Like most children, I was taught to not eat things I found in the woods. A generally sound piece of advice, I was astounded when I saw my friend pick something off a bush in the woods and pop it in her mouth. She assured me she wouldn’t die, and told me that she was eating wild blueberries. I was intrigued, so she kept pointing out a buffet of edible things on our walk. Pine needles, dandelions, chicken of the forest mushrooms, wild raspberries. Since then, I have been fascinated by foraging. 

Foraging is the act of harvesting wild fruits, nuts, plants, and mushrooms for consumption. While it has been around as long as humans have existed, its popularity is booming now – which wasn’t always the case.  

While foraging used to be normal for most of humanity’s existence, it became less common over time as grocery stores became bigger and more wide-spread. Getting lost in the woods grew unnecessary when food was available without having to hunt for it. To me and most others, it is far easier to click ‘order’ on Instacart than go through the woods looking for non-poisonous mushrooms and berries. 

Additionally, it is not always possible. Even if I didn’t know how to forage, at least I lived near woods where it was allowed and easy to do. This is not the case for most city dwellers. There are not as many plants, the soil is often contaminated, and most land belongs to someone. Foraging is also illegal in many parks and national lands. Identifying what is edible, where foraging is allowed, and not getting arrested in the process takes some effort. As such, foraging fell out of favor for almost everyone who did not live in or near wilderness. 

But recently, it has been becoming a popular hobby that many, including me, have picked up. With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing more people outside and into escapism, foraging re-entered the mainstream. There are foraging influencers who share advice on what they pick and how to prepare healthy meals with the bounty on almost every social media platform. Influencers like @BlackForager on Instagram have encouraged their followers to take up the hobby. Like crocheting, it was a dying art that thousands of young people took up to live slower and more purposefully. 

For some, like my friend who taught me, foraging is done out of environmental concerns. Transporting food accounts for 3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions a year – that’s 8% of global emissions. Foraging doesn’t create a carbon footprint anywhere close to that big. Others forage because it is a free way to get produce. For some, like me, it is a way to connect with nature. Whatever the reason, foraging is having a comeback moment. 

But just as the popularity of foraging has changed, so has the planet. Native plants are being pushed out by invasive species and climate change. This alters what can be taken and makes it harder to start or keep foraging. The boom in foraging has also stressed ecosystems. With more people harvesting areas, ecosystems are being overused. Some places have adopted regulations to minimize this, but it is not a perfect solution. If foraging is not done ethically, the environment and humans will be harmed. As foraging and the Earth evolve, it is important to understand the process and how it is changing. 

Foraging, a seemingly simple act, is far from it. I will be exploring how climate change affects foragers, how foragers affect nature, ethical foraging, its history and growth in pop culture, and how it can help reduce emissions. Picking blueberries is just scratching the surface of this complex topic.

When European colonists first arrived in the Midwest in search of arable land, they compared the expansive prairie to the ocean; the tall, green grasses swayed in the breeze like waves rippling the water. But, that sea has slowly disappeared under the sprawl of industrial agriculture, changing the landscape of the Midwest from prairie to small scale farms, to huge farming enterprises. 

The Midwest has the highest density of farming enterprises in the United States. This region alone produces 27% of all US agricultural output. Shockingly, most of this output, of which corn and soybeans account for 75%, is used for the production of industry products, rather than consumption. Consumer goods are not just food: only a small percentage of corn grown in the Midwest is used for these products, while 80% goes to the production of ethanol and livestock feed. The agriculture industry affects almost every aspect of life: from the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to the fuel we put in our cars. Yet, despite its importance, the very future of US agriculture is bleak.

Eroding topsoil, polluted rivers, dwindling workforces, tariff disputes: environmental and social problems in the agricultural industry continue to accumulate. As farmers struggle to retain and return nutrients in their soil or find enough workers to remain operational, they try to find solutions that allow them to persist. But these solutions are varied and unequal. While some farmers choose to adopt sustainable practices and experiment with regenerative farming techniques that pay off in the long term, others turn to short term patches instead of solutions. In order to understand farmers’ actions, their attitudes and beliefs must be studied.  What are the political, economic, or psychological roadblocks that hinder wide adoption of sustainable farming methods, despite a shared vision of a productive future? How have changing attitudes divided farmers on how best to advance sustainability? How can the agricultural policy be reformed to better serve farmers? 

In a changing world, farmers must change too if they are going to remain profitable and productive. For my beat, I will dive into social issues as the causes and consequences of problems facing the Midwest agricultural industry. 

     Lush greenery towers above you, shading out the sun. Life flourishes, animals flit between the fronds flashing colors everywhere you turn. As you swim through the forest… Yes, swim! Did you think this description was of a jungle? The Amazon and Taiga aren’t the only forests of incredible proportions and significance. Kelp forests support not only diversity but also carbon storage efforts. 

     While often overlooked, they store carbon at a faster rate than terrestrial forests. However, these rich algal gardens aren’t the only type of ocean based carbon sinks coined “Blue Carbon”. Others include seagrass meadows, mangroves, and algaes. 

     Climate change is the most pressing issue looming over humanity’s future. The impacts are already being felt in the form of altered weather patterns, such as droughts, more violent storms, and abnormal temperatures. These changes are visible, not just observed on a monitor or predicted on a graph. So now, more than ever, it’s crucial to understand the different ways to fight climate change. 

     Prevention involves actions which limit carbon emissions and stop the problem at the source. Reduction is the process of sequestering the carbon that has already been released into the atmosphere. But scientists have shown that limiting carbon emissions is no longer enough. Carbon capture is necessary to fight climate change. 

     Trees, peatland, soil. These are all typical terrestrial carbon sinks, but our ocean is far superior. Coastal blue carbon, such as mangroves and seagrasses, store carbon more quickly and keep it for longer due to fast growing plants and algaes. Additionally sediments in the ocean prevent the carbon from decomposing and rejoining the carbon cycle as quickly as soil on land. According to the World Bank coastal blue carbon is responsible for 50% of total ocean carbon storage. A prime example of this is mangroves, which can store five times the amount of carbon as terrestrial forests because of their quick growth and large root systems. However, mangroves are being destroyed around the world for development, shrimp farming, and other human uses. Perhaps we should be planting more mangroves in addition to maples and oaks? 

     Seagrasses, mangroves, and macroalgae represent a lifeline for the planet. Tragically, these watery ecosystems are threatened by many human activities such as removal for aquaculture, port infrastructure, and tourism. My beat will focus on Blue Carbon and the restoration of vital ocean ecosystems in the face of environmental degradation. Stick around and swim through the kelp forests and eelgrass meadows important to a healthy future.

Have you ever wondered what resulted from the major environmental justice movements? Where did the leaders of these organizations end up? What lasting effects did these movements have around New York City? Did they really make a difference? From 1960 to present day, organizations like WE ACT, UPROSE, GROW NYC, and the Sunrise Movement have been working locally, globally, and nationally to improve legislation and the environment. They have successfully made their communities cleaner through NYC waste legislation, drawing attention to redlining and disproportionately affected communities of color, and creating the environmental leaders of the future. But how have they, and how can they, continue to do so in current times when similar issues like housing crises, food shortages, and weather damage are continuously exacerbated by climate change? 

New York City’s melting pot of cultures has allowed for the creation of hundreds of movements beginning with some of the most influential revolutionary leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Even before the creation of individual environmental movements, The Young Lords and the Black Panthers addressed environmental racism in the streets of their communities. They set the stage for community-based organizing, and new movements continue to sprout up as grassroots organizing increases in the City. But looking back on NYC’s history shows how hard organizers and activists worked in order to effectively cause change. 

New York has a complex history, a history of environmental changes, and, unfortunately, disarray for communities facing eviction, a lack of resources, racism, and classism. Problematic legislation resulting in redlining has made proper housing conditions for BIPOC communities difficult to receive. As a result, these communities stay trapped in worsening conditions as large corporations target these neighborhoods for waste disposal. The progression of such issues makes it easy for followers of these movements to get lost in a number of articles without solutions, but as we’ll explore, no solutions does not always mean hope is lost. 

While people may think that the rallies, protests, and noise of environmentalists in the 20th century left, the reality is that this type of activism is still alive. It continues to power movements focusing on the causes marginalized communities have been fighting for with every new generation of activists. Thousands of people from around the city have started taking initiatives to raise awareness for their communities as well as for the state of the Earth as a whole.  

Exploring these movements centers the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Climate change data has shown that communities of color housing high percentages of Black (27%) and Hispanic (43%) individuals, face disproportionate negative outcomes from environmental crises. Lack of resources, specifically, worsens these communities’ abilities to combat these impending climate circumstances. 

As the years we have to achieve net-zero carbon emissions and avoid irreversible damage to the climate draw closer, the time has come to build on previous movements, raise morale, and begin fighting for a more sustainable future. 

Environmental issues are not just one community’s issues, it is all of ours and it is up to us to find a way to work together. By using these past movements as examples for creating new ones, reviving old ones, fighting for local legislation, and growing the need for mutual aid in our communities, neighborhoods across America will be able to advocate for themselves with the support of one another in knowing that a radical change can be created right from their homes. 

We must ask ourselves, how can we continue these movements’ projects in this day and age? How can we make a difference as they have? I will attempt to piece together the past and present of revolutionary NYC movements, providing an answer to their lesser known history and creating solutions to the incoming future of activism. 

Clothes are unique to humans. When Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree of knowledge, the first thing they became aware of was their nakedness; in response God created garments and clothed them.

Clothing is an essential part of everyday life today. There are clothes for work, school, working out — going out — and all those clothes say things about us: our age, personality, interests, how “on trend” we are.  But in the age of social media, trends come and go at lightning speed. Fashion historians suggest that trend cycles usually last years — 20 years on average — but with social media and globalization, that has changed to months. 

How does the fashion industry keep up with the ever-changing trends? Well, with “fast fashion” — a part of the fashion industry that produces clothing items quickly and cheaply. With giant teams of trend researchers and designers, as well as the means for large-scale mass-production, industry titans such as Zara, Shein, and H&M are able to produce more than 100 billion pieces of low-cost clothing annually. That’s 15 pieces of clothing for every person on the planet — every year.

This constant stream of cheap, synthetically-made clothes encourages a “throw-away” mentality. Consumers are encouraged to buy low-cost clothes to keep up with the trends, not to mention that low-quality production makes it easy to justify their disposal. Clothes waste itself is a huge problem, with 92 million tonnes of clothes ending up in landfills each year. Factor in that over 60% of fast fashion pieces can’t be recycled, and now those tonnes of clothes are staying on our planet for thousands of years, releasing harmful chemicals into the environment.

But it’s not just the non-biodegradable clothes ending up in the landfill that’s the issue. Every time synthetic clothes are washed and dried, they release microplastic fibers that end up in our waterways and bodies of water. It’s estimated that nearly 10% of microplastics dispersed in the ocean start as clothes.

What is the solution? Slow fashion is a slower production process often cited as more eco-friendly. Reformation is a popular brand that claims its company will be circular by 2030. Circularity means customers will be buying clothes from the company that are made with recycled fabrics that come from the buyback of their own clothes, creating a sustainable cycle. But are these brands as sustainable as they claim? Beyond the effects of the clothing items themselves, making the clothing is responsible for 20% of wastewater globally and 10% of global carbon emissions. With my beat I want to explore the impacts of the fashion industry. Just because clothing is part of humanity’s original sin, does not mean it should be a burden on our environment.