The United States has institutionalized racism, police brutality, and injustice for BIPOC Americans. We stand in solidarity with those demanding systemic change.
Many of the same beliefs, practices, and systems that create and perpetuate white supremacy also create and perpetuate environmental destruction. After we consume products, our waste is trucked, transferred, landfilled, and burned in predominantly low-income communities of color. While we all experience the impacts of climate change, the companies that benefit from the use of fossil fuels continue to profit while already vulnerable communities continue to shoulder the greatest burdens from rising temperatures and sea levels and pollution. Indeed, the U.S. economy was founded on genocide and slavery and continues to benefit from oppression today.
PSI is committed to doing better. We recognize that PSI is a largely white-led organization and actively reflect on our privileged position while striving to be proactively anti-racist in our policies, practices, and work culture by:
- Engaging our staff, board, members, and partners in difficult conversations to better understand the deep pain and suffering of those impacted by racism.
- Examining the way that we operate both internally and externally and address racial inequities by incorporating racial, economic, and environmental justice into our core work.
- Embracing our responsibility as conveners and facilitators to incorporate equity and justice for people of color into our facilitated dialogues and our work.
In 2020, we added an equity and environmental justice element to PSI’s policy model. We now evaluate legislation not simply on whether it would create an efficient EPR program, but also on how it impacts progress towards equity and addressing environmental injustice.
PSI strives to bring humility and compassion to how we treat each other on this journey. This work can be hard, messy, and painful, but we refuse to let perfectionism, guilt, or discomfort distract us from the actions we need to take. Restructuring the pillars of our economy so that producers are held accountable for their products is a step toward addressing economic justice. But until we directly address racial justice, both internally amongst ourselves and externally with our Members and Partners, we cannot fully achieve our mission.
There is no environmental justice without racial and economic justice.