Taking Sustainability Personally
Sustainability: not just about recycling By Kevin Jurassi Illustrations by Stella Richman
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think it is safe to say that 2020 has been a challenging year. It’s funny; when I look back to our preCOVID world, everything seems so simple. I feel like life had sense, purpose, direction and a bit more meaning. I don’t want to suggest meaning has ceased to exist, but I do believe that for many of us it has been called into question, even if just a little bit. Like so many of my fellow students, I came to Paris from elsewhere in the world. I left my family, my friends and my built-in support networks, all to come here to pursue my master’s degree in one of the world’s most dynamic cities. And then COVID happened, with its two-month lockdown in the spring. Personally, those two months were incredibly difficult. I lived in a tiny chambre de bonne in the 16th arrondissement, not far from Trocadero, and during those months there were days where I could hardly get out of bed. Day after day, week after week, the arduousness of being trapped while trying to study really got me down. Looking back now, even while in the midst of a second lockdown (which is nothing like the first), it seems like a dream. I am a graduate student in the International Management program and I chose the Sustainability track for my studies. I’m originally from Montana, and my family has a large ranch where I spent much of my childhood. My grandparents practiced sustainability long before it became a hot topic. They conserved water, reused everything they could, and even threw scraps of food over the fence for the wild animals to eat. But they would have never used the word “sustainability.” For them, it was really just a logical way of life. Nowadays, I believe that when people consider that word, they often think about it in terms of recycling, fashion, food production, air quality, etc. And those are incredibly important topics that deserve the utmost attention, particularly as we move forward in our postCOVID world.
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However, I believe there is another, less-discussed area of sustainability, but one that in our current situation demands our attention; that is the notion of personal sustainability. Can anything be more important than sustaining one’s own existence in a healthy and somewhat meaningful way? The University of Worcester defines personal sustainability as being “underpinned by not just maintaining one’s own health and wellness but by actively improving it and supporting others to do so too.” Throughout the last several months I have been consciously working on my health and wellness, and I have been paying really close attention to what my friends and have been doing as well. Personally, I love to cook for myself. I concoct dishes on a daily basis that are visually pleasing, nutritionally-rich and exciting to create. According to Harvard Medical School, 95% of the serotonin in our body is produced in our gastrointestinal tract. This pandemic has certainly affected my mood, and I know many people who have had issues with appetite. Kat Smith of Livekindly, cites that cooking helps with feelings of accomplishment, creativity, patience, connection (I take this term in the personal sense), organization and overall health. So many people I know dislike cooking for themselves, what can be more self-sustaining than making healthy food that you enjoy eating and looking at? I cooked like crazy during the first confinement, and then I thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant scene over the summer. Now that we are back in our second lockdown, I have begun to cook again; and I feel so much better. I have also been shopping in local markets, not large grocery chains. This past year has been a time of economic uncertainty for billions of people, and small businesses are suffering. It has become very important to me to support these local merchants. Paris is full of these small businesses, and unlike in the United States, the cost difference between these stores and
