Leslie Myint

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Sustainability

Last tendedAug 02, 2026â•Ś âť– â•Ś5 min read

Identity-based habits and climate activism

A systems-first mentality provides the antidote. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. (James Clear, Atomic Habits)

This quote helped me understand why climate work fulfills me in a way that my former academic research never did. With climate work, I feel a resolve in showing up every day to do the work because it is an area where the outcome is so sharply present and yet simultaneously in the background. Every climate activist is fighting for a better world because it’s the right thing to do now regardless of how it ends up turning out. I end up thinking to myself on a weekly basis, “Even if we don’t make it, I would never turn away from trying every day. If Earth comes to be in a state of irreversible damage, I want to be able to say that I did everything I could.” I love the being of a climate activist—especially when environmental justice is my focus.

My origin story

Within the first few days of moving in to Macalester housing, I was stuffing a bunch of plastic film into my recycling bin. A man strode up to me proclaiming, “I’m a master recycler. That stuff can’t go in there! It’ll jam up the machines.” I was flabbergasted. Master recycler, is that a thing? Like an official thing, and not just some title he’s bestowed upon himself?

Fast forward 6 years. I stumbled upon an advertisement for the Ramsey County Recycling Ambassadors program. “This is it!” I thought. “This is that thing that that guy was!”

(To be continued!)

Fiber recycling from textiles

On a tour of the Goodwill St. Paul outlet and distribution center on April 10, 2025, Alan Hurd (Manager of Donation Services) told our group about new technology that is able to break down textiles into their component fibers. It’s currently too expensive to use at scale, but it could revolutionize sustainability efforts related to the textile industry. learn-more Is fiber recycling like chemical recycling of plastics? If so, it would create substantial amounts of pollution and is a false solution.

Aksay Sethi and Moby Ahmed founded Los Angeles-based Ambercycle in 2015 as they developed a breakthrough technology using a biological recycling process that enables the molecular separation of different fibers, such as cotton and polyester. This process, known as Ambercycling, produces regenerated materials from post-consumer waste that has been separated and purified at the molecular level. In their process, a whole T-shirt goes into a reactor, and using their patented process, polyester is recovered and reformed into a yarn. These newly regenerated materials can then be made into fabrics for new garments. This not only reduces garments from going into landfills but also reduces the need to use new resources. Ambercycle introduced Cycora® which has been designed to serve as a direct replacement for polyester used in apparel. Cycora is a closed-loop circular yarn created using regenerated textile waste. Ambercycle also collaborated with Avery Dennison to create a unique, scannable QR code label, which allows for full traceability, transparency, and authenticity. Source: Fiber-to-Fiber Textile Recycling

Other sources:

Beyond Plastics: Grassroots Advocacy Training

Ethane cracking facilities—result = plastic nurdles (small bead-sized pellets). These nurdles often spill off trains and end up in soil.

Why are there so many plastics? Fossil fuel industry decided that plastics production is their Plan B after the world started moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy (https://www.beyondplastics.org/publications/the-new-coal)

Only 6% of plastics get recycled because of colors and types of chemicals in the plastics. The plastics industry tried to push chemical recycling but it doesn’t work—there’s a Beyond Plastics report on this.

https://www.beyondplastics.org/act

Sustainability Data Hubs

Teaching sustainability

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Why climate?

Quotes and stories that resonated with me about why people care about fighting climate change

From the “Why climate?” section of the 12/18/25 Project Drawdown newsletter:

Climate change has already impacted me, personally, and probably you too. The Ottawa canal that I used to commute to work on in my teens didn’t open in 2023 due to warm weather. I can no longer go for long runs for part of the summer because the temperature is just too hot, even in the early morning. Polar vortexes, extreme heat events, and derecho storms were not part of my vocabulary a few decades ago, but they are now. Food prices are rising, homes are becoming uninsurable, and I now keep an emergency survival kit ready to go in my basement. I am resilient, and I can adapt, but what will my children face when they are my age? What about my grandchildren? I want the very best for my family, and that is why I have chosen to dedicate my career to advancing solutions that cut climate pollution and improve the likelihood of a stable and livable climate future. — Heather M., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

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