Sustainability Embodiment

Highlights the Duality, Interconnectedness + Dynamic Nature of Sustainability in Our Daily Lives

Sustainability Embodiment, my ongoing written and visual series, aims to highlight the interconnectedness, dynamic nature, and duality of sustainability, circularity, and regeneration. I work as a Sustainability, Circularity, and Regeneration Strategist and Designer (mainly in fashion, textiles, land, and education), helping brands design circular products, ensuring businesses have the structure to make circular and regenerative decisions, and creating educational content. My work and lifestyle revolve around the belief that sustainability is the science, circularity is the tool, and regeneration is the way. (You can find my definitions for these terms in the complementary article, Sustainability Is The Science, Circularity Is The Tool + Regeneration Is The Way.)

After being asked in industry panel discussions, and in chats with strangers, friends, and family, ‘What can I do in my daily life to be more sustainable?’ I felt drawn to house my tips, tricks, mindsets, and trade-offs for living this way under one umbrella. I’m not sure how this “umbrella” will look over time, but if you’d like to learn how I found myself in this space and how I’d like to ease your relationship to sustainability, reduce the anxiety of taking action, and reflect ways in which you’re already being sustainable, read on.

My Sustainability Path From Business Management to Fashion Design

Having learned about corporate social responsibility over 10 years ago, and realising that few corporations implement it, I felt drawn to the field of sustainability, going on to study Fashion Design (something I had my mind on since I was 7) with a minor in Nature-Culture, Sustainability, and Science at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I devoted my undergraduate degree to advocacy and raising awareness around the unsustainability issues in the fashion industry, whether that was on the pages of Vogue or as RISD’s Fashion Revolution student ambassador.

Once I graduated, I had a few internships and freelance gigs, where I was asked to answer and solve sustainability questions and challenges on the daily. I quickly realised that I didn’t have a built-in compass or truth-detection system for what was sustainable, unsustainable, or simply misinformation.

Up to this point, my sustainability education had been siloed in niches rather than systemic and practical across industries. This disparity screamed to me, and I could clearly see why many well-intentioned sustainability initiatives missed the mark in the fashion industry. I wanted to be able to discern what was truly sustainable to avoid contributing to prevalent misinformation and misdirected initiatives. To do this, I sought a master’s degree that was industry-agnostic and multi-disciplinary so that I could take my learnings back to the fashion industry.

After weeks of searching, I found Harvard University’s Master’s Degree program in Sustainability, which serendipitously combined quantitative scientific writing, data analysis, greenhouse gas accounting, lifecycle assessment, impact reduction planning, and measuring sustainable product design with more qualitative circular and regenerative economics, Indigenous knowledge, non-violent communication, policy discernment, business strategy, sustainability consulting, and ethical marketing.

The degree enabled me to understand the systems within which my creative world revolved, uncovering the data and research to evaluate the impact of every creative and business decision. It involved questioning everything, rejecting ingrained beliefs, and researching endlessly. It was a degree in how to live harmoniously with nature in a largely synthetic world, learning to create values, define important practices, and develop actions that embody these. It was groundbreaking, life-changing, soul-shaking, and terrifyingly awesome. Most of all, it allowed me to see every life decision as an opportunity to align with my now deeply-rooted values in sustainability, circularity, and regeneration.

I’d like to bring out in everyone the sense of empowerment that comes from being able to discern sustainable from unsustainable, take choices into your own hands, and use your purchasing power to send a signal to the market, especially in 2026, when it can feel like many politicians are not representing our world views.

How Sustainability Embodiment Can Empower You

Sometimes, you’ll live in a place where living sustainably is easy. Other times, you’ll be in a place (physically or mentally) where sustainability feels harder to reach. I’ve lived through the guilt of buying food in single-use plastic, the frustration of finding organic, non-toxic cosmetics in unrecyclable containers, or the panic of signing up for a last-minute activity and not having time to buy gear second-hand. It is more common than we know to feel guilt, shame, and overwhelm for not acting perfectly in line with our values and the knowledge we have at the time. But the flipside is living most of the time with a sense of connection, purpose, community, drive, optimism, and appreciation.

Organic groceries in minimal plastic packaging over the years

One of the greatest disservices that has happened to the field of sustainability is that people are afraid to speak about their sustainability progress and challenges through fear of backlash, and that being sustainable looks unfun, unattainable, and an overhaul of life as you know it. To counter this, I’ll share openly and vulnerably the imperfect ways in which I embody sustainability daily, hopefully inspiring a shift and sparking conversations that ask questions, encourage action, and connect us with like-minded folks.

However, having had this formal training in scientific research and sustainability consulting, my social media sharing style tends to be heavily research-focused, data-driven, and planned out, so, it pains me to break my usually methodical sharing style, but the things that come up for me in the moment of recording a video or sharing a quick note are the things that I’ve truly embodied and want to share because they’ve withstood the test of time and life.

If you’re curious, the first Sustainability Embodiment video is live (and 7 minutes long), so please have a watch, and let me know your thoughts:

Today is the day to start implementing actions that push sustainability, but that can be scary, and the way it’s promoted currently can feel like you have to dress in beige, turn to D.I.Y., and let your B.O. reign free. That’s not what I’m advocating for, and from chats with friends, this perception holds many people back from trying new things. So, my goal is to share the lifestyle framework I’ve developed over the years, reflect ways in which you’re already being sustainable, show that perfection really isn’t the goal, and make your sustainability journey feel attainable, easier, and fun! If this resonates with you, I would love to hear what you’re stuck with, reflecting on, or liking at the moment; I’m keen to co-create this series based on your feedback and interests.

Lifestyle Changes

To share more about my own journey, my lifestyle changes really sped up as I moved through my Master's Degree in Sustainability at Harvard, and it was a daunting and uncomfortable experience. I discovered that this is the emotional path that everyone moves through as they learn things that challenge their current beliefs and ways of life. It can feel something like this: You learn something, it terrifies you, you reject it, but then you feel obligated to act because you know too much to ignore it. You might then learn something else that throws the old learning off kilter, being faced with decision paralysis: What do I do? How do I know if this is sustainable? Is anyone or anything truly sustainable? Maybe you’ll take it to the extreme, refusing to buy certain things, eat certain foods, go certain places, and usually, you make sure that everyone around you knows why you’re making these decisions. Thankfully (and hopefully), you get to a place where you have a good understanding of this new system, how it connects to other systems in your life, and the challenges it has from different angles. You realise what is actually achievable in your life, what your values truly are, and what trade-offs you can live with. For example, I have been on both sides of the pendulum swing, from

• Regularly buying fast fashion;

• Bleaching my hair and not being fully aware of product ingredients;

• And eating any kind of farmed food

To

• Completely rejecting fashion (buying nothing and only wearing already-owned clothes for 2 years);

• Researching every ingredient in anything I buy and avoiding anything with a plastic component;

• And eating fully organic vegan food.

2012, 2020, last weekend

I now find myself in an in-between space:

• I still don’t buy fast fashion, but I do buy new clothes to support brands that share my values.

• I no longer dye my hair, and I still look up every ingredient and component in everything I buy, but I save time thanks to the Yuka app (you bet I was manually checking every ingredient before discovering Yuka), and I’m more lenient with the presence of plastic components if everything else meets my standards.

• I am no longer vegan, but I mostly eat organically-farmed, whole foods.

All this to say that duality is at the heart of sustainability and life. As two dynamic systems that are ever evolving, like us, who knows where we’ll all be on this journey in 10 years’ time. Personally, I’m not convinced that we’ll ever live in a fully sustainable or circular society, but I like to think that we can get close to 50% in the next 100 years, so why not push that percentage a little more today?

This series isn’t only for those of you who are early on your sustainability journeys, it can also be for those:

• Who dipped their toes into sustainability, but lost motivation over time;

• Who feel disempowered to act where they live;

• Sustainability professionals who are burnt out and don’t have the bandwidth to think of lifestyle actions outside of work.

In any case, if you’ve read this far, this space is likely for you, so welcome! I’m thrilled you’re here and want this to be a space where we can support, uplift, inspire, and empower one another; one that is constructive and conducive to vulnerability. If you know of anyone else who would enjoy it, please do share this article with them.

A few disclaimers before I leave you:

1. Buying less is often the most sustainable choice, so promoting the purchase of products (especially new products) is a debate I’ve had for years. The conclusion I’ve come to for now is that we live in a society that prioritises capitalism. Therefore, we’re preconditioned to look for products that align with our values, aesthetics, and aspirations for who we are or want to be. Therefore, it’s significantly easier and quicker for us to buy a product than to change a behaviour to begin with. Buying more sustainable products allows us to support businesses with better ethics than conventional alternatives, while also sending a signal to the greater market. So, if I share a product, I’ll try to also share the reasons why I chose it and its pros and cons so that you have that information.

2. This isn’t a perfectly polished series. I have one video up on YouTube, another recorded and in need of editing, and a few ideas for articles so I’m experimenting to see what resonates, what your interests are, and which platforms work well.

3. As I share my learnings, I invite you to question my knowledge and bring new discoveries to the conversation. No one can know everything and the concept of (un)learning is vital.

Thank you for being here, and please let me know in the comments what you’d like to hear about next!