when we are children we’re told that we can do anything, so long as we grit our teeth and try; we can become the president, go to space or even save the world so long as we decide that’s what we want to do and we work hard enough.

this is the story of susette onate, who in 2014 learned about a business transaction between the university of miami (um) and a developing company called ram group, that would threaten to destroy one of the rarest natural habitats in the world. this is the story of a sophomore at hialeah senior high school who was able to stand against two monolithic institutions in order to achieve one simple goal: saving the butterflies.

when the palm beach county-based developing company, ram group bought up a massive allotment of land from um, onate didn’t think there was anything she could do. she knew that this wouldn’t just be the latest in a series of miami’s overdevelopment crisis; this particular plot of land contained one of the rarest eco-regions in the world because it contained one of the last reserves of florida’s pine rocklands. the pine rocklands are some of the most precious forests in the world and boast some of the rarest plant and animal life in florida. onate understood that if this critical plot of land was going to be destroyed by the acquisitive designs of ram group, then the wildlife that inhabited the region would also be destroyed. her favorite animals, butterflies lived in abundance there, making their homes nestled amongst feathery green leaves and lush grasses. threatened and endangered butterfly species, like the bartram’s hairstreak, that once called the pine rocklands home were now the living-dead, surviving off borrowed time before construction began.

enter: the butterfly garden project

when the “adults,” the policymakers, the lawmakers, and the corporations couldn’t be trusted to protect the rare biomes that make south florida so indescribably unique, at least we could count on onate. she took up shop in a disused garden, which had been established by her campus nearly ten years prior and then promptly forgotten about, she organized her friends, her classmates and even her teachers with one goal in mind. she wanted to make a home for the butterflies who were on the brink of losing their habitat.

the journey was a long one. “when i started it was just a small project,” onate said. “the administration wasn’t really very supportive, they considered it (the garden) to be just attracting bugs. basically, they and maintenance just saw it as a nuisance.”

but she persisted. being a resident of south florida, onate was all too familiar with the common attitudes of people who are not interested in hearing about the environment. though the state is mired in a series of one environmental disaster after another, people there are all too often indifferent. this indifference even leads to a maintenance crew digging up her first attempts at the garden, mistaking precious native seedlings and butterfly pupas for “weeds and bugs.”  

but she persisted. once their first of the butterflies had broken free from their chrysalises and begun to flutter across the garden, stopping here or there to hover amongst flower blossoms, a tangible change swept over the students of hialeah high. the once arid and unused garden had become a hub of activity. kids who once preferred to linger indoors now had a place to communicate with nature. the garden even served as a spot for special needs students to have therapy sessions.  

a miraculous change took place. the garden was no longer onate’s, it wasn’t even the school’s anymore. it became a product of the community. something that touched everyone. children were invited to take home potted sprouts that lined their hallways so that they could begin gardens of their own at home. she even began talks with her mayor so that she could introduce him to the idea of repurposing amelia earhart park from a “green desert” into a vibrant eco-region of its own, complete with native and life-sustaining plants. she wants to encourage the green garden movement until it becomes an eco-tourism movement, something that can financially support south florida in a positive way.

planting a global garden

the night that onate applied for the browers youth award, she never dreamt that she would actually get it. “i applied for that the night it was due,” she explained in between laughs, her face glowing. “i thought there’s no way i’d get it!”

but she did. though she might’ve only seen her project as a small butterfly garden, everyone around her (including the browers selection board) saw it for what it could be: a movement. when she got the call that she had been chosen as a browers environmental scholar, she was in a state of shock and needless to say, when she landed in california to make her acceptance speech, she was overwhelmed. the people around her, fellow scholars and program organizers, told her about how her story had inspired them to research their area’s native plant life and start gardens of their own. “it’s so simple to start a garden,” onate said. “that’s why people wanted to do it. they were inspired to try themselves.”

when she returned home, she greeted by yet another surprise. a team of french journalists had reached out to onate, asking her to be featured in their documentary: les super-juniors: ils s’engagent pour la planet (the super kids: and their commitment to the planet.) they wanted to talk to the famous girl in the garden, the high school student who single-handedly called out environmentally disastrous overdevelopment and was able to actually do something about it. they wanted to tell you the story of susette onate, a kid who decided to save the world.   

as a definitive rule of nature, human beings (yes, this includes you) are creatures bound by a certain degree of non-permanence. despite the cloud of fear and anxiousness that surrounds it, death is as naturally a part of the cycle of life as birth. as far as the living are concerned, the real threats of death have nothing to do with fire and brimstone.

the funeral industry, like many other industries, has made massive contributions to the pollution of our planet. the true terror of the great beyond is that it’s actually killing the environment. the world which we living people must occupy has become overburdened by millions upon millions of our dead – more specifically by how we’ve chosen to deal with our dead. traditionally, the american funeral industry has presented us with two options for laying our loved ones to rest: burial or cremation.

it may come as a surprise to the less ‘death-conscious’ of us, but burial is not as simple as shoving a body in the ground. the practice of embalming removes the natural bodily fluids from a corpse and replacing them with toxic, carcinogenic embalming liquids has become a matter of course in the industry. funeral directors often lead grieving families to believe that embalming is the safest, most loving, most respectful way to care for a loved one after death. they rarely let on that a cadaver in its natural state is not a biohazard, nor do they inform that the united states is one of the only countries in the world to routinely embalm their dead.

as a result of these misconceptions hundreds of millions of people are led to believe there is no choice about embalming, and so each year americans pump some five million gallons of poisonous phenol, formaldehyde, and glutaraldehyde deep into the earth. this means that there’s enough hazardous liquid to fill more than one olympic swimming pool leaking from caskets all across the country and draining itself straight into our groundwater and underground ecosystems.

cremation is no better. although it’s seen as the harmless, cost-efficient alternative to burial, cremation is only marginally less detrimental to the environment. cremation, rather self-explanatorily, is the process of burning bodies. in this process crematories must release carbon dioxide. there’s no getting around it. sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and many more hazardous atmospheric pollutants are simply an inextricable part of cremation.

so what is a mere mortal to do when there seems to be no real environmentally friendly way to die?  enter alkaline hydrolysis cremation, the new kid on the block. alkaline hydrolysis also known as water cremation or resomation, may be one of the greenest innovations ever to reach the funeral industry. it’s a low cost, low waste, method of body disposal that follows a relatively simple procedure:

step one: your body is placed in a pressure chamber along with a mixture of either water and liquid lye or potassium hydroxide, then the chamber is heated to 320 degrees fahrenheit, and the contents are left for 3 to 6 hours.

step two: after the contents of the chamber has been allowed to cool, the liquid (which at this point will mostly consist of liquefied tissue and water) will be drained. what will be left behind is ashy-white processed bone matter.

step three: remaining bones are put through a cremulator machine which grinds them to a fine powder that will later be placed in a new container and presented to the deceased’s family.

this whole process is reported to use less water than a family of four uses in a few hours, and compared to cremation or burial, its resource use is nearly null. what’s more, the end product is almost identical to ashes we see as a result of cremation. the family can be presented with the remains of their loved one to do with what they please, just like in cremation. the ashes produced by alkaline hydrolysis may be kept in a urn, buried or even released in a spot that held emotional significance for the deceased.  

despite the monumental potential for the widespread use of alkaline hydrolysis, its low cost, and the fact that it’s the foremost “green” method of body disposal, it’s only been legalized in some parts of canada and at least 14 states.

the funeral industry is, at the end of the day, an industry like any other. it currently runs on high waste, high prices, and high profit. alkaline hydrolysis is posed to rock the industry in a big way. lobbyists for the funeral industry worry that alkaline hydrolysis could potentially cause dramatic decreases in exorbitant “funeral frills” like luxury coffins lined with velvet, or cosmetic embalmings.

there is also the matter of uninformed decision makers: legislators who have chosen to vote for the suppression of alkaline hydrolysis because they’re simply uncomfortable with it. a board of embalmers and funeral directors in ohio, for example, called their colleague, jeff edwards, “immoral and unprofessional” for practicing alkaline hydrolysis on his own clients with the families’ consent, according to court documents. even in traditionally progressive states, there are retrograde opinions about it.  when a bill to legalize it in california failed in 2010 and then again in 2013, it wasn’t because there was a substantive reason to oppose alkaline hydrolysis. it was because the california catholic conference campaigned against it, demanding that senate members vote “no” to legalization on the grounds that alkaline hydrolysis “does not appear to respectfully treat human remains.”

just like in the 1900s when the rise of cremation was met with controversy and outrage, opposers of alkaline hydrolysis may simply be afraid of the unknown. however, as citizens, it is our duty to demand knowledgeable and unbiased decisions from our legislators. it’s ridiculous that the corpse of a former eco-warrior could be harming the environment posthumously because their state does not provide the option of a green death. it’s up to us to demand changes in legislation, changes that go beyond just alkaline hydrolysis. we should have the option of a natural burial if we want to, and insist that funeral directors keep embalming toxins out of our bodies. it’s up to us to take agency over our deaths and make sure that they reflect the lives we led.

life on the sun-drenched isles of south florida can be breathtaking. miami boasts some of the most vibrant coastlines in the nation; crystalline ocean waters, brimming with life and home to some of the most remarkable biomes on earth, lap gently against bone-white shores. for me, miami is the perfect oasis. if only i could forget one little problem: we. are. sinking.

the atlantic ocean is marching upon us. environmental protection agency reports state that from 1996 to 2011, we’ve lost 20 square miles of coastline to the sea. the very same glistening waters that we floridians so love to admire have begun a seemingly unstoppable tirade against us. so, what are we going to do? where do we turn? who is going to ‘save our souls’?

we can’t count on the powerful developers who run the place. they’re doing better business than ever. the miami coastline is booming; the city is dotted with engineers and construction crews who swarm their work-sites like ants. hundreds of steel and glass towers crowd the narrow strip of land, each one taller than the last and all of them vying to be closest to god.

we can’t count on our elected officials. even when faced with daily floods and the sobering aftermath of hurricane irma, florida governor rick scott — the man who banned the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” from his administration’s vocabulary — still refuses to deal with the watery grave that he’s condemning our city to.

as it turns out, we’re going to have to save ourselves. all over the state, university students and educators are answering the call-to-arms. they’re researching, collaborating with the city of miami beach and working towards implementing substantive solutions. essentially, they are fighting back.

they are fighting back not just against the incoming tides but also against the seemingly endless inaction from those who are supposed to be in power. florida international university’s sea level solutions center (slsc) is leading the charge. the center was founded in 2015 with the vision of creating and implementing sustainable solutions for sea level rising.

in under two years, slsc had netted together a vast web of collaborators, student scientists and project leaders who work towards making some real changes in south florida. year after year, slsc pushes out newer, more innovative research projects. from a project which outlines the potential dangers of increasing salinity on our natural water systems and drinking water, to a project that aims to stabilize and protect south florida archaeological sites with integrated ecosystem restoration.  these research projects are important because through them the slsc is not only able to gather usable data and implement plans, but they also get the opportunity to educate on the less obvious effects of rising sea levels.

slsc tries to work directly with the community, according to brad schonhoff, a fiu graduate turned project manager.

“[we are] bringing science to the table, and telling what the latest data is showing, informing current zoning and building projects on the data… getting them to implement resilience into the building,” schonhoff said.

slsc works hand in hand with regional bodies to make sure that the plans for this new generation of renovations will be based in science. for example a recent a $400 million dollar general obligation bond was voted on in miami. roughly 200 million dollars of that will be funneled into environmentally focused renovations to the city, this includes; water pumps, sewage restructuring and raised roads. in situations like these, slsc takes the research they’ve painstakingly gathered and presents it to those who are charged with rebuilding our cities.

while this collaboration between the city of miami beach and the university’s research center is enough to give us hope for the future, we know that water pumps and high-roads are not exactly permanent fixes. we cannot build high enough, nor can we pump back out enough water to escape the forward march of the rising seas.

dear readers, i’m going to level with you. we know there is only one real solution to this problem. and floridians are counting on you – yes, i mean you! – to help us out on this one.

although we’re facing the immediate effects of rising sea-levels, this is a truly international issue. if we, as a united international community, could come together to do something about the adverse effects of global warming, melting glaciers wouldn’t be flooding into our coastal cities.

miami needs you, all of you, to join the fight. for our sake. this is our s.o.s. call, because at the rate we’re going, this beautiful, blossoming, slice of tropical paradise won’t be here for much longer.

from florida, with love.