Everyday Heroes: Rudy Sanchez, the teen environmental educator

Everyday Heroes: Rudy Sanchez, the teen environmental educator

How does a shy teenager become an energetic peer educator? Ask Rudy Sanchez, a senior at Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale, and he’ll credit a class he took called Green Ambassadors. This academic program for 10th graders educates students hands-on about addressing current environmental issues — and for Rudy, served as a catalyst that brought him out of his shell and turned him into a teen environmental leader.

Now, Rudy’s working locally, nationally, and even internationally to turn more of his peers into environmental activists and educators. Read this five-question interview to find out how you can do what you love while making a green impact — and what exciting new opportunities green-leaning L.A. teens can take advantage of.
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What do you do?

I’m involved with the Plastics Are Forever International Youth Summit that’s happening in March, [2011]. I shot a video during the summer on how to give a presentation, so we can empower other students to take action in their community. The summit basically lets the students submit their ideas — We’re gonna compile them all together, and we’re gonna show them how to do it more effectively, so they can create even greater change.

Another project I’m doing is working with Solar the Sign. They’re using the Hollywood sign as an example because, obviously, everyone knows the Hollywood sign. So what if we implement solar panels on it? What if we made this huge iconic thing in L.A. a sustainable iconic image, so that everyone else that sees L.A. is not only thinking movie stars but also thinking a sustainable future? That’s the concept behind it, but throughout the whole thing we’re trying to show people the alternatives to fossil fuels and how to better conserve energy.

I’m still involved with Green Ambassadors, so I still do a lot of stuff with them. There’s Rise Above Plastics — That’s Surfrider Foundation and Green Ambassadors. They partnered up and made a student speaker series. I’m the group leader for that, so I set up the presentations and we’re also having a training. We took a school in Pasadena and we trained them how to start up their own [environmental] group. And we hope we do that again this year with another school, so it’s not just us looking for solutions but other places as well.

When did you start?

Around late sophomore year. And the reason I started was just because I was shown different solutions. Many times when I heard about anything environmental or anything activist oriented, it was always the negative issues, like — all these polar bears are dying, the earth is getting warmer, we have to go buy like these expensive panels for our roofs. I was never really shown a true solution, one that I could apply and relate to.

And then I took the Green Ambassadors class. I wasn’t excited to take that class to start off. Back then, being green was negative to me, so I was like, I don’t want to take a whole class on negativity, basically. Come first semester, and we start talking about systems thinking, and I was like, wait, this was not the green I was taught before coming to this school.

We started off with systems thinking — how are things connected — and we learned it through composting. So Green Ambassadors changed my perspective. It didn’t really changed my attitude towards anything, but it changed my whole perspective on things and gave me a 180 so it [environmentalism] went from being a negative movement to being something positive, something that could be implemented.

The best thing I loved about it was that it’s not just about the environment. They related it back to politics, and back to education, and how the community works, and how these different sustainable solutions that we’re going to apply to our lives can be applied to other factors in our community. It’s not just about the environment. It’s about living sustainably.

Why do you do it?

I feel that there are so many different solutions out there. Many times you hear a lot of the negative side, and I’m trying to offer the perspective where it’s a “We can do it” kind of method. I have been inspired by the solutions that the Green Ambassadors taught me. The only logical thing for me is to keep inspiring others so that they don’t just hear the dread of being green but they hear it’s a way to empower people and motivate people.

It doesn’t just have to be through public speaking or presentations like I do. If you love film, go make a film that promotes something green or that brings awareness. Or if you’re in fashion, make your own fashion from recycled material, organic material. So basically what I’m trying to get at is, the reason I do what I do is to inspire people. We each have our own calling and we can be part of the solution and still do what we love to do.

Who inspires you?

There are four people that I guess I look up to. One of them would be Van Jones. I love his whole idea, that low income communities are the leaders for the green movement and the green economy.

Another one would be Steve Jobs. I believe that a lot of his ideas are innovation, and that’s what we really need in environmentalism, so that they can become the standard instead of just, like, “green.” I think the green label is just going to go away entirely in the future and it’s just going to be the standard for the industry, or the standard that we have for everything.

Then Mark Zuckerberg — the Facebook guy. He has that personality that I guess can get things done. And he took an idea that’s as easy as me talking to you, like, connection, and he expanded it across the campus of Harvard, and from there expanded it to other colleges, and before you know it, it’s this global movement.

And the fourth person is Jarrett Barrios. He’s the president of GLAAD. And the reason I admire him is he takes equality but he brings like a social media aspect to it. He takes Twitter and Facebook — something that’s free — and he makes it something that can implement a standard of change. Obviously with him, it’s equality, but with other people, it can be environmental.

And of course, the people who started it all were [Director of Green Ambassadors] Sara Laimon and Lindsey Jurca [of Surfrider Foundation]. They knew me from before I was outgoing. I was shy — I used to be absent for presentations in middle school just because I was that shy. The more I got involved, the more Sara kept pushing me, the more Lindsay kept pushing me. I wasn’t happy at first but then once I got up there and I saw that people wanted to hear what I wanted to say, I think that did a whole 180 on me. So Sarah and Lindsey were the catalysts for me getting up on stage and sharing my message.

How can people help?

I want to do a call out to all youth right now, basically saying, submit your idea for the Plastics Are Forever International Youth Summit. The deadline is Nov. 30. And any idea that you want to implement in your community that you’ve started doing or want to do, submit it to the website, plasticsareforever.org. It’s a two-day summit, we’ll be in Long Beach, and they’ll stay all-expenses paid. And we’ll be working with their ideas — how to implement it, how to get community involved. How to not just start it, but to maintain it, which is a problem that we see. People start the project but many times it kind of dies out after the leader leaves. We want to implement it so that it stays consistent. All youth can apply if you’re in high school — and you can do it alone or do it in a group.

As for Rise Above Plastics or Green Ambassadors — If anyone wants to get involved with being part of the change but they just don’t know how, they can email me and we can set up a presentation or workshop on how to rise above plastics. And that way it’s not like you’re starting off all alone, thrust into like googling “how to be green.” This way we’re offering a specific solution, and they can start off.

Get educated. And I say that not because people are dumb but because I think there are just so many different takes on things we do. One of the examples I use is greenwashing. Anyone can just slap on an eco label or green leaf label on a product and say this is recyclable. Sometimes they just put that label on for marketing. I’m not saying it’s all marketing, but let’s be smart about what we buy, instead of just going out and buying the green label.

After you become educated, take action in your community and share it. We all have different solutions, and if we all collaborate and share, there’s more likelihood we’re going to get things done.
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Though busy taking SATs and preparing for college, Rudy’s eager to help other environmentalists get started on their green path — especially other high school students. Contact Rudy at rudy_sanchez@echs.org to set up a Rise Above Plastics workshop and presentation for your class organization. And if you’re a high school student, don’t forget to get your idea in to the Plastics Are Forever International Youth Summit.

Know an Everyday Hero or few? Nominate them for this weekly series.

Photo: Siel Ju