here’s how I’m going to handle it.” It shows that you’ve put some foresight and some thought into it. That investor is going to feel much more comfortable if you’ve thought through the risks, because you don’t want to be there hemming and hawing about something that you’ve never thought about.

“SugarDetoxMe” is about empowering people on an individual level, and connecting them to the greater whole. Part of that also comes with language. A woman who read the book came up to me and was like, “I really feel so strongly about the language that you used in the book, because so many books made me feel guilty about who I am and how I am as a person and that I shouldn’t be eating these things. You’re speaking from a standpoint of like being my best friend.” That’s important for people. If you’re overweight and you go to the gym, you don’t want to go to the gym to be berated. You want to be motivated and you want to be supported.

It’s the same thing with climate change. People can’t go and say, “You shouldn’t be doing this. You shouldn’t be doing that.” No one wants to hear that. People want to hear solutions, and sometimes the solutions are really hard to imagine. And sometimes the solutions are the things that are only at the end of the documentaries.

The solution is like the last five minutes of the documentary to make you feel somewhat good, after you’ve listened to an hour and 45 minutes of the problems. No. It should be five minutes of the challenges and an hour and 45 minutes of the solutions, so people really understand the blueprint for how they can address it in their daily lives. And then maybe once I do it for myself, I get so excited to say, “You know what? This has really worked for me. You should try it too.”

Q: I would love to jump back for a second to your metaphor of being an entrepreneur and analyzing risks before asking for investment. You mentioned earlier that some startups you worked on in the past few years haven’t succeeded in the same way some of your other projects have. Could you speak about those startups that didn’t succeed? Was it challenges related to business, or did you feel the mission and purpose was what hindered them?

Well, I wouldn’t say that they weren’t successful. I helped launch them, but I didn’t launch them myself, just to clarify that. With the farm-to-fridge grocery delivery service, Good Eggs, and then with Food Stand, which is an app to help people eat better. You know, whenever you start a business, it’s hard. Most businesses don’t survive past seven years. I’m happy to say that Source For Style, Le Souk, was started in 2009. It’s now 2017. It’s kind of beyond that mark.

Each business has its own challenges. Good Eggs still exists in the Bay Area, but it’s hard to operationally make those things work. The last mile in food delivery, I think people are still trying to figure it out. No one has it exactly right. It’s sometimes a question of how much money you have, and is that money running out, and can you figure out your operational challenges before that wick comes to an end? Generally speaking, that was one of the biggest challenges with Good Eggs, especially because they had a quick ramp-up where they launched in four cities. They had to determine that, “Hey, we’re not a tech company. Even though tech is a big part of it, we’re really a food company. We’re a logistics, an operational company.”

Food Stand had to go through some pivots of saying, “Well, what does this product look like? Do we have enough users to be able to ask is this working for folks? How are we going to get that user base?” These are some of the challenges, especially because apps are really saturated these days. Maybe they weren’t five or six years ago, but they are today. You have to really stand out of the crowd and have something that’s sticky. But then you have to compromise with this idea of, “Is this truly adding value to people’s lives, or am I just trying to suck people into spending time on an app for my investors?” Those are struggles that entrepreneurs have to deal with on a daily basis, professional as well as ethical struggles.

Both companies exist. I wouldn’t say that they were less successful or more successful. They have different challenges. It’s really hard to compare them.

Q: That makes me think of your other point about perception being prohibitive. Being in a sustainable business world, have you ever found the perception of sustainability to be something that hinders growth?

First of all, I think sustainable business is a little bit of an oxymoron in this current state. We have this perception of scarcity, and that inhibits and prohibits us from being the fullest human beings that we possibly can be. If we really looked at and shed everything else outside of our lives and asked ourselves what we would be doing now if we had no limitations, no restrictions, chances are it’d be something very different than what you are doing now.

Q: I find that a lot of people interested in or working in sustainability didn’t know they were going to go down this path. There’s often one moment or insight or reason behind how they got started. Could you share where your interest sparked from?

I feel like I was one of the blessed ones who always knew. I was very much interested in art growing up, but all of my art was inspired by the work of Edward S. Curtis, who photographed American Indians in the 1800s. I was also inspired by my mother’s 1970 and 1980 collections of National Geographic Magazines and also just nature and the outdoors. For a while there, I thought I would go to school for art. But all of my art was inspired by that deeper level of nature and American Indian culture. Obviously, that for me won over and has permeated throughout my life.

I’ve been with kids in school who probably to this day still don’t know what their passion is. That’s why I said I feel like I’m one of the blessed and kind of fortunate ones to know that this was always my calling. From 2007 to 2012 or so, when sustainability was becoming popular, I told my agency, “You know what? What’s different about me and these other folks who are out there, who are doing it just because it’s cool at the moment,” I said, “I’m going to be the person who’s doing it until the day I die, when it’s not in vogue any longer, literally and physically.”

I think that a lot of people have their “aha” moments. But for me, I feel like I was born saying aha.

Q: So cool. My last question, and you touched on this earlier, but given the journey you’ve been on in your career, I wonder if you have further thoughts on that vision of yourself in the future — who you want to be and what impact you hope to have?

If you had asked me 10 years ago what I would be doing at this moment, it wouldn’t be what I’m doing right now. I think that’s the beauty of not having a plan but having a path. I don’t have a plan. I have a path, and I usually go from project to project. A project could mean six days. It could mean six months. It could be a six-year project. It could be a 60-year project. That’s how I feel comfortable. I don’t look at it like a career. I look at projects that in total sum are a career.

I guess I haven’t really thought through much of what the legacy would be, but I would hope it’s that I left the world a better place, for how trite that is. And usually that means influencing other people to kind of carry on your beliefs and take them beyond what you had ever imagined them to be.

A special thank you to Hannah Phang for asking these great questions. Best of luck on your new adventure in London at Futerra!

This interview is featured in Issue №2 of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

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From the Runway to The Garden: Model turned Horticulturist shows it’s never too late to change. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Moving the Climate Movement from Hopefulness to Fearlessness.

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and author. Since the age of 20, he has dedicated his life to sustainability and improving the relationship between business and the environment. As one of the inspirations for the launch of this magazine, Hawken answers a few questions about his hopes for the climate movement and his latest endeavor, Project Drawdown.

Q: Your work played a pivotal role in the creation of The Regeneration Magazine — it’s an honor to be speaking with you. You’ve done some incredible work on issues like environmental justice and civil rights. How have you seen the largest movement on Earth change over the years?

A: That makes me happy. I believe the world will awaken soon to regenerative development as the only path that can restore our atmosphere, seas, land and society. In fact, it’s the subject of my next book.

The nature of the “largest movement” is that it cannot be seen … by anyone. It is so vast, diverse and widespread. It mutates and evolves constantly. There is no way to track it. My sense is that as certain issues become prominent, it may seem that [the movement] is shifting, but I tend to doubt that. I think what happens is that as new issues arise and become more commonly undertaken, we hear about them more. More layers are being added, like tree rings, but nothing is forsaken.

Are you worried about the current stance the U.S. government is taking and the message it sends to the rest of the world about our inaction on climate change and the Paris Agreement goals?

I am very concerned about the current administration, because it is taking a wrecking ball to America in every way possible. The new president does not understand his job or the oath he took. I am not so worried about the Paris Agreement, however. Most Americans did not understand the Paris Agreement until Trump showboated his non-support.

So, that was a big plus. It has awakened the responsible institutions — states, cities, corporations, universities, churches, as well as individuals — to double down on their commitments. Further, J.P. Morgan announced that because the price of renewable energy continues to plummet, the U.S. will meet its Paris commitments regardless of Trump. He has no say in how Americans respond. In this, he is powerless.

The environmental movement needs strong leaders. It has always been the sum of its parts. Who and/or what organizations do you see at the helm of progress right now?

Actually, I do not see any organization at the helm. I am not sure there is a helm, to be honest.

What are you hopeful about?

I am not sure hope is a useful emotion. Hope is a condition that depends on fear. If you are not worried or apprehensive about something occurring or not occurring in the future, there is nothing to be hopeful for. In essence, hope is the pretty face of fear, and what we need now is fearlessness, not hopefullness. Science has created excellent problem statements, from global warming to ocean acidification, biodiversity loss and more.

Our job is not to fret and cling to threads of hope; our role is to solve the problems. Blame, demonization of others and hand-wringing waste our time and energy. We need to focus on actions that reverse global warming and regenerate all living systems, including human society.

When did you realize you wanted to write “Drawdown”?

The idea occurred to me in 2001, when the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Third Assessment came out. Like all assessments before and since (except the first), it was more pessimistic than the prior. Because it is “consensus science,” the IPCC has a bias toward moderating the predictions of future impacts of global warming.

Countries with large fossil fuel resources played down what the best climatologists were saying. There is no such thing as consensus science. Science is evidentiary.

Later in 2001, Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative came out with its famous eight global wedges made up of 15 solutions that, if adopted, could achieve stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases by 2050. Eleven of those 15 could only be accomplished by very large energy, utility or car companies. But all 11 were deeply underwater and unaffordable. In other words, to solve emissions, the boards of directors of conservative companies would have to vote to spend down their balance sheet, if not go out of business. Of those 15 [solutions], the only thing you and I could do was put a solar panel on our roof and drive less. There was no mention of agency — what cities, communities, neighborhoods, small business, provinces, states or farmers could do.

And that is when I started to suggest to friends at big environmental NGOs that we/they should make a list of all the top extant solutions, do the math on carbon, calculate the costs and determine whether the solutions, if scaled, could achieve drawdown in a reasonable amount of time. What I also suggested is that we name the goal: drawdown, the point in time when greenhouse gases peak and go down on a year-to-year basis. The goal then and now has been reduction, mitigation, stabilization — and that too did not make sense to me. There is no stability at 450 to 500 ppm. Those levels of CO2 in the atmosphere bring about climate chaos.

In any case, my friends either shrugged or said they did not have the expertise, and neither did I, so [I] forgot about it until 2012/2013. During that time a series of articles came out, including Bill McKibben’s “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” that shocked people, including friends. I began to hear people say “game over,” that all was lost. I had a different take, that maybe it was “game on” now. So, I decided to create an organization and do the research, even though there was virtually no money or support for it.

Can you tell me about Project Drawdown and the goal of the book?

The organization, Project Drawdown, consists of a small staff, 70 research fellows from 22 countries, over 120 prominent and knowledgeable advisors and several dozen outside expert scientific reviewers.

The goal is to map, measure and model the 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming. It is fascinating that although we have had public discourse about global warming for over 40 years, no one had measured the top 100 (or 25, 50, etc.) solutions to climate change, until now. I do not know why. Eighty of the solutions analyzed are in place, well understood and are scaling. What our 70-person global research team did was measure the impact the solutions would have if they continued to scale in a rigorous but reasonable way, and what the cost and profits would be. All carbon data was based on peer-reviewed science.

Could we reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases with techniques and practices already underway? We didn’t know. The goal of the book was to present the findings, describe the solutions in ways that fascinated and informed, and accompany them with images that enlivened and inspired.

Can you take me through an average day of work at Project Drawdown?

Until the final draft of the book was submitted Feb. 12, we were consumed with hundreds of details pertaining to the text, imagery, licenses, credits, numbers (models), harmonizing impact statements and more. We were tying together two and a half years of work. The months of March through mid-April focused on website design and content, pre-publication interviews, publicity coordination, event scheduling and social media outreach, commencing with the publication on April 18.

Until now, the team at Drawdown has been a bit overwhelmed in its effort to respond to incoming queries, comments, requests, talks, seminars, webinars and offers.

Since that time, the research team has been fully occupied with preparing the descriptions of the research for publication on drawdown.org, including technical assessment summaries, sector summaries and upgraded models. I think all of us would welcome an “average day.” Haven’t seen one yet.

How do you feel this book fits into the context of your other work?

It might be too soon to evaluate how it fits. My intention has always been to look at possibility, to honor the true nature of humanity — its kindness, brilliance and goodness­­ — and to do so through a matrix of biology and living systems. I have never been interested in polemics or right-left political divisiveness.

I see the science of climate change as a gift, not a curse. Global warming is feedback from the atmosphere. The earth is a system, and any system that does not incorporate feedback fails. This is true of our body, ecosystems, social systems, and business and economic systems. Global warming is creating huge breakthroughs in energy, transport, agriculture, housing, urbanization, materials and more.

If it wasn’t for the science of climate change, we would be destroying the Earth faster than we already are. I wanted to bring this point out into the open. Focusing repeatedly on the problem does not solve the problem. The science of what will happen if we do not act has been here for a long time. Because there is a perception that society is not taking sufficient action, there has been a tendency to focus mainly on the serious impacts of global warming. Ninety-eight percent of the media stories on climate change are about loss and damage. I wanted to change that emphasis.

How can people get involved or purchase a copy?

Depends on where they are. For some reason, although we are published by Penguin U.S., Penguin U.K. has hesitated to publish. And those are the editions that would naturally go to Commonwealth countries. Their thinking is the same as Penguin in the states, that books on climate and the environment do not sell. The U.S. publisher was hesitant. The good news is that “Drawdown” became a New York Times best-seller its first week (number nine), something no climate or environment book had done for over 25 years. It can be purchased through Amazon at least, but it would be so much better if it was available in bookstores.

Who are some of your biggest influences?

My wife, Barry Lopez, Byron Katie, Jane Jacobs, Janine Benyus, Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Margaret Atwood, William Merwin, Henry David Thoreau, Pema Chödrön, Doris Lessing, Stephen Mitchell, David James Duncan, Arundhati Roy, Mooji Baba, Jane Goodall and Alexander von Humboldt.

What are some things you do to reduce your impact?

Honestly, no matter what I do I will have an outsize impact, because I travel to speak and teach about “Drawdown.” At home, we eschew meat and dairy, buy local and organic, pay close attention to food waste. We have solar electricity, one car, a bike for commuting, a cooperatively owned organic farm and more. But mobility is significant. And we do not watch TV.

This interview is featured in Issue №2 of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

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What Does The Environmental Movement Need Right Now? A conversation with Paul Hawken. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Ryan Madden

Disclaimer: This piece may not be particularly insightful for those who have been speaking about and experiencing colonialism and oppression for hundreds of years in this country. My hope is that it will be helpful for people already on (or interested in beginning) their personal journey of understanding privilege and complicity in structural oppression.

My realizations are unique to me, my personal growth and my continuing political education as an activist and organizer in anti-racist and anti-oppressive leftist movement spaces.

This piece is not meant to guilt or shame myself or others — only to contextualize my understanding of inherent complicity in systems of oppression and the need to confront those systems.

My name is Ryan Madden, and I am a settler colonialist. I also spend my life organizing around issues of climate justice, which forces me to come to terms with complicated and conflicting truths.

I am a product of tremendous privilege; privilege I am afforded because of a sordid history of white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism and genocide. While I am not responsible for the sins of the past, I am responsible for understanding how those sins afford me an existence in this life that is not guaranteed to everyone: a life free of racial oppression and violence, of gender discrimination and sexual exploitation, of economic disparity, and of other structural barriers to a full existence with dignity and respect on this Earth.

I am a cisgendered, straight, able-bodied white man from an upper-middle-class family with a strong educational upbringing. And I have lived my entire life benefiting from forces that value my life over others. I have never questioned my safety among police. I have never gone days without eating. I have never been subject to scrutiny, suspicion or hatred because of my physical appearance. These privileges have afforded me the opportunity to pursue my life without fear of retribution from society. There is a spectrum of privilege in this complex world, of course, and I acknowledge how many of mine intersect.

I lived 20 years of my life never understanding this, never having to learn these truths. This is what privilege is in its varied forms: insulation from a reality unavoidable for others — a reality marked by exploitation, discrimination, persecution and violence. It wasn’t until I participated in an anti-oppression training with a youth climate justice organization after college that the veil began to lift.

While I had always considered myself a progressive person, I had never questioned how I conducted myself in public life. Because of my class, race, gender and sexual orientation, I never feared for my safety in public. I never questioned whether my voice would be listened to. I never had to worry that an authority figure would question my intelligence. I never had to concern myself with access to education, employment or housing. I still don’t. Not in a country that values my life over all others.

My path has led me to the climate justice movement: a movement to tackle the climate crisis with equity for communities and workers, for those historically oppressed by an economic and political system that exploits land, labor and people — systems which leave particular communities disproportionately burdened by an extractive economy and the impacts of climate change, while having contributed least to the problem.

Today’s climate crisis is the culmination of centuries of exploitation of people and resources, the result of an inequitable economic system that prioritizes endless growth and accumulation over equity and justice. It is the planetary reaction to a culture of oppression and domination, a symptom of settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism — all systems that I personally benefit from and am morally obligated to combat.

I graduated from SUNY Binghamton and did what a lot of millennial recent graduates do: moved to an affordable area in the five boroughs. For me, that was Queens. And although my mother — the daughter of a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria after being expelled by the Nazis — grew up in Jackson Heights and my grandparents spent 30-plus years in Bayside, I am not from Queens. That means I am part of a gentrifying force in the area, given my economic and social upbringing in Westchester, New York.

Unbeknownst to me, until I began my journey in anti-oppression and anti-racist movements, I was contributing to the legacy of colonialism and displacement. I was complicit in centuries of domination over land and people — an insidious process that began with the forced displacement and genocide of indigenous people and has continued in various manifestations up to the present day, from land grabs and racial segregation to redlining and gentrification. All of these processes are part of an inherent inertia in American society that dates back to our endeavors in settler-colonialist expansion.

Gentrification is the new form of colonialism, and a lot of us are complicit in the process.

I want to stop here to remind readers that the intention of this piece is not to shame or guilt (I myself can’t always internalize these realizations without spiraling into paralyzing existential dread) but to give pause and think deeply about the structural forces that shape our existence. It made sense for me to move to Queens.

While I am economically well off, I am not rich. When I got a job in Manhattan a few years ago, it was a logical choice to settle in an affordable borough. But I hadn’t given enough thought to that choice and what it meant in the context of modern-day colonialism. I imagine many of my millennial friends reading this haven’t either.

I think we all need to sit with these truths about ourselves and our roles in perpetuating systems of oppression, so we can then ask ourselves what we are doing about it.

As a climate organizer, I know my path is to continue intentionally building relationships and challenging power structures with those most impacted by the forces that created this crisis. I do this by following the leadership of communities on the frontlines of climate change who have been fighting for decades; by showing up to spaces, forming new relationships and understanding the privileges I enter them with; by constantly questioning my assumptions; and by keeping myself open to new ways of thinking based on others’ experiences.

What forced me to frame my role in settler-colonialism was attending a party a few months ago in Astoria. Of nearly 30 people, there was not a single person of color. In the most linguistically and ethnically diverse area in the country, there was not a single black or brown person to be found. This isn’t surprising when three-quarters of white people in this country don’t have a black friend. But this stark situation really brought the process of gentrification to the forefront of my mind. Having recently read “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” it sunk in that gentrification really is the new form of settler-colonialism, and I was in a room with 30 perpetrators.

As I continue to grow and develop as a white accomplice to indigenous movements, to queer movements, to black liberation movements and more, I think it’s important to share my experience with other folks, especially white folks, who may be at different stages of their learning and, more importantly, unlearning.

Unlearning the baked-in assumptions about our particular worth, about what we are entitled to and about what we should expect from the world and others. Racism, colonialism, sexism, ableism and classism are systems of oppression, and those who are white or non-indigenous or male or able-bodied or wealthy or straight or cisgendered are all participants and beneficiaries. To the extent that we aren’t actively trying to dismantle these forces, we are racists, colonialists, sexists, ableists and classists — myself included.

I am humbled by the education I have been afforded by others patient enough to teach me. I am grateful to be a part of movements that so thoughtfully work toward dissecting power and privilege and what it means for everyone’s lived experience — for those who hold and wield that power and for those who are subject to its oppressive forces.

There are a litany of resources out there for people trying to better understand privilege and power. I hope this article encourages you to start that journey, to further it or to push me further on my own, so that we can all better understand our role in dismantling the layers of oppressive forces that viscerally harm people every day.

For those who do not currently consider themselves part of any movement, ask yourself why.

Know that there are organizers out there prepared to have these conversations with you and orient you to this work: to guide you to an organization that needs volunteers; to point you in the direction of the next canvass, phone bank or direct action; to teach you how to build power in your community. Signing a petition is great, and showing up to a protest is important.But we need more people flyering neighborhoods with those petitions and organizing those protests.

We need more people knocking on doors for electoral campaigns. We need more people lobbying their elected officials. We need more op-eds pushing our narrative into the mainstream.

We need more dedicated activists pushing for change. We need you.

This interview is featured in the second issue of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, order it, or subscribe on our website.

Issue №2 ships out soon! You can support our Indiegogo campaign here.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

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Complicity — understanding privilege and confronting the climate crisis. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We use 500 million plastic straws daily in the United States?! Lonely Whale has a plan so we can #StopSucking.

A conversation with Dune Ives on their campaign to prevent plastic from getting into our oceans.

Kyle Calian: How did you get involved with the Lonely Whale, and what led you to working with them?

Dune Ives: I spent about two and a half years working for Paul Allen, designing and then leading his global environmental philanthropy. One of the questions he asked us, as an executive team, we could never fully answer. That question was, how do you get people to care for the ocean?

That’s really the heart. That’s the most important question for us to answer. He recognized that as a philanthropist you can keep spending money and spending money and spending money to solve problems but never really get at the root, until people truly care for their environment.

The ocean is so far away from us. Even though I live in the Puget Sound, and I can see it every day out my window, when I look at it, it doesn’t change. There’s no billboard to tell me that it’s getting too warm, or that it’s acidifying, or that there is tons of plastic pollution or that it’s really loud under the water because of all the sirens and blasting. There’s really nothing that tells me that it’s hurting, and that it’s a result of our behaviors.

I left that organization, because I really wanted to dive into that question, which was creating care for something that is so unattainable for the vast majority of the world’s population. Even when you’re on
the water, you’re still not really in the water.

When I left, I was introduced to Adrian Grenier, the co-founder of our foundation. I found that he and I and the other co-founder, Lucy Sumner, shared a passion around creating content that really engaged the hearts and minds of people around ocean health, in a way that didn’t let them just forget about it.

I think sometimes campaigns are really great at attracting attention and getting individuals to take an action. But what they were really interested in — which really sparked a passion in me — was how do you essentially create a brand for the ocean that is so sticky, that as consumers of the ocean, as its customers, we never want to separate ourselves from it.

Just like BMW grabbed me when I was 12 years old. I visited their plant. Although I’ve never owned a BMW, I really want a BMW, just because of that experience. We really want to create the same kind of emotive connection between people and the ocean.

It was nice to land with the Lonely Whale team, where there is a shared interest in creating care and doing something in a way that really results in persistent action and impact that isn’t just a one-time thing.

Why is ocean pollution so important in terms of climate change?

The ocean gives us every second breath. I think most of us think that it’s really the trees (and the oxygen that comes from the trees) that provides for all of our breath. But, the ocean gives us every second breath. We know, because of the increasing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide, that our ocean is not only becoming warmer and more acidic, it’s actually de-oxygenating.

We need to care for the ocean as if it’s a tree on a property that takes in the bad air and gives us oxygen. Secondly, related to ocean and climate change very specifically, the ocean has been our second most important carbon reservoir. It no longer is. It can no longer retain the carbon dioxide that it once was able to.

If we care about climate change, we should care about the ocean’s health. We should really better understand the changes that are occurring — the chemical changes that are occurring within the oceanic environment that are going to make it difficult for us, as a human species, to continue with life as we know it.

Could you take me through a couple of the projects that Lonely Whale is working on?

The way Lonely Whale is structured, we have two main programs. One is education, and the other is impact.

On the education side, we have this great program, called Catch the Wave. It’s a K-12 plastic pollution education program and campaign. We did a pilot in Canada this spring, and we’re rolling it out in the United States in partnership with 5 Gyres Institute.

We’re really excited about giving K-12 kids all of the information and tools they need to tackle single-use plastics in their home, in their community, in their city and in their state, or even their country. That’s very exciting.

It’s the first of its kind. No one has ever done this in such a cohesive fashion. We find that when kids are engaged around single-use plastics, they are the biggest champions for a healthy ocean and doing what they can to eliminate single-use plastics globally.

We’ve got all these amazing global youth ambassadors for the program as well. It’s teaching kids all over the world about how they tackle, let’s say, single-use plastic bags in Bali, or Indonesia at large. Or single-use plastic water bottles in Canada. Or the plastic straw in Georgia. It’s nice to see this cross-fertilization of ideas coming from these youth ambassadors.

Our big impact campaign right now is Strawless Ocean. That has multiple parts to it. Ultimately, our goal is to eliminate 500 million single-use plastic straws during 2017. That equates to just one day of our annual consumption. Every day in the U.S., we use 500 million single-use plastic straws. Zero percent of those are recyclable.

If a small percentage is recyclable, chances are they aren’t recycled. We wanted to do a test to see if we can engage consumers to be aware of the single-use plastic straw and pledge to ditch it. Can we also engage establishments to move forward with an on-demand offering to customers — which means that you and I have to ask for a straw — and replace their single-use plastic and single-use biodegradable plastic straws with a marine degradable option? The most affordable one is a paper-based straw.

There are also reusables, which we love. They tend to be a little bit too pricey for establishments to convert one-for-one. Although there are some, like Renee Erickson’s Sea Creatures. Her suite of restaurants have converted to stainless steel in a couple of the restaurants that she owns.

Strawless Ocean is the big initiative. We have #StopSucking, which is the consumer-facing social media challenge, getting people to challenge their friends, family, as well as brands, to #StopSucking.

Then, we have our big, city-wide takeover in Seattle. Strawless in Seattle, we call it. That, to date, has resulted in over a million straws already, during the month of September, being removed from circulation. We’ll see what we get to at the end of the month.

We have over 200 establishments. We have the first football and soccer stadium. We have the first baseball stadium. We have the first landmark property, with the space needle, and the first airport to go plastic straw free. We’re really excited about that and really looking forward to taking that to multiple cities in 2018.

Can you take me through an average day of work at the Lonely Whale ?

I don’t know that there is an “average day” of work at the Lonely Whale. That’s the nature of the work, right? We have to remain nimble and be willing to be flexible in our approach, and take advantage of opportunities we didn’t necessarily know were coming our way. That’s why every day is a little different than the day before.

We have a really tiny team of three of us working full-time on these campaigns. As a small team, being nimble and flexible is paramount in order to take advantage of opportunities when you least expect it. I think that has allowed us to enjoy the success that we’ve had so far.

We don’t get trapped in the plan and how we think things should go. We just let the plan evolve, as we continue to move forward.

So, who are the three main people working full time?

Myself, obviously. Emma Riley, who is the director of partnerships and strategic initiatives, and Emy Kane, who must be the fastest typer in the world. She’s in charge of our digital community. She does all of our design. But she also, importantly, does all of our media and social media engagement.

I think social media is really where she shines. As a tiny foundation, to only have been around for a couple of years, we have the third-largest Instagram audience. It’s a very, very engaged audience. That’s really a testament to her work.

Then, we have a very diverse advisory board. They’re all very successful in their own rights, with a lot of experience working on campaigns, which is really what we are looking for from our advisory board right now.

Even though Adrian’s the front guy, right, he’s like — what would that be in the band? He’s not the drummer.

He’s kind of like your lead singer?

He’s our lead singer, yeah. We’ve got the full band supporting him as well. Lucy, and Chase Jarvis is on our board. It’s really incredible to watch the engagement from the advisory board, too. We couldn’t do it without them, to be honest.

I met with an advisor this morning about this very magazine. I agree, it’s incredibly important to find good advisors. What are some ways people can get involved? Obviously, the #StopSucking campaign is one. Are there others people should know about?

There are. #StopSucking would really love for more people to join the challenge. Right now, it’s in over 30 countries. What’s really cool about its spread is that it’s localized in different languages.

It’s #StopSucking in the U.S., but it’s not necessarily #StopSucking in French or in Icelandic, which was really important to the success of the campaign, to make sure that it spread virally. But, we need more. We want more people to be engaged in this campaign to directly challenge friends and families, but also to directly challenge brands.

There are a lot of watering holes. There are a lot of coffeehouses. There are a lot of big brands that, globally, are responsible for single-use plastic straws and cups and lids. We really need to hold them accountable. We’re encouraging direct challenges between our audience and specific brands that they love, but they just need to #StopSucking. That’s one way to get involved. We are also about ready to put out a challenge to our audience to tell us where our next 10 cities should be. That’s important to us, because we know there’s a magic formula for being successful in a city. It has everything to do with passion on the ground and people’s connections, their network.

We also heard that we’re going to get a few early influencers on board, so we want to hear from our audience. That would be a really great way for people to get engaged — to tell us that their city deserves to be the next Strawless Ocean city, which we will absolutely take into consideration.

Then, there’s a third thing that people can do. They can send us their trash. This is really weird to say. I never thought I would be pining after people’s beach trash. But, we have another campaign that we are supporting. It’s getting ready to launch next week. Then, we’ll do a big reveal in November about what we do with it.

Essentially, we call it Ticktock. We feel like marine litter is this ticking time bomb that, in some cases, has already exploded, and you can’t put the pieces back together. But in other cases, we still have a chance to turn back the clock and address our plastic pollution issue and our marine litter issue at scale.

To do that, we want to create a visually metaphorical piece of art that really articulates the trash that people find on their beaches and in their riparian areas. We would love to have people send us their trash, and we’ll see what we can do with it, see if we could turn it into a beautiful piece of art. Then, if we can, they’ll be given those digital assets to use locally for conversations with their politicians.

That’s awesome. What are some trends you’re seeing in the world of sustainability?

I’m seeing a lot more grassroots involvement, people I didn’t expect to get really engaged in the issues. I think it’s probably the situation. We don’t really know what to call our situation in Washington, D.C. It just seems to be changing on a daily basis, so it’s hard to put a label on it.

But I think the lack of control that people feel like they have — and how policies are being made and implemented and enforced — is creating a growing sentiment that if we don’t stand up to march, and if we don’t stand up to make our voice heard, then nothing will ever change in the right direction. We see that, as well, on the plastic pollution side. The people that are getting engaged in the #StopSucking and the Strawless Ocean campaigns are really surprising.

It’s heartwarming to see how many people have already declared, personally and in private, that they’re going to make a switch around single-use plastics, but they just haven’t known how to actually do it. Now, there’s a platform for them to really get engaged. We’re really excited about that.

It’s always really exciting when people get involved, in any capacity, with something that can actually make a difference. Who are some of your biggest influences?

That’s a really good question. I’ve actually never been asked that question before. I would say I’m probably unique in that I don’t — I wouldn’t point to a Teddy or an Eleanor Roosevelt, or a Hillary Clinton or anyone of that ilk. I think those that have influenced me have been those who have been extremely curious about their environment. This one’s going to be a little controversial, because he helped actually create the first atomic bomb, but Dr. Feynman. The way that he looked at this world, and his curiosity for really understanding and discovering how things work was really inspirational to me. I think it’s something that I really hold pretty dear to how I operate and the way I think about developing solutions to the issues we face.

Paul Allen was a huge influence on me as well. Never before have I been as challenged as I was by Paul himself — extremely well-read, extremely smart.
He and his sister Jodi were big influences on my life and the way that I think about change.

For Paul, it was never enough that we developed the best Band-Aid approach we could possibly develop. He continued to push me toward finding the systemic solutions, and continuing to find ways for the market itself to adopt what a philanthropist was asking the world to take a look at. That’s really influenced the way I think about my life right now and the kind of campaigns we fund.

I’m also lucky to have two children. I have a 25-year-old step daughter who is incredible and wonderful. Then, my husband and I decided to adopt a child at birth. He is now a little over three years old. But they both look at the world, obviously, extremely differently. At least for our daughter I think she has a chance to experience some of the beauty and the wonder that I’ve experienced through my life. He might still see coral in its beauty. She has already seen coral in its beauty.

I don’t know that my son ever will. To think of a world that has already changed so significantly, that there are beautiful things about it that he will never experience is really sad to me as a mother. I guess my fight right now is to make sure he can actually swim in water and experience that, without getting tangled up in a Doritos bag. Or to make sure that his drinking water and the fish snacks that he eats don’t come with the added plastic that we now know is in both of those.

I work really hard for him, to do everything that I can. Just one more person that’s inspiring to me, who I think also comes from a place of passion with his children, is Shawn Heinrichs, the incredible, Emmy award-winning underwater filmmaker and photographer. Even though he lives in Boulder, Colorado, he does all of his work in Indonesia and remote places that — whose names I can’t even pronounce. He goes home for a day here and there to reconnect with his family, and then his kids send him out again and say, “Daddy, you’ve got to get out. You’ve gotta save the mantas.”

To see how hard he works on behalf of marine species, it makes me make sure I’m not resting on my laurels. I’m constantly challenging myself to be a better human.

On that note, is there anything personal that you do to reduce your impact?

We try to grow as much of our food as we can, which is really hard to do. But, we definitely buy local. We buy from organic farmers. We bike or walk or take public transportation where we can. We live in a rural area right now, which makes it so much more difficult to actually take public transportation anywhere. It kills us. Although we’ve got great access to high quality food, we’re driving a lot more, which is really frustrating.

I pack chopsticks where I go, so I don’t have to take a plastic fork or spoon or knife when I do get a to-go sandwich or salad, because I travel so much. I also talk a lot with my friends and family. I’m not shy about sharing my opinion about things.

I think everyone is getting a little sick and tired of me preempting our phenomenal meal at a restaurant by saying, “Just don’t bring us any straws.” But, I think it’s important to stay vigilant on the things that matter to you.

Agreed. Finally, what’s your favorite thing to bring everywhere you go?

I have a silver certificate that my grandfather gave me before he passed away. He gave it to me years ago. I don’t know if you know what a silver certificate is? It looks like a one dollar bill. I kind of look at it as old tiny money, because back in the day you could actually redeem it for silver itself. I was so excited to figure out exactly what it was.

But my grandfather had a really significant influence on my life. I miss him dearly. He passed away last year. He was one of my best friends in the world. I carry the silver certificate around with me everywhere I go, as a reminder of him. There’s just something really simple about the silver certificate.

I think, for me, it’s about an era in which things were absolutely as complicated as they are today, just in a really different way. But also, in a way, much simpler and much more focused on being connected to humans, which we’ve really lost.

During those days, you didn’t have your cellphone. You weren’t texting. You weren’t on Facebook. You were actually talking with your friends face to face. I think there’s part of that silver certificate that just reminds me that being connected to an individual through a thing, through a conversation, through a hug, through looking somebody in the eyes is really important, which my grandfather always taught me.

Is there anything you feel we didn’t cover that you want to add before we finish?

I guess the only thing that I might add if I could (and I add this because it’s one of the things we’re seeing in our work with campaigns) is that oftentimes I think campaigners move forward with their interest in mind, rather than figuring out how to design a campaign in which all people can see themselves. That they can see their imprints on and feel like they’ve been able to make a contribution.

One thing we really focus pretty hard on, especially with Strawless Ocean, is ensuring that we have a disability community in mind and their input really well represented. Because it’s really easy to overlook the needs of seemingly a few people when you think about designing for the masses. When that happens, I think you get misplaced campaigns.

But being as inclusive as you can, and really listening to the needs and interests of others, I think makes you a better campaigner. It certainly has for our team. I think that’s one of the reasons we are enjoying such an overwhelmingly positive response to the campaign in Seattle, and then in other parts of the world.

However, there is an entire group of people who need plastic water bottles. They need plastic straws, they need plastic bags, really, for their daily existence. And we’ve really left them behind. I want to make sure that at some point their voices are really represented in how we think about the kind of work that we do. Because when they are, man, they can help us go fast and be even more impactful than we thought we could be.

Yeah. There’s no such thing as a blanket solution.

No, there really isn’t.

This interview is featured in the second issue of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it, pre-order it, or subscribe on our website.

Issue №2 is due out in a few weeks! You can support our Indiegogo campaign here.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

Find us on social media: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

We use 500 million plastic straws daily in the United States?! was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lessons about starting not one, but two zero waste businesses.

Kyle Calian: Describe your path to what you’re doing now.

Lauren Singer: It all started at NYU where I majored in environmental studies and realized that even though I really cared about the environment and I was protesting about the environment and learning about the environment, I still wasn’t doing enough. It took a big eye-opening experience with this girl who was using a lot of plastic and was also in my program. I realized that she had these values that she wanted to study, but she wasn’t actually living them. Then, I realized that I was exactly the same way.
It took that experience to really show me that caring about something deeply and actually living like you care about something deeply are two completely different things.

I had been protesting against the oil and gas industry — skipping school to go lobby in D.C., having protests and talking to everyone that I could about why everything was basically horrible in the world. At the same time, I was still using plastic every day. I was buying bad food. I was buying fast fashion. Even though I really cared about all these issues, I was actively subsidizing them with my everyday actions.

That’s why I started out with eliminating plastic from my life, because plastic is one of the biggest products of the oil and gas industry, which is the industry that I was trying to fight. I started by just doing things like getting a reusable water filter and water bottle and trying to find products and clothes that weren’t made from plastic. But I quickly found that it wasn’t really possible to find most of the things I was using without plastic packaging. That was especially true for beauty products. If you walk into a CVS, it’s basically impossible to find something that’s not packaged in plastic. I had never really explored natural beauty or DIY before that. I started Googling and found a bunch of DIY recipes for beauty products.

Through that search process, I found Bea Johnson’s blog Zero Waste Home. That’s when I learned about the zero-waste lifestyle. It was the most empowering thing to ever happen to me. I didn’t know that it was possible to do something so impactful in my own life. I thought the best way to live a sustainable lifestyle was to not use plastic. Realizing that there was so much more that I could be doing, and that I didn’t have to make trash at all, was the most eye-opening, empowering, motivating thing. I just decided in that moment that I was gonna go zero-waste.

I didn’t really talk about it, and I was still a senior in college. I would be in class using a mason jar and people would be like, “Why do you have a mason jar with coffee in it? What is that?” I would have to explain to them. My family started asking me about it, too. I realized that it was confusing for me to have to explain everything. I was doing it for myself and not for other people, so to explain my point of view in a way that wasn’t abrasive or proselytizing was difficult at first. No one ever taught me how to just live my values.

How did Trash is for Tossers begin?

I started Trash is for Tossers because I wanted to create a safe place for anyone who was interested in what I was doing: to learn about it in a way that was very neutral and safe. When you talk about sustainability, it’s really easy to get caught up in the politics.

I think a mistake that I made when I was in college was telling people, you have to live this way because you’re messing up the environment. Nobody wants to be told what to do and nobody wants to be told that the way that they’re living their life is wrong.
We all make the choices that we make because we think they’re right.

I learned through living this lifestyle that the best thing to do is just figure out what my values are, ask myself what makes me feel good and what has a good impact on the environment and actually just live that way. By living that way, being consistent and writing about what I was doing, I was having a much bigger impact than I would trying to convince people to live a certain way. They saw that I was feeling good and that I was healthy and that I was motivated. All of those things are exponentially more alluring than just trying to tell people what to do.

What inspired you to start Simply Co.?

When I graduated from college, I started working at the Department of Environ-mental Protection, as a sustainability manager in the engineering department, which is a job that I was completely not right for. I worked there for nine months. Every day I would say to myself, “I need to be doing something more creative. This isn’t right for me, but this is the best job in environmentalism there is.”

It was either working for a nonprofit or working for the government at that point. There really weren’t any other options. I experienced that especially when I was in college and needed to get internships. There just were no creative things happening in sustainability. There were three big companies and two private. There was nonprofit and government. That’s it.

People started emailing me saying, I really like these DIY products that you’re making. At the time I was DIY-ing basically everything that I was using. They were like, clearly you have no friends and no family and no social life, because you have time to do all of this. I was like, well that’s definitely not true, but how do I prove this? That’s also why I started doing videos to show just how quick it was. People were also asking, “I really like these products, but I don’t have time to make them myself. How can I buy something like this?”

I started researching the brands out there that were making somewhat sustainable products. In skin care, there really were a lot and are a lot of sustainable, amazingly made and packaged products. The same just isn’t true for cleaning products.

When I looked into the cleaning product industry more in depth, I learned that there are over 85,000 industrial chemicals in use in the United States. Most of them aren’t tested for safety before being released into the market. Then, on top of that, in the U.S., cleaning product manufacturers aren’t legally required to disclose ingredients on product packaging, so we have no idea what’s actually in them.

That couldn’t be more evident in the beauty industry. In the EU, they ban over a thousand chemicals for beauty products. In the U.S., I think the number right now is 11. Cleaning products are just as impactful in our everyday lives, if not more. We clean the surfaces that we eat off of with cleaning products. We clean the clothing that we wear all day and our sheets and our towels with laundry detergent. We are very intimate with these products that are potentially laden with toxic chemicals, and that’s just not OK.

I started thinking about the cleaning products that I was making, and one of them was laundry detergent. I had been making a three-ingredient, organic vegan laundry detergent for two years at that point. I knew that it worked. It was effective. It was cost effective. It was really simple to make. I realized there was an opportunity for me to start making it myself. I was going to launch on Etsy at first and I was like no, I need to go bigger with this.

I was really unhappy at my job. At the same time I was like, OK let’s see if I can find a way to make this work. I launched a video on Kickstarter and literally two days before I quit my job, booked a flight to Seattle. I was gonna do a road trip down the southern west coast of the United States. I was just like, “Fuck it. If this doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. If it does, then I guess I have a company.” I was really worried that I wouldn’t make my goal of $10,000. It turned out that I made my goal in under 48 hours. By the end of the 30 days, I raised over $42,000 to start Simply, and now here we are. I have a company.

How long did it take to get Simply Co. started?

I still feel like I’m getting Simply Co. started. I had never started a business before when I started the Simply Co. When I launched my Kickstarter, I anticipated having the product in a box, but I didn’t know the first thing about sourcing packaging at all. I ended up doing a jar because of the refillable aspect. It took me about a year between finishing the Kickstarter and actually getting product to the backers, because I just had to figure out how to make it all. I was expecting to maybe make 100 jars of it, or 100 boxes, and it would take me two weeks.

Then, I realized that I had over 800 pre-orders and that was over 2,000 boxes of detergent. I was living in Brooklyn in a tiny apartment, and I was hand-making all of this product. It was just insane. I would sit on my floor, covered in white powder, and cry. I don’t know how someone didn’t call the DEA on me.

Were you doing it alone?

I had my friends, my family. There were interns that I found. My mom. My poor mother came and hand-ground soap for me. I was baking the baking soda in Pyrex dish batches that could only fill about two jars of detergent. It was insane. In retrospect, it was really amazing, but also not how you should run a business.

I was really lucky. I was on a research trip in the Atlantic Gyre with Five Gyres and Jack Johnson and some other others like Céline Cousteau and her family. There was another company there that basically was like, “We love what you’re doing. We help companies scale. Can we find you a manufacturer and a fulfillment center?” At that point, I was about ready to quit. I was like, I cannot hand-grind soap for one more second, or I will actually quit.

We partnered and they helped me find a manufacturer and a fulfillment center that aligned with my values and that uses sustainable materials and renewable energy. They helped me scale the company, so now it’s a fully automated process. I have the jars and we offer bulk. Now, the next step is for me to offer boxes, so people can actually compost the entire package. It reduces shipping weight, breakage risk and ultimately helps me grow the business.

What steps did you take to get the business to be zero-waste?

With a simple product like mine, there are really only a few points of input. There’s who I order the jars from, who I order the raw materials from, where I have it manufactured and how I have it brought to my fulfillment center. We use the same boxes from the glass jar manufacturer and have them printed and made in the same facility. They get shipped to our manufacturer who uses the same jars and the same boxes to fill everything. Those are sealed using paper tape in the same boxes and brought to our fulfillment center by truck, because it’s so close. Then, they’re shipped out in the same package. If they have to repackage it, it’s with paper packaging and paper tape. Everything is completely recyclable and biodegradable. That being said, there are probably people who won’t recycle it, but from my end everything that I do is as sustainable as possible.

We also offer bulk in large containers that we send to stores. They can use a return label that we provide and ship it back to us. We’re also looking into an option that’s fully biodegradable and not returnable, so we can actually decrease shipping emissions. It’s another option that I’m weighing the impact of.

The biggest forms of trash that I find from consumer product companies are plastic, and that’s inherently what I try to avoid at all costs for the Simply Co.

I think it’s just working with your manufacturers to do things like have paper tape and paper packaging. Opening the Package Free Shop, 90 percent of the brands we’re working with sent us all of their product with paper tape and paper packaging. What we’re trying to do is show them what the other options are and provide a resource on our website where brands can go to get their paper filler and their paper tape. It’s a really easy step that they can take. Another way is to partner with brands that will take back thin plastics. For Simply Co, it’s actually really easy because we’re buying raw ingredients that you could very simply get in bulk.

What has been your biggest surprise so far?

I’ve been surprised by a lot of things. Not as much surprised as I am proud that I was able to start a company having no experience whatsoever. Starting a company that hasn’t failed. I think, to me, that was never an option, but it’s pretty crazy. Now, I’ve started my second company with 500- fold more ease, and it just shows me that really anyone could start a company if they have the right intentions. I think I really believe that business is the way to change the world. I’m surprised that there aren’t more companies that are more sustainable, because it really is pretty easy to get your consumer product company to that place.

What are some trends you’re seeing in the world of sustainability?

If I can help it, zero-waste will become more prevalent. But maybe not a trend — maybe more of, like, a longstanding practice. I’m hoping to make it more convenient for people to live a zero-waste and sustainable lifestyle through the Package Free Shop and through Simply Co., … to just make those everyday choices a lot more intuitive and simple for people. Because right now, it’s pretty hard to get everything you need in one place. It’s sometimes really hard for people to find places that offer bulk products. I think the more mainstream zero waste becomes, the more open other businesses will be to integrating it into their own current practices. Then, it’ll just be a snowball effect.

I also believe urban agriculture and sustainable energy in cities is something that will become more trendy. It’s really hard right now to find solar solutions for small apartments. I really hope that changes. I would love to have an apartment that’s run completely on solar power. I would love to have freedom from gas that’s pre-wired. I would love to have a moment where I could just turn off the gas and use a solar powered burner in my apartment. Those are all things that I will work on after I open the store. I hope it becomes more trendy to do DIY-implemented sustainability on your own home. It just isn’t convenient in New York City right now and that needs to change.

Who are some of your biggest influences?

My biggest influence is anyone who looks at the world, sees a problem and doesn’t just talk about it, but actually decides to try to do something about it. To make it better, to change it or to solve it. People like you and people like Daniel Silverstein, who’s my partner who takes discarded clothing scraps and uses them to make beautiful new clothing and textiles.

Even Bea, who saw the world of trash and didn’t try to change the world. She just changed herself. But through changing herself, she’s changing the world. It doesn’t have to be a famous person, just anyone that doesn’t believe the world has to be as it is. Those are the people that make me want to push through whatever is happening in my life and do the best that I can do.

What are some of your favorite companies outside of the Simply Co.?

Zero Waste Daniel. My favorite companies are the companies that I’ll be having in Package Free Shop. They’re really the companies that do exactly what I just said. They’re the companies that saw problems in the world, or in the space that they’re working in, weren’t happy with the state of their category and started a business to solve it. We’ll have a huge range of brands in Package Free Shop, from Zero Waste Daniel and Thinx to MeowMeowTweet and Lunette Cup. All of these companies are doing little things in their categories, but (if the brands take off) will have a large scale personal and environmental impact. I’m really excited about that.

In the same vein, what are some favorite things you always bring with you?

My Ecoffee cup. I used to use mason jars for coffee. I really like them because you can seal them and put them in your bag, but this cup I got as a gift from my friend Tom Griffiths who’s a sustainable chef in the UK. I’m just obsessed with it. It wasn’t possible to get them in the U.S. until I opened my store and placed a huge bulk order. They’re made of bamboo, the base is totally biodegradable and the top is silicon. Silicon you can actually burn, and it turns into biodegradable ash, just like the Lunette cup. I love it, and I think it’s chic and a lot sexier than a typical reusable cup.

I always have my reusable bag. I don’t like purses, and I’ll usually have a reusable bag in my reusable bag.

Like bagception.

Exactly, bagception, amazing. Then, it depends on what my day is, but I’ll usually have reusable silverware and a reusable napkin. I keep a small stainless steel container full of baking soda in my bag all the time, which I use for deodorant or as toothpaste. I keep a Brush With Bamboo toothbrush in my drawer at work, so I can brush my teeth with that, or use it to not smell bad. With those, you can do whatever you need to do.

Finally, how can people get a jar of Simply Co.?

So many ways! You can buy Simply Co. at thesimplyco.com, but my first suggestion would be to find a local retailer and support them. You can do that by going to our website and looking at the store locator. My favorite are stores that offer the Simply Co. in bulk, so that you can bring your own container and fill it up. We will also be offering the Simply Co. online or through Package Free Shop.

This is an interview featured in the sold out first issue of The Regeneration Magazine. You can preview it here or download it from our website here.

Issue №2 is due out in a few weeks! You can preorder or subscribe for more sustainable business profiles here.

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How do you make trash trashy and zero waste sexy? Lauren Singer certainly knows how. was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Daniel Pinchbeck, author of “How Soon is Now” shares his thoughts on climate change, the era of Trump and the role of individual action.

Q: When did you realize you wanted to speak and write about sustainability?

A: Actually, I prefer the idea of resilient or regenerative systems to sustainability. Nature does more than sustain herself; she flourishes and thrives. I first started thinking about ecological subjects when I was a journalist in my mid-twenties. I wrote a story for Esquire on the decline of the sperm count by 50 percent in the last half-century. They thought it was funny. I discovered it was quite a significant subject. Pesticides and plastics concentrating were impacting our endocrine system. I realized people couldn’t focus on the ecological threats we were facing as a species. They were too distracted and also cynical.

I began to realize there was a huge hole culturally. We are facing an extinction-level event, potentially, yet we can’t face it. Our relationship to the Earth’s ecology should be the most important and the first thing we care about, as indigenous cultures tell us. Newspapers like The New York Times should have a daily ecology section instead of a sports section, reporting on the quality of the water, the local species, the health of the soil and so on. The whole prioritization of our culture is very wrong.

Can you tell me about the journey from journalism to writing about psychedelics and shamanism to your new book, “How Soon is Now,” which is about climate change and human ecology?

I consider my work to be a very coherent and rational undertaking, which may sound funny to some people who might say, “He’s writing about psychedelic drugs. He’s so fringe.” But as I said, I had this experience with ecology and why people couldn’t focus on it, so I began to poll myself and my friends. I realized we were functioning under a nihilistic worldview, where we believed in scientific materialism and no possibility of any form of consciousness outside of this body and this experience.

That led us to not really care about the future. Because if you think that this is it, then why would you care about seven generations from now, as indigenous people do? I began to ask the question, “How do I know that scientific materialism is correct?” which led me to write a book about Shamanism and to visit tribal people. I had so many experiences that confirmed their spiritual understanding, like Carl Jung’s understanding that there is a collective psyche and that there are other dimensions of consciousness and space-time. So, when I wrote the first book, I was answering, “What is really going on?” and I learned that our modern society had missed the big picture.

My second book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” was a logical follow-up. If our worldview and value system is deeply mistaken, and these other cultures know a lot that we don’t know, then we have to take their way of understanding the world a lot more seriously. Indigenous people view this era as very prophetic, as a time of transformation or change. I was really trying to grasp their knowledge systems and how they relate to our understanding of reality. I tried to find the junctures between our beliefs and their knowledge, by studying philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, as well as visionaries like Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung.

The media kind of glommed onto that title and framed it as a doomsday book. I saw how distorted the media can be when they receive new kinds of information and go on the attack instead of trying to receive. It’s almost like an immune system response. So, after all of this, I stopped to ask myself, “If I agree with these indigenous peoples that this is a time of transformation, then what is on the other side of this?”

All of these books have been journalism in a sense, or scholarly, but in my own way. The new book tries to answer the questions: What’s the situation we’re in, what’s the crisis we’re facing and what’s the solution set?

The subtitle of the book is, “From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation,” can you speak to what you mean by that?

I feel like over the last 40 years, many people have gone through a spiritual journey through yoga or meditation or a shamanic experience. But because these things are still on the margins, they can still become just another self-serving thing. This guy Chögyam Trungpa, the Tibetan lama, refers to this as “spiritual materialism.” People create a great yoga practice, they’ve gotten themselves in shape and they’ve found this great calm and inner peace. Meanwhile, as we can now see, the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket, and we have the worst possible people owning and running everything. Those people who have gone through that voyage of self discovery and healing initiation now need to figure out how to engage with the planetary crisis.

Does the book’s title have any connection to the Smiths album of the same name?

No, it has no connection at all. I wrote a lot of the book here in the East Village. In front of the cafe I worked at, there was a white van that had “How Soon is Now” spray-painted on it. I never even knew about the Smiths album — just some van wisdom.

Have you always felt a responsibility to contribute to something bigger than yourself? You mentioned you’ve gone through phases of nihilism and scientific materialism.

What I wanted to be as a younger person was a novelist or a poet — some sort of creative artist. Both of my parents were artists. My father was a painter. My mother was a writer. I felt that creative self-expression was at the core of what I wanted to do and be. Over time, going through the process of writing these books, it became more about recognizing that I was able to undergo certain intellectual explorations. For whatever reason, other people weren’t able to go as deep on their own, so that was my way of serving society creatively.

“As we launch a regenerative society, we will pursue art, joy and spiritual communion, instead of profit and power.”

Apart from the matrix and simulation we’re living in now, how are you feeling about the era of politics we’re about to step into and the role of individual action?

This guy Jonathan Zapper argued that Trump’s victory is so absurd that we might actually be living in a videogame or a simulation — a lot of people have approached this idea from different angles. I do like his way of thinking about it. If it is a simulation, or some sort of spectacle that other dimensional beings are enjoying, then the way to succeed is to be a story-intensifying character. So, Trump has intensified all the plot lines to a tremendous degree.

Obviously, there are things that individuals can and should do, but ultimately these actions need to be organized and orchestrated into a collective movement. My hope is that social technologies or social networks can somehow facilitate that.

As someone who is described as a futurist, what are some global trends you’re seeing?

I’m definitely seeing a trend to create alternative communities and networks — in some cases physical communities in urban areas or in countries like Costa Rica — and try to model a post-capitalist utopia.

I also feel like Trump’s victory created an electric shock in a lot of people, and I see a lot of people creating activism groups being far more proactive. People who weren’t even thinking about social issues now seem to be deeply engaged. I think there’s a greater awareness that the system is broken, really really broken.

On the negative side, however, I don’t think anyone was aware of the rise of this extreme white, right-wing ideology, which bears a lot of resemblance to neo-nazism. Through Facebook, I’ve been communicating with young men who believe there is a Jewish conspiracy and that we should have concentration camps again. These ideas, which were so incredibly marginal you couldn’t even speak about them, are now finding currency. In a way, America has entered into a collective psychosis, which we’ve done before (think back to the Salem Witch Trials or McCarthyism).

Or Japanese concentration camps.

Exactly. We don’t know how deep it’s going to go. Trump is probably not going to create progressive social policies that are going to tangibly benefit his followers. So, then it’s going to be bread and circuses — how do we divert the public with war or by demonizing groups within this country. It’s a very predictable playbook.

The alternative on the left-wing side doesn’t feel cohesive right now either. Everyone just feels broken and confused.

As we move closer to really understanding the importance of human ecology, can you speak about some of the things you believe need to happen to foster a more symbiotic relationship with the planet?

In the new book I try to look at how we could move back into balance. We can see how fast things are changing now, and some of them won’t be reversible unless there’s some sort of miraculous technology. For instance, we’re probably going to see significant sea-level rise within a century, which could wipe out coastal cities. In order to survive, people are going to have to create new urban environments that are hopefully more like eco-cities.

The three main buckets that I talk about are technology (the technical infrastructure), economics and social structures, and consciousness, which is determined by culture and media, beliefs and ideologies. Those three areas can all evolve to deal with this menace we’ve created.

We need to shift to a renewable energy system. We could do that through global mobilization in a decade or two. We could shift from monoculture farming to regenerative agriculture, which would replenish topsoil. We could also have a global reduction or moratorium on meat eating, so we can return 30 percent of the earth’s surface to forest and reduce the CO2 and methane emissions caused by factory farming.

In terms of industry, there’s this idea that William McDonough put forward that all our industries could positively feed back into one another, like Earth’s ecosystems. Biodegradable and compostable plastics could, for example, have seeds in them. So, instead of them causing environmental damage, a fruit tree blossoms. We should be focusing on shifting our systems to be reusing, recycling and getting companies to build products that way.

Our cellphones, for example, are massive contributors to ecological harm. Some 3 million people have died in West Africa mining virgin conflict minerals. We should be treating these devices as precious.

We’re running low on a lot of precious minerals and metals. Instead of planned obsolescence built into our consumer model, where we’re just junking stuff, we should be building products and systems where all the components can be reused or replaced. That really requires a different economic and political-economic model — ways of exchanging value that support sharing behavior, ecologically responsible behavior. Unfortunately, the money system we have now is based off debt, which basically forces unsustainable growth, because everyone’s trying to make back that debt or that interest on the debt.

Hypothetically, we could have a currency with negative interest, so there’s no value in holding it and people want to share with their community when they have an excess of something. There are a lot of redesign possibilities in the political-economic system that we could implement.

Who have been some of your biggest influences?

One is José Argüelles, who I wrote about in the 2012 book. He died in 2011, and I actually published his last book, “Manifesto for the Noosphere.” He was a big thinker on the Mayan Calendar, and he created this thing called “The Dreamspell,” which was a postmodern version of the Mayan Calendar where everyone has a galactic signature. He was a very big thinker and a lot of his early work is just brilliant. I love the idea of making an art piece out of time.

Another big influence is Buckminster Fuller. He was a design scientist who foresaw the ’60s, and that humanity had a choice between utopia or oblivion. He knew we either had to come together as the human community as a whole, or we wouldn’t survive as a species. A lot of his ideas are part of my new book and thinking.

“Just as a caterpillar in the chrysalis can’t imagine flight, we can’t envision our own future unfolding.”

Do you ever feel like you’re not doing enough, and when that happens what do you do?

Sometimes you have to just not do anything. You have to allow yourself to know that those times are also necessary. My biggest regret, well not really regret, but it does bring me sadness … I started this company Evolver with an old friend. I found that we were bumping heads a lot, so I left and he found another partner.

It’s still going, and the for-profit side has an event space here on 1st Street. They’re still publishing the blog, Reality Sandwich, as well. On the nonprofit side we had 40 or 50 groups, mostly in the U.S., but also globally, which peaked in 2010. By 2012, the organization had reached an exhausted level, and we couldn’t find financial donations to keep it going. So, I walked away. I was just so exhausted. I gave it to someone who wasn’t that great at handling the project, so it sort of fell apart. But the model of having these groups as local nodes of alternative culture was really amazing. The idea of constructing a template for local groups to form feels to me like a good one.

I think one reason people are falling into this alt-right psychosis is because they’re in these isolated towns, and there’s nothing interesting happening. They’re gravitating toward really negative ideologies, because that’s their reaction to the bombardment of the media, which is so destructive.

What’s your biggest motivator to keep working on these issues?

At this point, it’s who I am. I don’t know what else I would do. I’m fascinated to see what’s possible. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to have a significant influence. In fact, a friend of mine just moved to Louisiana, and he’s been working with a Shaman who has a community of over 100 people. The Shaman was excited to see on Facebook that this friend of mine and I were connected, because apparently he was inspired by my first book to pursue the work of shamanism. Through him, I’ve influenced those hundred people, and who knows how many more thousands he’ll influence (or already has).

Russell Brand was also inspired by my work and wrote about me in his book, “Revolution.” The worldview that he’s put forward in his YouTube videos, The Trews, which have reached millions of people — I’ve helped to inform that. You can have a multiplier effect. There’s no reason not to try.

What advice do you have for others?

At this point, I would say to look for those higher leverage points. I would say that everyone intuitively knows their own skills, talents and capacities. Well, not everyone knows, to be honest. But the more you can figure that out … maybe your best skill is that you’re great with plants, so you’ll do rooftop gardening. Maybe you’re an organizer, or maybe you’re a lawyer and can use that skill for better causes. So, you look at yourself with almost a permaculture-like approach. Who are you, what skills have you got and what can you offer? And have a lot of forgiveness for yourself and others, because nobody is perfect.

Is there anything personal you do to reduce your impact?

I reduce my meat consumption. I toggle back and forth between vegetarian and mostly vegetarian. I don’t have a car. I don’t drive. I don’t consume excessively.

What’s your favorite thing to bring with you everywhere you go?

My phone and my laptop. That’s pretty much it.

This is an interview featured in the first issue of The Regeneration Magazine.

You can also order the first issue on our website.

Don’t forget to click the green heart if you liked this piece!

Follow our channel below for more interviews, essays, profiles and more about the people who are finding innovative ways to change the way we talk, think, and act in relation to the environment and climate change.

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Climate action in the age of Trump was originally published in The Regeneration on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.