My journey in learning how to be more sustainable has improved. It has opened my eyes to see things I didn’t see before, such as all the problems in the world that are affecting us without everyone realizing. My goal is to inform others what I have learned throughout my Wicked Problems course and attempt to make the world a better place one step at a time because if everyone does their part, it makes a huge impact.
I started learning more about fast fashion and how it works, learning more about other problems in the world made me understand that some overlap and could help one another. For example, poverty. People every day are losing jobs, homes, and eventually live on the streets with little to nothing to eat. The problem with fast fashion is exactly that, it’s going too fast and all of these factories are using big machines to produce it. In my eyes, I can see all of these companies helping the poor and giving them an opportunity to work in labor for good pay, while they are producing clothing that is of better quality so there won’t be so much textile waste. This could possibly help both poverty in some aspect as well as slow down fast fashion.
Relating to textile waste, when I was younger I would think about where all of our waste went and if could eventually fill the planet, then laughed and realized there was no way. I now look around me at cities like NYC for example and there is so much waste all over. Society doesn’t realize that not everything is biodegradable and can affect the planet. The visit to the sustainability office was interesting because there were both pros and cons. Mostly pros. It was nice to know we have such an amazing school where they do everything in their power to help the city and furthermore, educate all students to continue to do so after graduating. There were places for recycling, waste, and even upholstery. All I have to question now is, what is everyone doing beyond recycling and using less plastic to really be more sustainable? What is there that our generation can do in order to prepare a better future than what we are looking at now?
