Feeling climate pessimism? Sacramentans offer guidance on sticking to green New Year’s resolutions

It’s not offsetting the emissions from a pop star’s private jet, he told me, but that impact is undeniable. 

“Climate change grief is real. It's definitely real, and climate change optimism is also real,” he said. “It's a battle between those two and I feel like the way that I deal with it is by taking action all the time.” 

In the last couple years, Community Fruit has seen more volunteers and energy behind the movement, thanks in part to a Sacramento Bee article that Ampersand said brought new attention to the group. He’s at the point where now, he can see the group achieving nonprofit status within the next year. 

Sean Timberlake, a Community Fruit volunteer, picked oranges and lemons on a day in late January with others in the group. Timberlake and the others were harvesting fruit from trees in Sacramento’s Riverside neighborhood at a home close to where he lives himself. In this area, he said these trees are plentiful. 

“We all have citrus, too much of it, so it may as well go to good use,” said Timberlake as he plucked oranges off a tree by hand. 

He added that it’s not his first time volunteering — and there’s a reason for that. 

“It’s productive, you feel like you’re really done something,” he said. “And you’re helping on both sides. You’re helping the people who have the trees and you’re helping the people who receive the fruit.” 

Community Fruit is open to volunteers throughout the year and new opportunities to join in are typically announced via their Instagram.  

Using picker poles, volunteers like Sean Timberlake with the group Community Fruit can harvest oranges that are usually beyond reach. The group harvests fruit from trees that would otherwise go to waste and donates them to places like food banks.Manola Secaira/CapRadio

Making plastic the enemy 

But what about the waste that’s more difficult to escape? The majority of the responses to my call-out expressed interest in using less plastic, but it’s everywhere. 

I talked to Sloane Read, the owner of the zero-waste shop Refill Madness and self-proclaimed plastic enemy no. 1, about her own journey to ridding the material from her life.

She opened Refill Madness eight years ago, an idea inspired by zero-waste shops she’d heard about in other parts of California. She thought, why not bring that to Sacramento? 

“I wanted something that I could do where I could be my own boss and I could pass this along to my daughter in the future, and bring awareness to the community about what plastic does, where it ends up, and what can we do about it,” Read said. 

Like Ampersand, Read said creating her shop began as an individual effort. She’d never run a business before, but she sensed Refill Madness could fill a gap in Sacramento. 

“I thought that our community in Sacramento would appreciate a business where they could remove plastic from their purchasing habits,” she said. “Now that we have a real obvious climate crisis on our hands, I think way more people are aware of it.” 

Read said her goal with Refill Madness is to make non-plastic swaps manageable for the everyday person, not just the caricature of an environmentalist a person might typically associate with the zero-waste lifestyle. 

She keeps a tally of her impact on a chalkboard by the store’s cash register. During my visit in January, she’d counted over 184,000 refills of products completed at the shop and 28 tons of plastic waste eliminated as a result. 

One of the most popular swaps: Laundry detergent. People can come into the shop and refill their container in perpetuity, ensuring that no new plastic is introduced. There are other more surprising swaps, too — like chewable toothpaste tablets to replace toothpaste that comes in a tube, or dental floss containers that can be refilled at the shop without having to buy a new one. 

Read’s efforts have even made an impact on the manufacturers of the products she sells. Now, she said they’ll occasionally reach out and ask her what might make a product more appealing for customers. 

“And we say, OK, well, our customers prefer, maybe, a closed-loop system where we send back the containers and they get refilled and there's no waste involved or there's no plastic involved,” she said. “We’re definitely more than one voice here — you know, we’ve got thousands of customers that have been doing it for years.” 

Creating the conditions for life 

Then there are the resolutions that take some skill. While many people are attracted to the idea of gardening and urban farming, there are so many obstacles to getting started — like having a place to plant your seeds in the first place. 

Shawn Harrison, the founder and co-director of Soil Born Farms, said this is the exact kind of concern he tries to respond to in his work. The organization launched in 2000 and has grown into an urban farming project that educates Sacramentans of all ages on how to get involved. They host events at their 55-acre urban farm located on the American River Parkway.  

Getting people invested in this work, Harrison said, starts with people “getting their hands dirty.” 

“Planting a seed and being able to tend to that seed and watch it germinate, and turn it into something that you can work with in the kitchen and put into your body is a really, really powerful act,” he said. 

Often, getting into gardening and urban farming can get complicated. But Harrison said it doesn’t have to be that way. The key, he said, is meeting people where they’re at. 

“If they live in an apartment or they don't have a place for a garden, there's scales of participation that we try to share with folks,” he said. “You can grow herbs in your windowsill and gain great joy from that.”  

In urban agriculture, Harrison said he’s found a sense of power. There’s so much that’s out of our individual control. But when he’s talking to people getting into gardening, he encourages them to look at the impacts of their work — that butterfly who formed its cocoon on a plant grown by their hands, that bird that found shelter in the shade of their garden. 

“When we’re feeling overwhelmed and like the world’s going to crap and we have no control over what’s happening, you can very quickly see that … your actions can really positively impact the conditions for life to thrive,” he said. 

Harrison also reminds himself this work isn’t happening in isolation. Since 2000, Harrison said Soil Born’s programs have offered a space to learn and grow plants for thousands of people — and similar work is being carried out by so many all over the country. There’s comfort in that community, he said. 

“Don't think about just you,” he said. “Think about the thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are doing exactly what you're doing.” 

Soil Born offers all kinds of educational programming and training. 

If you’re looking to learn a little more or dip your toe into the world or urban gardens without the cost, Harrison recommends visiting their American River Parkway site during their next free gardening clinic on April 6. On that day, they'll have free gardening classes, a chance to shop around for seedlings and plants and an opportunity to get acquainted with the farm. 

They also invite people to volunteer at the farm every Saturday.