Cassandra McCullers – Scholarship Submission

In an effort to encourage and promote sustainability, Merida Home is offering a $1,000 scholarship to the high school student who best expresses Merida’s key theme: sustainability with style.

Cassandra McCullers – Yorktown, VA

The air buzzes with talk of environmental problems, of sustainability and ‘going green’. Carrying a canvas tote bag is becoming increasingly popular. Many people wear t-shirts with Earth-friendly messages. Yet their sustainability only scratches the surface. They have painted themselves green, to reflect the trends around them. Many people buy clothes made from cotton, a pesticide-intensive crop, or eat meat from factory farms without even thinking of the ramifications of their purchases. Few people check to see if the workers who made their products are ethically treated. Many revel in their obsession with the latest and shiniest products, producing mountains of trash as they fly through phones, computers, clothing, cars, furniture, and decorations among numerous other things. It never even occurs to them that they might be damaging themselves and the world with their unsustainable actions, like a plane held in the air by momentum alone. If somebody points out the effects of their actions, they often shrug it off or forget entirely.

To me, ‘sustainability with style’ represents the opposite of this shallow trend. It is a conscientious effort to investigate every producer, to shape the world for the better through consumer activism. Sustainable style uses plants grown without pesticides, and animal fibers taken from healthy and ethically treated animals. It pays workers a living wage and fosters growth within communities. It allows people to lift themselves out of poverty and desperation through the work of their own hands, rather than having to rely on others’ charity. The drive for sustainability with style leads to products that improve the health of the workers, the environment, and the consumer. It creates a system that everyone benefits from and that propels society along on its path to a better world for all, if only in small ways.

The style means making true sustainability fashionable and desirable. It pushes against fast fashions and disposable lives. It means designs that work with and overcome the limitations and unique opportunities offered by certain materials. The designs used in sustainable style celebrate their sustainable as an integral part of themselves, like a house designed to beautifully showcase solar panels. They capture the intrinsic beauty of the natural world and the communities that they protect, acting as a natural advertisement for their cause, merely by existing.