I rolled my bike toward the Trojan Statue on a Tuesday afternoon in late January. The front tire had been soft since early October, hissing a little every time I took a turn. The seat had been broken for almost as long, wobbling so badly I had been half-standing over it for weeks.
Take a close look at the backpack leaning against the side of my desk. It is a North Face; it was originally a dark obsidian black, but years of exposure to the California sun have faded it to a soft charcoal grey.
Sustainability doesn’t have to mean changing things that are old and don’t work, but rather fixing things to make them better. That’s just how sustainability in clothing should be. Learning to make something old into something new, helping reduce how much clothes get discarded. Shopping has been a big hobby of mine, and probably a large majority of people too.
After a long day in the Arizona desert heat, I feel the refreshing coldness of the A.C. blow into my face. Goodwill embraces me, allowing me to hide away from the sun. As I move through the score, I can’t help but to feel suffocated at the monstrous mountains staring at me. Hundreds–if not thousands–of pre-loved items sitting in piles and hangers, all of them waiting to be purchased again.
There was nothing I dreaded more than the sound of my mother cranking the faucet of our shower on a Sunday afternoon. It marked the start of “wash day,” an hours-long labor of love experienced by little black girls around the globe.
In a metropolis as large as Shanghai, movement never stops. It's a city that has one of the most advanced and complex subway transportation systems, making it so easy for people and things to move around. Millions rush through busy metro networks, tall office towers glow colorful late into the night, and electric scooters carrying food deliveries weave through the jam-packed traffic at every hour. However, in a dynamic city like this, convenience is part of the rhythm of daily life.
It was a cloudy afternoon on a quiet weekend at USC. Me and my roommate were loafing in the dorm, deprived of anything remotely interesting to do. I scrolled through Tik Tok and Instagram Reels, chasing the endorphin release a funny video might provide me, but it was no use. A couple of hours passed like this, and things weren’t getting any better.
In the sterile, climate-controlled hum of a USC economics classroom, sustainability is often presented as a beautiful, balanced geometry. Professors sketch the three-tier model, a venn diagram where the economy, society, and the environment overlap in three perfect, equitable circles. In this academic utopia, we are taught that for a system to be truly sustainable, it must be viable, equitable, and bearable.However, when the lecture ends and I step out onto the sun-drenched, exhaust heavy pavement of Figueroa Street, that geometric balance collapses.
As my heavy eyes reluctantly blink open I sluggishly roll out of bed, careful not to wake my roommate. My body swiftly moves towards the coffee machine as if a reflex, an action I've done a hundred times before…literally. The plastic compartment is filled with water, the mug is sitting on top of the drip tray, and with a familiar practiced motion, I drop a pre-packaged coffee pod into the machine.
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