One Student Looks Back at Her Journey to Sustainability

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Community is a flexible concept. For example, I belong to a community of people from different cultures, but who all care for the environment, and who refer to ourselves as environmentalists. Being an environmentalist is not what you say but what you do: it’s a kind of attitude that keeps us living for a certain lifestyle standard that will protect the environment. But just like the others in my community, I didn’t start off behaving, or even thinking, like one.

When I first stepped into high school, I didn’t expect myself to become so passionate about this topic. It wasn’t until our annual Global Issues Conference, where I joined a workshop that discussed environmentalism and started to think about this issue from a different perspective. I realized that I was originally so overwhelmed by this subject, including climate change, air pollution, deforestation and more, that I thought it was out of my reach. I learned that environmentalism is really about how we live our daily lives: from recycling to composting to doing things as simple and not binge shopping online. Sustainability is something we can do every single day.

In my sophomore year, I was encouraged to start my own club, Zer0, at my high school to raise awareness of this issue. Our mission is to reduce the carbon footprint at Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), introduce eco-friendly resources, and educate our community. Now in the international school environment, students are strongly encouraged to join clubs and extracurricular activities outside of academics and truthfully told, part of the reason why I founded this club is to fulfill this expectation. However, as I became the club leader, I found myself truly becoming more passionate. You know that one friend that criticizes you when you’re not recycling, judges you when you don’t print double-sided, and restricts you from using plastic bottles? Slowly through this experience, I have found myself becoming that person. Now, I am the one that persuades you to reduce waste, convinces you to bring your own shopping bag, or even teach you how to turn your food waste into compost.

It wasn’t always easy though. Although it’s fascinating to explore different cultures and understand different communities within an international school environment, the diversity of the student body also leads to differences in students’ experiences and values. We didn’t all grow up as environmentalists, learning about sustainability, or caring about green initiatives. So it was definitely a rough start for me to introduce this subject to the rest of the school. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good idea to inspire others like how I was inspired before.

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Ultimately, the purpose of Zer0 isn’t to criticize anyone for not being an environmentalist or to repeat the information people are already aware of. Everyone has somehow heard about ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle, and other issues that are seemingly impossible to change. Many of us are so overwhelmed by the scale of these problems that we feel so distanced from them and are sometimes even afraid to take action because they seem to be out of our reach. I started this club, however, to introduce community-friendly ways to approach this concern. Instead of forcing everyone to join environmental organizations or donate to eco-friendly groups, I rather show them ways to continue their original lifestyles in a “greener” way.

Throughout the past three years, our club has been focusing on small projects instead of trying to reach for the ultimate goal right away, but in a short time we’ve already achieved a lot. Projects we have accomplished include presenting in the Global Issues Conference annually, setting up booths at the annual Rock in the Park event at WAB and charity bazaar, working with WAB faculty to improve the recycling system on campus, designing our own reusable organic bags and more. Specifically, we have also made a great connection with WAB’s food supplier. They have now agreed to provide reusable cups to students who forget their water bottles to prevent them from buying plastic ones. Furthermore, they also now offer discounts to people who provide their own reusable cups for their drinks and reducing the selling of plastic packaging for food and beverages. Out of all our achievements, my favorite one is the solar-panel battery bank project. During my sophomore year, we partnered up with an outside company and designed our own battery banks that are able to recharge itself with any sort of light source. We offer custom name prints with multiple colors and have been selling them at different events since then. In my senior year, we were also able to partner up with WAB’s parent link, sharing our resources, ideas, and experiences with each other. Towards the end of my senior year, all environmental groups at WAB teamed up as the “Green Alliance.” We shared our resources, ideas, and experience with one another. Excitingly, after winter break we were able to build our own WAB composting system on campus, run by our own alliance members and using food waste from the whole school.

Changing one’s mindset can be difficult but not impossible. And sustainability doesn’t need one person to do it perfectly; it needs everyone to do it imperfectly. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” We belong to this planet, not the other way around. And it is our job, as environmentalists, to help everyone understand that.

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Photos: Courtesy of Chloe Chang

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