Growing up in the oil and gas epicenter of the U.S., Stacy Savage, founder and president of Zero Waste Strategies in Austin, Texas, knows firsthand how the environment can impact a person’s health and quality of life. She details this in her story for Living Standard:

Looking back, I understand now that I grew up in a fairly apolitical household. For a combined 75 years, my parents worked at oil refineries in this famed part of the state; and as a family, we knew very little about our rights to a clean environment, and about political accountability, and corporate responsibility. These just weren’t the conversations we were having. In fact, even with that information more accessible today, most members of my extended family living there still work at local refineries and chemical plants because they have kids to support and it’s one of the only well-paying gigs in town.

I don’t blame them.

Companies haven’t always made it easy for people to access information around environmental injustices and inequality. The decisions people make around both consumerism and employment are often between planet and profit, creating a vicious cycle between company and consumer, between employer and employee—when in reality, making money and creating a healthy living standard can go hand in hand.

That’s what I set out to do in my career in sustainability—to make a living at making a better standard of living for people across Texas.