Articles

The first time I ever encountered sustainability in a work setting wasn’t through a “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” poster or a cheesy mission statement on our company's website. It was through a commuting stipend. When I first started my transportation internship at LA28, I fully expected to hear about traffic flow, arrival windows, and large-scale logistics. What I didn’t expect was the idea that employees could be rewarded for not driving to work. A stipend was to be given for taking transit, biking, or carpooling. For a cash-strapped college student, that felt revolutionary. However, the first thing I felt when I heard this wasn’t inspiration but rather an unshakeable skepticism about its true purpose. The cynic inside me had been trained well; I'd seen enough greenwashed corporate campaigns and recycling bins placed solely for optics to know that institutional sustainability often has more to do with brand perception than real behavioral change. Was this actually about reducing emissions and sustainability, or was it just a more polite way to address limited parking and avoid garage fees?

Periodically, the Sustainability Hub at the USC Student Union hosts an event called FreeSCycle Friday. The basic concept of the event is that unclaimed lost and found items from around campus, including places like the campus gyms or laundry rooms, likely still have value and use to the USC student community, even if the items were not important enough to their original owner for them to go looking for. In the room where the event is held, there were two tables set up and on top of them were items like lanyards, wallets, books, headphones, and more (see featured image). The room was rather quiet, with only a few other students perusing the tables. There was something quite striking to me about this experience in general – the fact that this “garbage” that was saved from going to the landfill and instead ended up in the hands of folks who could benefit from it.

When I decided to visit the Natural History Museum as a part of my Writ-150 class, I expected to learn strictly about the past. I didn’t expect that it would completely change how I think about the present and the future. As I walked through the exhibits, I realized that learning about history, environmental history specifically, is not just about understanding what has already happened. It is essential for understanding what could happen in the future.

Two years ago, I was in Dunhuang, in the northwest of China, following a group of Przewalski’s horses across a stretch of desert that felt both endless and fragile. The work was quiet and slow. Most of what I did was observe—watching how the horses moved, how they stayed together, how they responded to the landscape around them. At the time, I thought sustainability meant exactly this: protecting, monitoring, and, when necessary, stepping in to help.

February 8, 2026. For my first outdoor journal entry, I did not think too much about where to go. I just chose the lawn between Marks and Fertitta since it was convenient on the way back from the gym. The goal was simple: finish the assignment. The idea of “connecting with nature” felt a little foolish. How can you connect with something that isn’t even paying attention to you? So I sat down, staring at the sky. After a minute, I glanced down, and a black lizard stared back at me sideways, perfectly still.

When I went to “Tend the Gardens, Tend the Self,” I searched for a long time before realizing that the event wasn't in the open farmland I thought it would be, but rather in a small flower bed in a corner of the USC University Park Campus, near the courtyard of the University Religious Center courtyard. It was quiet and unassuming, like a place easily overlooked by those passing by. At first, I thought it was just an ordinary cleanup.

At 8 p.m. on a Friday, eight of us left USC for Santa Monica. We only had one car. Five people squeezed in. The other three decided to take the metro. 

My boss described the villages the way someone talks about something they love but worry about losing. He told me about narrow roads lined with family-run restaurants, bicycles resting against wooden houses, and hiking trails sprinkled with vibrant wildflowers that lead to waterfalls hidden deep within the bright green trees. Not too far away from this beautiful picture, however, were overcrowded cities, industrialized towers, and tourist attractions that were built to draw in profit instead of preserving and teaching the quaint charm of Japanese life.

As summer approached, my mom would call to tell me where she was parked to pick up my sister and me from school. From the passenger seat, I would look out the window at the parents and kids walking home as we drove off. Some mothers held newspapers over their faces to block the sun, while younger kids lifted their backpacks above their heads for shade. Others stood by the gate with large, colorful umbrellas, waiting. Inside the car, the heat felt distant—something on the other side of the glass once the door closed. I remember feeling lucky that I didn't have to walk in it. Even then, I knew that many of the people outside didn't have another option but to make that walk every day in the burning sun. What I didn't understand at the time was how little the streets offered them in return—how the lack of trees and shaded structures wasn't accidental, but part of how some neighborhoods are designed with fewer protections from heat than others.