By Emily von Buttlar
Features Editor
Junior Sam Torres teaches others about the environmental issues of the world for the “greener good.”
Torres has been working with Grades of Green, a non-profit environmental group since she was first introduced to Grades of Green when she was in second grade. When Torres was a freshman in high school, she and 10 others start- ed the Grades of Green Club. Since then, she has been creating campaigns such as beach clean-ups, “Meatless Mondays” and spoke at the South Bay Cares webinar in its Sustainability Series.
“What continues to keep me inspired to care about the environment is definitely my love for nature, the planet and all of the animals within it, but also the social justice issue of environmentalism,” Torres said. “In the future, I want to have a job that makes a meaningful positive impact in the world, and at the moment it seems like the path for that will be through environmentalism.”
On Jan. 21, Torres spoke at the webinar about how to become an everyday environmentalist through fashion and food. Torres was invited by a South Bay Cares member, Lora Dapoz, who spoke to her Grades of Green advisor, Robyn Murphy. According to Torres, she chose to speak about the impact of fast fashion because she had been shopping second-hand for a while and has become passionate about the topic.
“It kind of makes you think how everything you do can have an impact, and how down to the clothes we wear can have an impact on carbon emissions,” Torres said. “I think it’s something very cool to be mindful of.”
According to Torres, as an environmentalist, she tries to look for the ethical issues and reasoning behind environmental issues and not just the environmental aspects. When she learned about how food choices affect the environment, it grew into an environmental advocacy passion for her. Torres also talked about how the impacts of the food people chose to buy affect the climate at the webinar.
“The webinar was going to be more teen-based, so I knew that those two topics were perfect since I think everyone can relate to them, especially teenagers,” Torres said. “I was super excited because whenever I had talked about environmental things before, it had always been policy-oriented, but now I was able to talk about every- day habits, and it was even better because I’m super passionate about those.”
Torres and the students of Costa’s Grades of Green Club are focusing on managing the effects that food has on climate change. They are working on a “Meatless Monday” campaign, which has launched recently on social media. Murphy has also been working with Torres and the club to help provide information and be a mentor to the Grades of Green Club.
“I have been super blessed with my environmental journey with awesome mentors,” Torres said. “I started an official club at Costa sophomore year, but we had been doing a campaign for Grades of Green. That eventually grew [and] became a real club at Costa.”
According to Torres, she believes that by encouraging local lawmakers to make decisions that will help the environment and our community, the effects will be reflected on a greater scale, as more lawmakers educate themselves and make these decisions. She believes that by doing this, others will follow and the effects will spread from city to city.
“I believe that it’s beneficial in proving to local lawmakers that the youth are educated on environmental issues and that we want our lawmakers to make progressive environmental decisions to protect our future,” Torres said.
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