The sustainability advocate: Sparking discussions and dispelling myths
For many students, sustainability can seem daunting, as if nothing we do individually could be enough to make a substantial impact.
This is exactly the narrative that the Sustainability Office’s team aims to dispel, proving that we all have a part to play, one social post at a time.
Since July 2021, Project Coordinator Kayla LaChance has managed the Sustainability Office’s social media accounts, primarily Instagram, as that is where LaChance says she receives the most student engagement.
The Instagram account caters to the University of Toronto community, particularly the student body, raising awareness about sustainability-related issues, university initiatives, and how we can live more eco-friendly lives.
“By making sustainability more relatable and approachable to students, they’ll understand what it means to live and act sustainably,” LaChance says.
LaChance and her team of work-study students work to do just that.
According to LaChance, educational content is a substantial portion of what one might find on their Instagram account, particularly content that highlights the sustainability initiatives across all three U of T campuses.
“We do everything from talking about our solar panels that are being installed to our climate positive plan that came out last year,” LaChance says.
More than that, she is trying to amplify the voices of students working on sustainability-focused projects around campus, raising awareness and advocating for sustainable change.
“There’s no point in reinventing the wheel,” LaChance says.
Whether it be student clubs to join or events to drop by, raising awareness about the work being done on campus by students helps promote these initiatives and encourages young people to take sustainable action and get involved in the community.
Creating content that sparks discussion beyond the all-too-common passive swiping is challenging as it requires more creativity. Instagram, like any other social media platform, is “huge on trending things” so the best way to maximize views is to make reels that follow these trends.
One way that LaChance says she works around this is to take advantage of captions. A trending video gets viewers hooked and encourages them to read the educational caption.
One post, where this runs true is a reel from March 2022. Though only a few seconds long, the reel received over 200,000 views within a couple of days. Much of the detail in this post was in the caption, which dispels some of the rumours about the construction at King’s College Circle.
View this post on Instagram
For LaChance and her team, it’s all about getting creative and finding ways to shed light on the more approachable and attainable side of sustainable living—one we can all take partake in.