sustainability in photography

*someone call town and country. they can use this for the cover.*

Something you should know about me is that I’m a total earth hero.

My mom always recycled when I was a kid but I didn’t have the roiling undercurrent of panic I have now as an adult about the state of our world.

Let me back up. I was in the cleverly named Club E in high school. You know, the club about…E. The Environment. Yeah.

We did clean up projects around the campus and…must have done something else. Planted a tree maybe?

But during Covid I had a bit of a Come-to-the-Universe moment. I was meditating a LOT. And doing a LOT of yoga. Two things I love to do. But it brought me to minimalism (which is getting its own post) which brought me to sustainability. Then on to frugality and getting my money right and that is also a story for another day.

Sustainability. I am only one person on the only planet we know of that can let me live. And because people want new things every day, every hour delivered to their door, you are telling me that my great great grandchildren really might not have safe air to breathe? Or water to drink?

Fuck that.

Yes, that is rather dark. Learning more about the absolutely unhinged things that are happening to our planet all for the sake of same day shipping and plastic trash that will not be in your house next year, I knew I wanted to be a part of the solution and less part of the problem.

So instead of just telling you what I did to get my shit right (which I talk about ad nauseam on YouTube), I’m giving you 3 easy actionable items that you can do if you, like me, live in the real world but also want to make some changes.

*me in 2008 when I thought hurting the environment was gross.*

Don’t buy from Amazon for…however long you can

Look, it is a hard habit to break but my friend Shanti did it and you can read her post about how she does it. She is #goals.

I cut it out slower. You know they keep your order history right? So do this little activity where you see how much you bought last month on Amazon. What about so far this year? What about all of last year?

I purchased 6 things on Amazon in 2025. 3 of them were for the studio I was outfitting. The other three were personal items I buy in bulk once a year.

So for 2026, I found other places to get those bulk items and didn’t buy Amazon stuff for the studio. I supported local photo shops that I met with at ImagingUSA because I know my dollars are going to help people I know and who appreciate my business. They still have to ship stuff to me but at least it is not money going to pay for a foam party in Venice.

Don’t buy anything today. Or this week. Or this month.

So, us middle-ish class millennials LOVE to talk about how hard it is to get by today. And it IS hard to get by today but mindless habits make it way harder.

For instance, I revoke your right to make complaining tiktoks about how no one can save for retirement if you bought your lunch today. Or if you were watching a movie on Netflix and saw they were making cute shaped cookies so you hopped on Amazon and ordered yourself some new cookie cutters (which you will get in the mail in two days and forgot you ordered).

OR if you have EVER purchased anything on shein or temu. I have very intimate friends who do this and it drives me insane when I compliment something they have and they say “aw thanks! I got it on tiktok shop”. Kill me.

Tangent over.

What I am saying is that if you can go back through your transactions just from today you might be shocked at how much money is leaving your account. Can you try not to spend any money tomorrow? What about not buying your lunch out all next week?

Could you?

What if you didn’t buy any clothes this month?

It sounds easier then it is. And I know that! But I’ve been doing a know buy day once a week for YEARS and it helped me really get a hold on what was happening.

To kickstart my financial facelift, I did a whole no buy year. You can watch that on Youtube but know that it is possible to start slow and change how often you are swiping that card.

You can’t do it all, but you can do 1 thing

@shelbizzle on youtube/instagram/tiktoc has I think literally trademarked “You can’t do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.” WHICH IS TRUE.

YES the big corporations are polluting at rates that are killing their main source of income; you.

YES we need to push for legislation that helps put into place protections of our very finite resources.

BUT the actual least you can do is recycle that soda bottle in the right place instead of throwing it away. The LEAST you can do is not buy from amazon every day. The LEAST you can do is not use ChatGPT to find a restaurant recommendation because you are too lazy to just look at google.

I saw a reel (that certainly originated as a tiktok) that was a woman saying

“I would love to thrift my clothes but I can’t ever find jeans”

-”well okay, then thrift everything but your jeans”

Basically, we need to do what we can. I get almost EVERY book I read from the library. But on the super special occasions I do buy myself a book, I buy it second hand or from the local bookstore.

When I need a gift, I thrift or hop on etsy. (etsy and poshmark are the sleeper cells of the classy, thrifty, and eco girlies everywhere)

So while Apple is taking Earth Day off it’s calendars (It’s April 22nd in 2026 btw), I hope you don’t let it pass you by. I hope you think of every day as Earth Day. I know you won’t but if you could not buy anything from Amazon just today, I would consider it a personal favor.

But Casey, this has NOTHING to do with photography…which is literally the title of this post.

Doesn’t it?

I have a love/relationship with the photography industry and its sustainability.

Pros:

there are very few consumables in digital photography. I can use the same memory card, camera, lens, lighting equipment, reflectors, etc. for years and years.
The second hand equipment market is thriving and accessible.
The product is digital most fo the time and requires nothing but storage space

Cons:

AI is a huge water suck and is almost mandatory in digital retouching
Equipment, when it is at the end of its life span, is e-waste which is terrible for the planet and the communities that process it if it is “recycled”
Digital storage, servers, hard drives, computers, etc. require lots of electricity to run.
Large commercial shoots can have lots of waste and can be hurtful to natural environments especially when manipulated with smoke machines, glitter, confetti, and other things that aren’t cleaned up appropriately.

I could go on.

But what I find is a kind of snowball effect with my students in the desire for new/more/better when it comes to equipment. They think they need a $14,000 lens to take a good photo. So they buy the equipment on amazon and then don’t get the pictures they want and throw the thing in the closet and look for the next piece of gear that will make them a professional.

NOTHING makes you more of a professional than knowing how to use the equipment you have.

I tell my students, “once you know how to use every function on your camera and know why you aren’t able to get the photos you want to make, THEN you can buy a piece of equipment”

Living within the bounds of what we have forces us to be creative.

That goes for photography just as it does for the planet.

Work with what you have. Learn what would actually make it easier to do what you have to do. Then go get it. And get it second hand if you can.

And when you realize you don’t utilize something the way you could, pass it along. Keep the market strong.

I bring sustainability to everything I do. How can you?

how I stay creative. maybe.