The Environmental Movement Today

I’ve always had an interest in science and grew up encouraged to reduce, reuse and recycle. Millennials and Gen Z were raised learning about global warming and habitat loss -- it’s always been part of our educational fabric. This has visibly shaped the identities of both generations and is the reason they’re the driving force behind the environmental movement.

According to a Nielsen global online study, 72 percent of Gen Z-ers are willing to pay extra for sustainable products or services from companies devoted to social and environmental change. Think Patagonia, Google or TOMS -- corporate businesses giving back to the world. This shouldn’t come as any surprise, as a Deloitte survey found only 47 percent of Millennials believe business leaders are dedicated to improving society at large.

With passionate go-getters like today’s younger generations, every day is Earth Day. There are middle school children organizing climate strikes. There are community trash pickups being spearheaded by high schoolers. These individuals are fighting for the future of the planet and everyone on it. And I applaud them.

The activism surging through the last few years could be a reaction to the current administration and its climate-change-denying members. While I admire the tenacity of modern activists and initiatives, I do see room for improvement. The energy and consistency needs to sustain, but the way environmental initiatives and innovations are marketed has to be improved.

Take the newest sustainability trend -- reusable straws. This initiative is a stepping stone towards reusable products to eliminate plastic waste. However, there are a myriad of issues surrounding this, from ableist claims to accessibility. The sentiment behind metal, pasta, glass, bamboo, etc. straws is a positive one, but companies don’t always communicate the vision correctly.

Although companies like Final Straw (the world’s first patented collapsible reusable straw) know the mission is to help the environment, they don’t properly elaborate on the journey it’ll take to meet their goals. In the past, I've addressed single-use straws on this blog. The company knows straws are an everyday product that will usher the idea of reusable products into the mainstream.

However, the advertising looks like a one-way street: “Single-use plastics are a disaster— polluting our lands, endangering marine ecosystems, and contaminating the food chain.” That’s part of Final Straw’s mission statement. This statement is like looking at a rubik's cube -- just because one side is all blue doesn’t mean all the other colors match. Every side of the issue has to be discussed.

What initiatives, companies and activists should be doing is explaining the benefits and risks while clarifying “we don’t want to eradicate single-use products, because certain populations depend on them. We do want to reduce the scale of production of single-use plastics, not alienate people.”

While I understand science is objective, we’re now entering an intersectional space; environmental and societal change go hand-in-hand. The environmental movement can’t just be “this is what we’re doing now”, but rather “this is what we have to do and why.”

While there are multiple environmental battles to fight, there are  young, passionate individuals leading it. With the current ambitiousness of Millennials and Gen Z-ers, I’m hopeful for the current and future state of this movement.