“I’m Here to be a Storyteller”
An interview with youth climate activist and UC Berkeley graduate Kristy Drutman.
If you’re active in the world of social media environmentalism, chances are you’ve come across Kristy Drutman. She’s a Jewish and Filipina American climate activist, and she runs the popular Instagram account “@browngirl_green,” where she posts about sustainable living and environmental awareness. Over the past three years, she’s amassed over 50,000 followers and has been a powerful voice for environmental justice and activism, speaking at conferences and universities across the country and hosting her own workshops. I spoke with her over the phone about how she got started, the lifestyle changes she’s made, and the power of social media as an educational tool.
L: How did you get started using your account to promote environmental education? Was there a particular moment that served as a catalyst to creating activist content?
K: I started using my account to promote environmental education starting in 2017, my last semester at UC Berkeley. I really wanted to start using my Instagram in that way because I wanted to have a platform that was focused on my healing and trying to create greater representation for black, indigenous, and people of color in the environmental space — I just felt like I wanted my Instagram to be a more formal platform to talk about that instead of it just being, like, me posting cute selfies. I really wanted to have it be a space that was defined by me, but also could really uplift the voices of others too.
I was doing some activist content when I was a student at UC Berkeley: I was part of Students Against Fracking, and I was actually already speaking on different panels and doing on-campus student activism. So I was already using my instagram in that way, and I already knew that I wanted to use social media in a way that could be empowering. I started seeing that people who weren’t necessarily going to UC Berkeley but were in my circles and networks were starting to learn about environmental issues by just viewing my Instagram stories or seeing my posts if I went to a certain event on campus, so I was just very inclined to talk about my life and the events I was already up to.
“Browngirl_green” was kind of a natural progression from there. I finally got to a point where I was meeting other people of color who felt just as frustrated that there was not enough culturally nuanced storytelling around environmental issues. They’d be like, “I wish there was a show about that” or “I wish there were more people on the internet making content like that,” and I was like, oh, I want to be that person. Back then, 2017 even, there was barely any of that kind of content, so I wanted to create the content that I wish I saw on my feed, and the thought I had was that I wanted to share that with other people.
L: In my experience, a lot of young people are disillusioned with the concept of individual action when it feels like we are overwhelmingly dependent on large corporations or governments to make those shifts in our world. What has been the hardest lifestyle change you’ve made for yourself? How did you overcome this when it felt difficult to begin or difficult to stick to?
K: I think the biggest thing that I've struggled with in terms of a lifestyle change is definitely plastic consumption. I actually did “Plastic Free July” last year and it was one of those things where it really opened my mind to realizing how much we are literally so dependent on plastic, and it made me feel very alarmed to realize that I felt so trapped in that system. However, I was also learning how much money you could save if you did do more sustainable swaps, if you actually did buy things in bulk, which obviously is difficult to do now with COVID. Yeah, I started to realize the ways in which the plastic industry has tried to convince us that not using plastic is not the way to go, when in reality there are real alternatives that are probably healthier, cheaper, and overall better for the environment.
Honestly, I didn't end up sticking to it because it's almost impossible for the average person, unless you want to spend a ton of money on everything zero waste. I feel like at least now, I'm just a lot more aware of like, okay, do I really need to buy the really pre-packaged products when I know each individual thing is wrapped in plastic, like do I really need to buy that thing? I’ll just question it more now. Now, when deciding the companies that I work with, I always ask them beforehand, “What kind of packaging do your products come in?” and if they tell me it comes in plastic then that’s just a hard no from me. That has felt pretty good, to have some sort of control over the plastic that I'm bringing into my life.
L: Is there anything you think current environmentalists are missing, especially relating to environmental justice?
K: I think one thing that current environmentalists may be missing is more joy and solutions-oriented content. I think there's a lot of just very much focusing on the problem. There obviously are solutions that are talked about often (like the Green New Deal, which is awesome), but I think there are not enough conversations about finding and discussing solutions which have existed for a long time from different cultures around the world and from BIPOC communities. There's not enough discussion about issues like what our ancestors’ relationships to the land and resources looked like. I just wish more people talked about that more often, because I feel like there's so much that I still don't even know about, and I would like to learn from other people, from other different cultures, on what that looks like or has looked like in the past.
L: The concept of using instagram, twitter, and other social media sites for educational awareness is still relatively new as a form of communication. How helpful do you think social media is as a platform for environmentalism education and awareness? Is there anything that is lost in translation in this particular format?
K: Yeah, since I've been doing this social media has been an amazing platform for environmental education awareness. With a lot of the things I share on my page, sometimes people are like, “I’ve never heard of that” or “I would have never learned about that had I not gone to your page.” Just knowing that I am that bridge, that resource, for a lot of dense academic information like journals and news articles that otherwise would probably be lost on the average person makes me feel really great as a communicator and translator of very important information. This kind of stuff needs to reach a lot of people, but I think a lot of journalists and scientists and academics fail to grasp the urgency of that. A lot of us using social media as this platform are trying to fill the gap that the media and academia just is not able to do.
I think the thing that can get lost though, in using social media in this way, is the follow-up action and the relationship building. How do we make sure it's not just “click-tivism” and make sure that there are people that are actually feeling like they're not alone in this movement, you know what I mean? We don’t want to feel superficial, where we’re just sharing things for their face value but people don't actually feel like things are moving on the ground, offline, when they're not on these platforms. I always worry about that: how do we actually create more substantial guides and spaces for people outside of social media? How can we combat the instant gratification of sharing a post and instead actually work towards the slower, movement-building processes that need to happen? So yeah, that’s what I worry about. Is this just going to remain this online thing, where we’re circulating information, but people aren't going to actually move and motivate? Or maybe they are going to be motivated, but then they feel like there's only “X, Y, and Z” ways to do it instead of thinking for themselves and defining their actions for themselves. I don’t know, and I always worry about that.
L: What keeps you grounded and hopeful? Are there any practices you do for self care that you find particularly inspiring?
K: What keeps me grounded is just doing my own practice of what I'm here to do, which is to be a storyteller and to share the knowledge and the resources I have. I try to work on enjoying the process of the things I’m learning, and focus on the fun that I get out of creating content. So yeah, that practice of creating and delivering awareness to other people keeps me the most grounded. I would say that a practice that I have done for self-care that I find inspiring is saying “no” (laughs). I never thought it would be such an inspiring thing, but really coming to terms with what a “no” feels like in my body and when I need to demonstrate that has been very eye-opening to me and has been one of my biggest tools as I go forward in this work.
Kristy Drutman graduated from UC Berkeley in 2017 with dual degrees in Society & Environment and Urban Studies. You can sign up for her newsletter here, subscribe to her Patreon here, check out her website here, and follow her on instagram @browngirl_green .
