Fresh Eyes
The next gen may prove how effortless sustainability is
Why is it so hard to mobilize a disengaged population?
The need for positive climate action, and calls for greater urgency & velocity in this movement, have been repetitive enough that one would assume the point has been already made. Yet we are witnessing aggressive shifts in seasonal temperature year on year, back-to-back natural disasters, and clothing landfills hitting max capacity. All the while, these proclamations get stifled in the grand machine of capitalism and scrolled quickly past on our feeds, instantly forgotten. We’re not holding up our end of the deal, are we?
Earlier this week, I touched on this discourse with someone trying to tackle food waste. We commiserated over the mountain climate innovation must climb to win public favor. I casually offered up the notion that, outside advocates & early adopters, a key marketing ploy to drive circular engagement is stroking their ego. People want to feel like their choices are the good ones — the right ones even — but more than this, they don’t want to imagine themselves as a participant in the wasteful systems they very well participate in. No one wants a mirror held up to their face to tell them they’ve been the reason the world burns. Obviously. To achieve any sort of changed behavior for positive climate action, the majority of us need to be wooed and validated that we are still the hero in our story.
It’s laughable coming from me, given that I constantly point out all the bad habits we need to break in our relationship to shopping and the fashion value chain. I don’t take my own advice with this newsletter (would I tap into a larger community if I did? Do I even want that?), preferring instead to accept the mistakes we’ve made and our fallible nature. Guilt is a constant companion, manifesting new shapes across areas of my life, and it is no different when evaluating my consumer habits + relationship to environmentalism. The situation, as it exists today, is that achieving widespread circularity has a massive obstacle: detachment. If the ties that work and personal life can have to nature are severed, and society rewards indifference, educating and spurring to action appear more difficult than need be.
While this may be the proposition now, history holds up that we get better with each new generation; and I believe today’s kids are proving to us just how intrinsic circularity can be. There isn’t a need to entice them nearly to the same intensity — particularly within the conditions that they are growing up highly impressionable, with a progressively advanced comprehension of our environment. In contrast, when I was a kid they were trying to tell us ethanol was going to be a climate warrior to replace oil! Oh how the times have changed.
Every few months there’s a sub-ten year old wunderkind hitting the talk show circuits for whatever impressive talents found them virality. The Ellen DeGeneres effect lives on, adored by the masses, because we want to have hope in the children of the future. Parents are taking stock of their children more than ever, so when they say who they are, parents believe them. The public celebrates the fearlessness sprouting from their purity, how their fresh eyes see the world. We should take this quite seriously as well.
Speaking of, there’s something striking about one of America’s current little starlets.
Eight year old designer Max Alexander, better known as Couture to the Max, made an appearance recently on Good Morning America alongside NYFW creator Fern Mallis, both sporting Max’s latest work and showing some of his upcoming collection. What captured my attention was his commitment to circularity could be seen clear as day, and one of an extremely casual nature. Why is it so easy for him to understand how to reuse coffee bags and scraps, or dye with turmeric? Why can it feel like pulling teeth to get an equivalent level of participation from someone thrice his age?
Circular design is incredibly effortful. It can be difficult to argue the profitability of climate-centered fashion when few have taken the chance. Without this connection, investors and stakeholders remain bullishly conservative, thus pressing a foot back on the neck of innovative circular design. Even harder is breaking the learned behaviors of consumers to take-make-waste, buy-wear-dump-buy again. To top it off, there are leading state and federal politicians hell bent on removing climate-centered education in schools. It’s grim on all fronts, truthfully. But there must be other kids out there just like Max.
Are we really hopeful that the youth growing up today are better equipped to adapt and progress the vision for a greener world? Perhaps the example of Couture to the Max is testament that all this work is, in fact, paving a neat little path for the future to traverse down. The passion and ease with which the young Mr. Alexander enacts eco-conscious design is likely inspired through a foundational environment, but in his creative choices he is fully autonomous. THAT is what motivates me so much about this example! Practicing circularity without asking anything of it — aka, just doing it in good faith — feels like a luxury out of reach where we stand today… but if we just turn our attention, and collaborate with a fresh pair of eyes, I would argue it’s not as far-fetched as it may seem. Maybe it’s already happening.
ICYMI
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