My first relationship with sustainability was not aspirational. It was domestic. It lived in the rules of our house, in what was allowed and what was refused, in the quiet logic my parents applied to everyday life.

I grew up wanting new things the way most kids do: techie toys, clothes from particular stores at the mall, brightly colored bits of plastic jewelry. Trendy things. Things that felt like proof I belonged. What I mostly heard in response was a resounding, “No.”

Not out of cruelty or moralizing, I later realized, but out of boundary. We shopped clearance racks for practical sets of clothes meant to last the entire school year and beyond, exactly once a year. School supplies were completely functional and purchased only according to requirements, not glittery or cartoon-character themed like we wanted.

We didn’t spend much time at friends’ houses because that usually required two things we would have to sort out on our own: a ride and spending money. Entertainment happened at home or outdoors with whatever was around, plus imagination.

At the time, I understood these things as limitations. I wanted what was new, colorful, and popular. My parents wanted what made sense. They never framed these decisions as lessons in environmental responsibility. Sustainability wasn’t a word they used. They lived by a simpler rule: use what you have and don’t waste. Only later did I realize how holistically that rule shaped our lives.

I was raised by South Korean immigrants whose instincts were formed long before terms like “carbon footprint” entered the zeitgeist. Their relationship to food, energy, and materials was not ideological; it was relational. I thought our household habits marked us as different in ways I didn’t want to explain or even show people. Now, I recognize them as a kind of ethical fluency.

Take foraging. Many Korean immigrants I know treat the landscape as something to be read closely, not merely passed through. It looks like chestnuts gathered from neighboring community green spaces. Berries innocently picked during a foray outdoors and shown off (“Look, Dad! Look what we found!”), revealing themselves as free food. Young shoots of plants I never learned the names of, pocketed from walks through wooded areas of public parks, followed by a quick trip home to grab bags and then back again for more.

Textiles followed the same logic. There’s a reason Korean-owned dry cleaners and tailoring shops are such a familiar fixture in the United States. Alteration is a deeply embedded mindset. Clothes are adjusted, repaired, resized, and passed down with little concern for gender labels or perfect fit. I wore hand-me-downs that were too long, too boxy, or clearly meant for someone else entirely. Everything was bought after careful consideration of how many times it could be worn in general, and by how many people specifically. Throwing clothes away was unheard of. If no one else could wear something, it became rags for cleaning or scraps for altering other things.

Immigrant thrift is often mislabeled because it is quiet and unpolished. It is repetitive, domestic, and largely invisible. Immigrant women, in particular, carry immense environmental knowledge in their daily labor: stretching resources, repairing what breaks, and managing small miracles without spectacle.

Reuse followed naturally. Glass jars washed and saved. Plastic bags folded neatly and tucked inside other bags. Cardboard boxes flattened and stacked. Brown paper bags smoothed and reused for packaging. Gift wrap carefully removed, never torn with delirious abandon, to be used again next season.

Energy and water were always treated as precious, limited resources. Not because of environmental campaigns, climate summits, or online trends, but because excess felt careless. In summer, we were sent outside to play, partly because there was no one home to wrangle us anyway, and partly because it meant the TV wasn’t on. We played in the sprinkler because it felt good in the boiling heat and because the garden needed watering anyway. In winter, we layered instead of fiddling with the thermostat, burrowing under stacks of comforters at night. Dish soap was diluted and used in lieu of hand soap (they’re the same thing, you know). You didn’t open the fridge or freezer until you knew exactly what you wanted. You didn’t leave lights on that weren’t in use. Sometimes, you might let it mellow.

Using more than you needed was immoral. It was sloppy. Inconsiderate.

As a child, I translated all of this into a single word: cheap. I assumed we lived this way because our family was broke. Only later did I understand that my parents had lived close enough to consequence that waste felt loud and unsettling, like ignoring a sign you’d already seen someone else get into a terrible accident over.

For a long time, I told this story as one about growing up with parents from a poor country. But that flattens something essential. It suggests these habits belong only to scarcity, not responsibility. That restraint is necessary only until you have enough.

What we practiced was not deprivation; it was orientation. It was respect, sharpened by foresight.

As sustainability entered public conversation with new language and new aesthetics, I felt recognition rather than revelation. The values were familiar; the framing was not. Sustainability was often presented as something you opted into, frequently through more consumption somehow. Better choices made with better brands and better products. Energy-efficient appliances replacing repair centers and lifetime warranties. Sustainably sourced ingredients earning Michelin stars and four dollar signs on Yelp. Everything code-switching, but arriving at the same consumerist bottom line.

When I began living on my own, I carried my parents’ logic with me, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately, while also adopting practices they never considered. I still water down dish soap, save and reuse glass jars and bottles, and stretch leftovers. Unlike my parents, I recycle and avoid hoarding. I joined communities of like-minded people: homesteaders trading pickles for eggs, homemade bread for baked goods, macramé for plant cuttings. I took the simple mending skills the immigrant women in my life taught me and expanded them into a styling practice. I thrift and repurpose instead of adding to cart or opting out of occasions. I use apps like Too Good To Go and Misfits Market, drawn to the idea of intercepting waste before it happens, and to the reminder that there’s plenty of ugly, slightly aged food that’s still perfectly good.

At this age, I realize these aren’t upgrades. They’re translations. Different tools for the same internal rule: whatever you have, don’t waste it.

What has changed most is my relationship with embarrassment and envy. Sustainability no longer feels like another trend I’m hopelessly striving for; it feels like continuity. A conversation across generations about care, restraint, and attention. When green movements overlook the quiet, consistent efforts that were there all along, they become myopic. They risk misidentification instead of acknowledgement. They risk overlooking the cultures and people who practiced these values long before they were marketable.

My parents will never call themselves sustainable. They may never use polished environmental terminology. But they taught me something more durable than jargon: how to live within the space I find myself in, how to see value where others may not, and how responsibility is deeply human, no matter where we are or how much we have access to.

The most sustainable thing I’ve learned is not how to consume better, but how to pay attention. And that lesson didn’t come from a movement. It came from watching my parents do what felt right, long before anyone told them it mattered.