Reclaiming Earth (Oct 2022)

Action Lab

School of Social Work

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE Reclaiming Earth

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Team Spotlight

Get Involved: Upcoming Events Microplastic Madness: Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Tuesday, November 1, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Columbia Climate School, Barnard Sustainability, and Cafeteria Culture

Film Screening - THE CONDOR & THE EAGLE Friday, October 28, 6:00pm - 8:00 PM

Columbia University

A warm welcome to our new members: Gabi, Meghan, Rosa Jonathan, Bailey, Hunter, and Ashley!

A warm farewell to our graduates!

Congratulations from the EJI Team!

*All links can be found in the PDF attached

Make Your Impact:

Learn to Compost

Find Composting Near You

It’s easy to make an environmental impact by composting your food scraps in your local community! Composting reduces food scraps found in landfills that are disproportionately found in Black and Brown communities and also decreases harm by reducing the amount of waste and greenhouse gasses produced by landfills.

Composting conserves water by binding with soil to retain moisture and nutrients for plant growth. It also helps to combat climate change by making community ecosystems more resilient to rising temperatures. Composting is easy and doesn’t cost you - well it might cost you a five-minute walk to the compost drop-off site, but hey, you’ll be connecting with nature and your community!

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The disproportionate effects of

Plastic Pollution The increased health risks of living near a plastic manufacturing facility, especially poor air quality, for which Black people bear a "pollution burden" of 56% (extra exposure relative to consumption), also contribute to the threefold higher fatality rate of COVID-19 among Blacks compared to whites.

Racism is intrinsic to the plastic pollution issue, from production to consumption to disposal, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of this injustice.

Plastic also contributes to the climate problem and climate change at every stage of its life cycle, from extraction to refining, manufacturing, transportation, disposal, and waste. Plastic production emissions might reach 1.34 gigatonnes per year by 2030, which is similar to the emissions emitted by more than 295 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants. Ninety-nine percent of plastic is sourced from fossil fuels, and its production's direct effect on our communities is the true global catastrophe. The pervasiveness of the plastic catastrophe has been shown by the discovery of micro-plastics in deep sea species, fish, human bodies, and even rain.

Local organization spotlight At the EJI, members are getting involved with the local environmental activist group: WeAct and we encourage you

too! They are a membershipbased organization. The way you can get involved is by becoming a member. Whatever peaks your interest in environmental justice, you can find at WeAct. WeAct hosts a variety of groups: Membership Planning Committee, Climate Justice Working Group, Healthy Homes Working Group, Environmental Health and Justice Leadership Training and more. Let’s support WeAct by attending their next event DIY Beauty Night at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Oct. 28th at 3:30pm.

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YOU SHOULD KNOW!

Environmental Justice Atlas The Environmental Justice Atlas is an online platform in which thousands of users from around the world report environmental injustices in their communities. Users can write a full-fleshed report of the situation, often getting in touch with organizations who help solve these problems. The EJA calls for environmental action, one problem at a time. Learn more here!

About us The Environmental Justice Initiative aims to center the voices and the activism of marginalized groups that are both disproportionately harmed by climate change and environmental degradation and disproportionately left out of, and consequently harmed by, mainstream environmental justice movements. We center race, class, gender, disability, nationality, and sexuality and recognize the intersections of these identities are often multiply marginalized.

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We additionally utilize a PROP (Power, Racism, Oppression, and Privilege) lens to think about environmental justice critically. For example, the concept of untouched wilderness is rooted in colonialism and white supremacy, that overpopulation myth is classist and racist, and food scarcity is a capitalist construct. These ideas form the basis of our anti-oppressive social work that will be integrated into micro, mezzo, and macro practice.

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Rosa GET IN TOUCH WITH US! SWEJIACTION@COLUMBIA.EDU

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