Climate Crusader TikTok Star–Shane Brown, Love Your Planet with LoveYourPlace.Org, LOOP—Shred Your Clothes New Again!

TIKTOK CLIMATE CRUSADER, SHANE BROWN

In THIS climate daily “Profiles in Green”, I recently came across young Shane Brown. Who, when he looks back on his life, will enjoy vivid memories that will include video recording himself collecting trash from Hawaii’s oceans and sharing educational content about marine life and ocean conservation with his 8 million TikTok followers. Yes, videos of collecting trash from the ocean’s surrounding Hawaii and sharing them with his 8 million followers.

Shane Brown has made well over a hundred videos of his forays to rid his tiny spot of the planet of human-made waste. Brown started this whole journey shooting videos about sustainable food harvesting, focusing on sustainable fishing, and uploading them to YouTube. Then a younger friend suggested he upload his videos to TikTok because that’s where Gen green new deal was. So he did.

Almost 8 million followers later, Shane doesn’t see himself as a leader. Just somebody who’s hoping to positively impact his viewers. “I’m not just cleaning up the ocean on my own — I’m also teaching people that they can go out and do that on their own and it doesn’t take much to do,” he said referring to his videos.

His reference point is the original Hawaiian way of life, which respected the ocean and the land. “I wanted to make videos that showed people that it was still possible today to go back to that kind of living and minimize your environmental impact while also feeding yourself,” he said. And he has. Follow Shane Brown @shangerdanger on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

DEEPER DIVE: @ShangerDanger, TikTok, Global Citizen

LOOP: SHRED YOUR CLOTHES NEW AGAIN!

Imagine dropping off a worn-out T-shirt and watching as a machine shreds and recycles it into a new garment. Cool, right? The machine, called Looop, developed by Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel in collaboration with the nonprofit H&M Foundation, cleans and shreds old fabric, spins it into yarn, and then knits it into a new product that the customer can pick up the next day.

“To fight climate change, we need to change fashion,” reads a statement on the fashion retailer’s website. Indeed, analysis from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests that fashion waste may make up as much as 5% of landfill capacity, while also producing 10% of the nation’s total methane emissions.

Customers use an app to choose the type of new garment they want—from a knit shirt to a baby blanket—and then leave the old clothing with attendants. The machine sterilizes the old clothing with ozone, then shreds it into smaller pieces that are filtered to remove dirt. Depending on how worn the old garment is, technicians might mix in new material to make the final product stronger.

The strands of fiber are combined and spun together into threads that the machine can use to knit the new product, for a fee of around $17.

DEEPER DIVE: FastCo., H&M, YouTube, Good News Network

LOVE THIS PLANET THROUGH LOVEYOURPLACE.ORG

To be an evangelical Christian in the climate change space can be lonely. It’s well documented that most evangelicals are Republican in their politics and many churches are influenced by the Republican party, and that Republicans as a group haven’t quite come around to embracing reality yet.

That’s why A Rocha, an evangelical Christian organization dedicated to restoring people and places through biodiversity conservation, education and creation care founded, Love Your Place. Love Your Place is an online community designed to connect members with resources and a community that cares about conservation—rooted in solid science and sound theology.

Love Your Place also created a series of courses designed to help evangelicals reconcile climate change with their biblical upbringings and apply the same toward positive climate change action. Those courses include the Climate Change Course, exploring the intersection between Christian faith and climate change consequences and actions; the Habitat Course—teaching evangelicals about personal, pollinator bird and coral reef habitats. There’s even a Plastics Course—teaching folks how to change their plastic habits, and other courses worthy of non-evangelicals too.

Climate change is a dynamic reality that impacts us all. Its wide-reaching consequences call us to action, as individuals and communities. If it’s worth its salt, the Love Your Place Climate Change course will help anybody willing to explore their faith or spirituality how to answer the question: Why and how does our what we believe move us to act on climate change?

DEEPER DIVE: Love Your Place, A Rocha