Stories from a Green New Deal: Toya

Toya's Story

The thing that grounds my work in climate advocacy is health.

But it started with a story of vanity and greed saving the day. I was working at a cancer center in the middle of Kansas, in the administrator’s office and my boss at the time wanted recycling in the administrative office, because it was a status symbol. At that time there weren’t many recycling pick-up services available, and only a certain number of households got it. My boss’s neighbor had gotten it, and he didn’t.

So, it was my job to reach out to the folks that did the recycling to see what was possible and they said I could bring in the recycling myself. I ended up learning a lot about recycling just from the process of having to sort types of paper, as well as the different types of plastics,  separating the lids and the bottles, and making sure everything is clean.

I got to know the people working at the recycling center, and how that industry worked. I started telling other people that they could bring their recycling to me, and I would bring it to the recycling center. In this part of Kansas a lot of people were burning their trash at the time.

I was in a public health fellowship at the time, and I decided to make a recycling guide. I wanted to include reasons to recycle. Around that time, Kansas had one of the largest prairie fires in it’s recorded history. I remember going outside and the sky was red and it was like there was a filter over everything. I started to look more into the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, and together  with the prairie fire and working at the cancer center I realized that environmental degradation, climate change, cancer, and health are all connected.