Five BIPOC Celebrities Using Their Platforms to Promote Sustainability
Quarantine life has had me relying on social media for both entertainment and news. This in combination with my love for pop culture has brought a lot of celebrities and their activism work to the forefront of my feeds.
Climate change and sustainability are getting a lot more attention from celebrities these days, prompting their fans and consumers in general to think about the impact we all have on the environment.
Here are five celebrities who are using their platforms to promote sustainability and environmental issues:
1. Rosario Dawson
Actress Rosario Dawson is not new to the activism game. Having attended her first campaign dedicated to saving the trees at age 10, she continues to advocate for sustainable practices such as rehabbing broken or second-hand items, and using backyard gardens to grow food. Even her fashion line, Studio 189, focuses on using environmentally-friendly and recycled materials. But while Dawson personally maintains a sustainable lifestyle, she emphasizes the greater importance of putting pressure on large corporations and governments to instate practices that combat climate-change.
2. America Ferrera
via @americaferrera Instagram
In an episode of National Geographic’s Years of Living Dangerously, actress America Ferrera visited a coal power plant in Waukegan, Illinois. While the plant creates hundreds of jobs in the predominantly Latinx and Black working-class community, the pollution-emissions have created major health problems as well. Alongside the Beyond Coal campaign, Ferrera helps collect petition signatures calling for the city’s mayor Wayne Motley to shut down the plant, and create more eco-friendly jobs in its place.
3. SZA
via @sza Instagram
SZA knows that our future “Good Days” depend on what we do in the present day. That’s why, this past February, she partnered with not-for-profit American Forests and TAZO Tea to launch TAZO Tree Corps.
Trees do so much more for our communities than we think; they cool and purify air, help boost people’s mental health, and even create job opportunities. According to American Forests, with the creation of TAZO Tree Corps, five cities across the U.S. will reap the benefits of “a paid, locally hired workforce that will use tree planting and maintenance to help combat climate change and create new jobs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities of color.”
4. Jaden Smith
via @gstarraw Instagram
From his boxed water company, to his many sustainable clothing brand collaborations, Smith’s involvement in various sustainability initiatives has made headlines for years now. One of many examples was his Jaden Smith x G-Star RAW “Forces of Nature Denim Collection” that uses environmentally conscious practices to manufacture clothing. Jaden explains this in further detail in an interview with Essence, “I chose G-Star because they’re at the frontier of environmental sciences and because of the way that they manufacture their clothes — minimizing dye exposure, lowering CO2 emissions, plus [boosting] water and energy efficiency. I knew I wanted to partner with them based on those ethical reasons.”
5. Beyoncé and Jay-Z
via @beyonce Instagram
Beyoncé and Jay-Z have been very vocal about their support for veganism and have encouraged fans to take a similar approach to their own diets by promoting the Greenprint Project. This movement encourages people to eat plant-based meals by placing an emphasis on the environmental benefits, like cutting carbon emissions and water conservation.
Rather than push people to go 100% vegan, Greenprint simply reaffirms the need for us to recognize the impact of our actions, and how we can make environmentally conscious decisions when it comes to the food we eat. Bey and Jay love it so much that they started a contest out of it, giving fans a chance to win a lifetime’s worth of tickets to either of their shows if they signed up to learn more about the movement.
Written by Pravieena Gnanakumar
Header photo by Akil Mazumder from Pexels
