Waste Hater: Wendy Gao
Waste Hater is a monthly series where we interview friends in the industry doing interesting and awesome work to reduce all kinds of waste, food or otherwise. This March, we spoke with Wendy Gao, an environmental activist, college student, and co-founder of Earth Uprising, a youth-led organization countering climate change.
Sometimes the scope of the climate crisis feels beyond our ability to tackle, but Wendy Gao proves one person alone has power to rouse the tides.
Before she was even out of high school, Gao set out on a mission to reduce her community’s waste and emissions. She joined the environmental club at Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the largest municipalities in the nation, and began doing research on how to implement better policies and systems.
Years of roaming the outdoors, bicycling and connecting with the world coupled with a heightened awareness of the Earth’s deterioration inspired the teen’s raison d’etre.
“Growing up climate change and global warming is in the back of all of our heads,” Gao tells Replate. “It’s just whether or not we act upon it.”
Composting and recycling were not enough for Gao however, she wanted to push beyond her own impact. Through water testing and other experiments, she and her peers began to calculate their school’s carbon footprint.
“We started discussing how we could make our schools greener, how we could transition to cleaner energy sources,” she recalls. “We began to look at government buildings and offices in the county, and utilizing empty spaces.”
This led to a two-year initiative to install solar panels not only at Oakton, but other schools in the area. Gao put together what she calls a “three-pronged argument” to show the economic feasibility, environmental necessity and educational value of moving forward with her initiative. She presented her case at school board meetings, and additionally launched petitions and scheduled direct conversations with local decision-makers.
It worked.
“A lot of people in the climate movement alienate adults, they blame them for being part of the problem, they say their generation is what left us with this scorched Earth, but what really inspired me was how willing to help our school board members were,” Gao explains. “They made a contract that said they would solarize three schools, then they started to evaluate 150 more schools for solar capacity. Now they’re starting to look into things like net-zero schools, which is completely carbon-free.”
As her vision for a sun-powered community came to fruition, Gao was subsequently galvanizing young people to be environmental leaders in their own towns and cities. In 2019, she coordinated strategic action and planned financial leads for the Washington D.C. branch of the national climate strike. She co-founded Earth Uprising, a youth-led international climate change organization, and spoke at the United Nations Youth Climate Summit.
Now a first-year student at the University of Virginia, Gao studies economics and climate policy while continuing to run her environmental nonprofit.
“We strive to give youth tools to educate people on the science and human impact of climate change,” she says. “We’re also working on developing very concrete financial systems.”
Since its inception, Earth Uprising has grown to include almost 200 members across the United States. The idea is to make climate activism practicable and purposeful. Young people within the organization do grassroots campaigns on the ground, they protest or hold climate justice webinars, one chapter in Chicago is lobbying against the erection of an oil refinery in the neighborhood.
At its core, Earth Uprising priorities equity within all recommended climate solutions.
“Yes it’s an environmental science issue, but it’s also a social and economic issue,” Gao says. “Climate change disproportionately affects people, that’s just a fact. All our solutions must be viewed through the lens of the people who are suffering the most.”
When it comes to waste, Gao similarly feels systemic problems inhibit progress. Individuals can do their part, but without charging corporations to change the way food is produced and distributed, results won’t match the scale.
“It’s not just the way that we’re eating, it’s also the distribution of food,” she observes. “A lot of impoverished communities don’t even have access to healthier, more sustainably grown foods.”
And so while Gao may have been able to persuade opinion and generate action in her personal war against time and neglect, she acknowledges the need for a multilateral, integrated front.
“The reality is we’re not going to be able to confront the climate crisis unless it’s a united effort,” she urges. “We need more climate leadership, and more aggressive targets, and we need to hold each other accountable. Multilateral climate action is one of the biggest and most important things for us.”
For more information on Earth Uprising, visit their website.