The Sustainability Movement Has A Diversity Problem — This Organization Is Working To Fix It

Welcome to Power Shift, a video series in which we ride along with women disrupting their industries — just as the Porsche Taycan is doing in the world of electric sports cars. Here, in partnership with Porsche, we meet a sustainability expert looking at saving the planet through a more local lens.

When many of us were first taught to reduce, reuse, and recycle, the reasoning behind it was that "we're doing it for Mother Earth." And while that may be true...what if we were to also think about sustainability as a way to help those around us?

For Whitney McGuire, cofounder of Sustainable Brooklyn, "an initiative that disrupts the whitewashing of sustainability," a major obstacle to this mindset is that the modern of "clean living" excludes certain demographics — so much so that those who already practice it might not even recognize it as such.

"When I was introduced to sustainability in law school, that's when it really connected for me that, Wait, I've actually been engaged in this lifestyle for a very long time," she says. "And the way it's being conveyed doesn't have me or people who look like me or people who have that socioeconomic background — it's not contemplating our experience."

So how do you make change in a system in which "it's not just clothes...or food being discarded haphazardly, but we're also discarding people?" Below, watch McGuire explain how sustainability starts with the self and how to "get involved in your backyard."