Black Histories of Sustainability Hold the Key to A Collectively Healthy Future
Time moves backward toward the present: Lessons from John Mbiti, Fannie Lou Hamer, the Gullah Geechee, and other Black elders and ancestors.
If you find value in this work, consider subscribing or upgrading to a paid subscription to support more of it. Your support helps keep this going and makes a real difference. Thank you for being here.
At the beginning of October, I decided to participate in a “Project Pan,” a sustainability challenge that involves using up items I already have—such as blush, lip glosses, and body butters—before purchasing anything new. Typically, this applies to makeup and skincare, but I also decided to work on my pantry and refrigerator. This was a fun and creative challenge for me, and it was pretty successful. I saved money, didn’t waste any food, cooked some…interesting meals1, and emptied some skincare products and makeup, which gave me an excuse to buy more.
Keep reading to see my empties, restocks, and a fun recipe I made using leftover fruit!
As wages stagnate, the cost of living rises, and climate disasters multiply, sustainability is the practical choice. Before it became trendy on social media, sustainability was primarily a consequence of poverty. For generations, people reused, repurposed, and stretched what they had because it was necessary. The zero-waste lifestyle that now fills social media feeds once looked like growing your own food, utilizing animal scraps, mending clothes instead of buying new ones, and saving glass jars for storage. What’s being marketed as moral virtue today was, for many, simply survival.
My family was my first introduction to the concept of sustainability. We saved glass sauce and jam jars, rubbed off the labels with warm water and Ajax dish soap, and dried them on a rack to use for drinking or storing food. Whatever recyclables weren’t kept went into the bins or were taken by Muss2 to scrap yards that pay cash on the spot based on material weight. Nana3 would always make sure Muss took her items, too, so that her mother could make a little extra cash. My grandmothers gardened, shopped at farmers’ markets, fish markets, and bought fresh, hunted meats from people they knew. Those meat scraps would be added to a pot with greens or another vegetable, allowing us to enjoy the benefits for a longer period. And, of course, I got chewed out for leaving the lights on in an empty room, as were many other children I grew up around, whose caretakers were navigating tricky socioeconomic conditions with limited resources.
Sustainability’s history, particularly in Black communities, is interstitial with the present. We can learn valuable lessons from the past to pull forward into the current day, guiding us on how to live amid economic precarity and environmental collapse.
Kenyan philosopher John S. Mbiti’s concept of time offers some insight.
Mbiti argued that African conceptions of time are anchored in the past and present, with little emphasis on a distant, abstract future. Time is not an infinite, linear horizon like in Western societies, but a lived, event-based reality made tangible through memory and ritual. The past remains ever-present, shaping identity and practice, while the future is experienced only insofar as it is imminent or embedded in communal rhythms. When you break it down, Mbiti’s theory was relatively simple: people and communities progress by following and learning from their ancestors, who paved the way for them, rather than turning their backs on lessons from past generations. It’s reminiscent of the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa or “go[ing] back and fetch[ing] it.”
Mbiti’s understanding feels urgent in this moment. Our future may depend less on technological or industrial innovation than on remembering and recovering the wisdom embedded in older ways of caring for the Earth and for one another.
Revelatory examples abound. George Washington Carver worked on developing sustainable farming practices, natural remedies, and community health initiatives, making him a pioneer in holistic science—combining agriculture, wellness, and environmental care to uplift entire communities4. The Gullah-Geechee communities practice resource circularity5 by net making with cotton to reduce waste and ensure product longevity, and by melting down metal scraps to cap them using the original West African method. They also practice quilting, sweetgrass basketry6, and making bateau boats from wood by hand so that the captain can readily repair the boats themselves.
One of the most prominent communal care models that offers wisdom is the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC), based in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Before the FFC was founded in 1967 by Fannie Lou Hamer to combat poverty and hunger, Sunflower County’s rates of diet-related illness were among the highest in the nation, and most of them were related to malnutrition. Wealthy white folks in Sunflower County were using starvation and limited resources as a tactic to get Black people who wanted to stay down South to join the Great Migration.
But Hamer understood that food justice, health equity, and political power are inextricably linked. Being self-sufficient would enable Black communities to resist disenfranchisement more effectively. To work toward a future where Black people could choose to stay in the South, the FFC provided housing, helped individuals obtain mortgages, and offered financial support to enable them to pay their rent or mortgages. It also provided healthcare, employment, education, economic resources for small business owners, and access to healthy, nutritious foods. It housed one of the first Head Starts in Mississippi. There was a “pig bank” that allowed families to generate income by raising pigs or butchering the meat to feed their families. It was, as Monica White wrote:
…an alternative to the second wave of northern migration—the departure from the rural South for northern cities and work in the manufacturing industry. FFC represented an opportunity to stay in the South, live off of the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. It was in keeping with Hamer’s perspective that if she had a pig and a garden, “she might be harassed and physically harmed but at least she would not starve to death.”7
The FFC had almost 700 acres of land and farmed a variety of crops, including kale, turnips, corn, okra, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and butter beans. According to White’s research, more than 1,600 families were fed by the FFC in 1972. Unfortunately, due to a lack of institutional backing, the co-op couldn’t sustain itself once donations began to wane and was fully dissolved by 1976.
I’m not telling you to go out and start a farm, although that would be really dope. The lesson, however, is that sustainability, like most things in the health and wellness sphere, has historically been a communal and justice-oriented pursuit rather than an individual endeavor. Taken together, these stories are blueprints. The question, then, is how we turn that wisdom into action.
Recognize and honor the knowledge that already exists. If you have elders to discuss their sustainability practices with, sit down and have a conversation with them. Documenting those practices and then teaching them will remove the luxurious lens sometimes applied to sustainability. We don’t have to spend $20 on a single reusable silicone storage bag; we can repair, repurpose, or rethink what’s already in our homes—such as hemming a torn seam, reupholstering an old chair, or learning to make something last instead of replacing it.
Take the opportunity to be sustainable in community when it presents itself. That might look like planting herbs in a community garden, donating your old books to a public bookcase/Little Free Library, or contributing to a local food pantry. It could also mean swapping clothes with friends, organizing or participating in a mutual-aid drive, or volunteering to drop off your neighbors’ compost.
Get political. Personal ethics aren’t enough to address systemic harm, and pushing for policies that make sustainable living accessible to everyone will be key. There are a plethora of options here. You can organize around food justice, support land-back initiatives, or join a co-op. Voting with intention, attending city council meetings, and amplifying the work of grassroots organizers are all extensions of sustainability. The systems that harm the planet are the same ones that harm people; the work toward climate, health, and economic justice is inseparable.
Technological innovation isn’t the end-all, be-all. Environmental stewardship is as crucial as investing in solar panels and wind technology.
Historical legacies of sustainability beg us to push the limits of our creativity. They require that our imaginations and paths forward be rooted in the memory of what sustained those before us. The past is not something we’ve outgrown, but rather something we return to for guidance, like soil that still holds seeds. As climate disasters accelerate and economic precarity deepens, the lesson is not to innovate our way out, but to remember our way through.
A Deeper Look At My Project Pan
I wasn’t going to do a post based on my Project Pan without sharing more info about it! Here are a few things I did, emptied, and learned during this challenge.
I made a batch of what I’m calling “Scrappy Wellness Shots”: I blended up some fresh ginger root, and the meat of a few oranges and lemons a friend left me when she moved out of her apartment last week. I juiced them using a nut milk bag and then froze the liquid in ice cube trays. Now in the mornings, I pop one into a cup of hot water with honey and a dose of creatine. This concoction is anti-inflammatory, supports the immune system, and aids in digestion.
My October Empties
Garnier Fruitis Micellar Water: Honestly, this isn’t my favorite. I’m a Bioderma enthusiast, but I picked up the Garnier one day because the Bioderma was sold out at my CVS. It’s fine. It works well enough. It’s affordable. I used all of it, begrudingly. I did not repurchase.
Dieux Ethereal Makeup Removing Concentrated Cleansing Oil: I’ve tried many cleansing oils, but this one is among my favorites. While I don’t like that it doesn’t emulsify as well as, say, the Clinique Take The Day Off Balm (my OG), I do love that Dieux’s formula doesn’t tug at my skin like many oil cleansers do. It’s very gentle and soft, almost—and I didn’t know that a cleanser could be soft. I repurchased it.
Topicals Faded Serum (Unscented): I have so much post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation and dark spots that I struggle to see if a product is actually working—but the Topicals has made a dramatic change in the texture and composition of my skin. It uses a combo of tranexamic acid (reduces melanin production), niacinamide (brightens dull skin), azelaic acid (fights acne and evens skin tone), kojic acid (inhibits tyrosinase, an enzyme involved in melanin production, to lighten hyperpigmentation), and melatonin (acts as an antioxidant to repair UV damage) to reduce the medley of issues that causes skin, espeically skin of color, to hyperpigment. I love it. I obviously repurchased it.
Bob’s Red Mill Farro: I love farro. It’s high in fiber and protein—a win-win for me. I repurchased.
Ilia Multi-Stick Cream Blush + Lip Tint in Tenderly: I actually do like this, and I enjoyed using it. In a way, the color reminded me of Orgasm by NARS—an iconic tint that I always have in my makeup kit. But when I bought the Ilia eons ago, it wasn’t $36. And it isn’t NARS, so to me it’s not worth the price hike. I did not repurchase. Instead, I grabbed a rhode Pocket Blush in Toasted Teddy. I didn’t believe the hype behind the brand because TikTok tends to overhype things, but I gotta give Hailey Bieber her 10s. I’ve tried several products at Sephora before they dropped that distasteful holiday ad and bought a lip tint. The products are, in fact, amazing. I’m going to try the mini Glazing Milk once I run out of my Cyklar Milky Essence.
Barebells Protein Bars: I run through these like a hog runs through mud. Of course, I repurchased them. I’m on the hunt for the peppermint bark flavor right now.
By interesting, I mean I ate a lot of sandwiches with stuff you wouldn’t typically put on a sandwich, IMO.
My great-grandmother.
My grandmother.
Negro Digest 1944-07: Vol 2 Iss 9. With Internet Archive. Johnson Publishing, 1944. https://www.blackwellnesslibrary.com/archival-print/negro-digest-black-world-july-1944.
An economic model that works to reduce or eliminate waste by keeping materials and products in use for as long as possible.
Service, National Park. Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study. July 2005. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/chpi/ggsrs_book.pdf.
White, Monica M. “‘A Pig and a Garden’: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farms Cooperative.” Food and Foodways 25, no. 1 (2017): 20–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2017.1270647.