Rooted

When one thinks of Los Angeles and sustainability, a common mental image usually involves the physical environment: air quality, drought, urban heat, wildfires, and loss of green space. However, this perspective captures only the surface of what sustainability truly means in this great city. What I’ve come to understand is that the environmental realities of LA are layered on top of a wealth of history of migration, segregation, displacement, and cultural survival. The land of Los Angeles is so much more than just dirt and trees: it is also about the people who live here. To understand sustainability in LA, one must understand the people who live on this land, the stories they carry, and the vulnerabilities that shaped their history.

I walked into the LA Cleantech Incubator thinking sustainability meant paper straws and beach cleanups. Two hours later, I realized I’d been thinking way too small.

The founder showcase at the La Kretz Innovation Campus featured seven startups, but none of them resembled the “eco-friendly” projects I had expected. No one was pitching reusable water bottle campaigns or compostable packaging. Instead, the room filled with bright projector screens, prototype displays, and founders discussing systems problems I didn’t even know existed: AI that detects contamination inside recycling trucks, modular direct-air-capture machines built for cities, and shoes made from California algae. Every pitch aimed at a failure point in our infrastructure—problems individual actions could never solve.

It’s time for the truth about windmills. Yeah sure, they generate lots of electricity and make renewable energy and all that jazzy stuff. They are also an eyesore that interrupts the beautiful, pure, and peaceful places that are California highways. And like yeah temperatures rising and ice melting and climate change matter… but what about my property value? 

When I first arrived at USC, I did not think much about how sustainability showed up in my everyday routine. I grabbed lunch between classes at the Village, picked up groceries at Trader Joe’s, and mindlessly ate the plant-based options in the dining halls. I always knew food was important for sustainability. However, I did not realize the multitude of systems in play when it comes to food choice. Listening to “The Food Fight” podcast this semester reinforced the significance of food and deepened my understanding of how the food one eats is impacted by more than just mere personal choice. Here at the University of Southern California, students on the meal plan do not choose their food. Their food choices are shaped by USC and the systems of Los Angeles. These choices have impacts. More plant-based diets are better for the environment; more meat-heavy diets are more harmful for sustainability. The choices of the individual are small and have no real impact. However, when combined, these small impacts result in a larger impact, whether for the better or for worse. Many, including me in the past, do not realize the impact of food choices. Something as simple as choosing a meal on USC campus is connected to a much larger story about sustainability.

The stage lights dim, the curtains close, and the hundreds of polyester costumes head straight to the landfill. Seeing how quickly dance costumes can become waste made me think about my own role in addressing sustainability. I feel connected to sustainability on campus through my dance club, Xpressions Dance Company. We host a showcase every semester, featuring approximately 15 different dances, each requiring unique costumes for its performance. These costumes are often bought from fast fashion manufacturers, such as Shein, due to affordability concerns. They are typically worn only once on stage and then are thrown away or donated. During last year’s rehearsal, as I handed out costumes, I noticed the huge box filled with an overwhelming number of individually plastic-wrapped clothing items and realized just how much waste our club was generating.

On the morning of September 19th, I entered the Sustainability Hub at STU 101 for FreeSCycle Friday, expecting a simple event. Instead, it was like walking into a small, temporary ecosystem constructed entirely around reuse. Rows of tables were placed across the room, stacked with things that had been forgotten, from AirPods, tablets, e-readers, to glasses, mugs, and desk lamps. What surprised me the most was not the variety but the abundance. Dozens of AirPods and glasses were sitting neatly in rows, reminding me how quickly valuable things slip out of our lives and are left unused.

The roar of the crowd, the marching band’s opening note, and then, BOOM!

The Coliseum lights up with fireworks as the Trojans race on to the field, the night sky sparkling with gold and cherry red. My friends had always shown me videos, and I’d always heard people in my classes talk about it, but attending my first night game at USC and witnessing the fireworks burst above me was somehow something so much more alive than anything I had expected. For a moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything except how incredible it felt to be a part of that immense energy. But once the excitement settled, I found myself noticing something else that I’d always overlooked, the smoke.

“Dilution Protocol: 20 treatment groups. Treatment 1: 1200 microliters of unsonicated biostimulant combined with 298.8 milliliters of water.” I am researching how the concentration of different biostimulants helps plants grow better. 1200 microliters means I need to pipet twice. Either I set the p1000 to six hundred microliters twice, or I set one p1000 to one thousand microliters and one p200 to two hundred microliters. Either way I have to pipet twice and use a new pipet each time. I decide to do the latter and first pipet one thousand microliters with the p1000 using the larger pipet tip, and then pipet two hundred microliters with the p200 with the smaller pipet tip. For my water, I need eight hundred microliters pipetted with the p1000. Three pipet tips thrown into the biohazard bin. Next treatment group. “Treatment 2: 1200 microliters of positive control biostimulant combined with 298.8 milliliters of water.” Another three pipet tips thrown into the biohazard bin. And another. And another. And another. And finally, when I get through all twenty treatment groups, the biohazard bin is overflowing. Filled to the brim with these single-use pipet tips covered in the various biostimulant treatments used in my experiment. And I have to do this all over again next week…

It was my sophomore year of college with another round of general education requirements to fulfill as I further considered my EJ interests and began a year-long climate lobbying fellowship to support my JD dreams within environmental policy. Deep breath.

I thought, if I’m gonna be about EJ, I’ve got to be all about EJ, not only for fellow Black people. Command F was my best friend when looking through the course catalog for classes, and I found a history course called “The Latin American Experience.” I faintly stepped into an awkwardly rectangular classroom with a couple of seats towards the door, calling to me in a sea of Latino students. I didn’t blame these students, who crafted time out of their weeks to trace historical narratives that could’ve brought a twinge of resemblance to their personal histories at a PWI.

I don’t know your name yet. I don’t know the details of your life, whether you are someone who forgets to schedule your annual checkups until the last minute or someone who comes in at the first sign of worry. I don’t know what brings you to my clinic years from now, maybe a tight chest, a racing heartbeat, or a worry you’ve quietly carried. I do know that by the time I become your doctor, the world around us will have changed, and the way we care for your heart will need to adapt with it.

Peering up at Philippa, I tell her about my nightmare group project I’ve just finished and my looming final exams. Her branches and leaves shine in the sunlight, lightly rustling after I finish my story, seeming to comfort me in my suffering.