Little Brown Book: Tracing 'Zero'
Robert Gama | Appel Fellow 2025 | Documenting waste cultures through travel, sketching, observation, and conversation.
Overview
This summer, I traveled to Japan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Portland, and San Francisco exploring how communities practice sustainability in everyday life. From Kyoto’s strict waste systems to zero-waste shops in Singapore and Portland, I observed the gap between sustainability as a marketed lifestyle and as a lived necessity. Through journals, sketches, and conversations, I reflected on how reuse, access, and cultural habits shape what sustainability looks like across borders. My project grew into an article and collection of field notes and photographs that questioned why sustainable living is often seen as a privilege, highlighting lessons I could bring back to my own community.
Contact: rgama28@cmc.edu
About me
📍 Pomona, Los Angeles County, California
📊 Economics-Accounting major at CMC
🪴 Hobbies: Rock climbing, yoga, functional pottery, landscaping, landscape oil painting
Project Background, Information, & Welcome
I am a sophomore undergraduate student at Claremont McKenna College(CMC) located in Claremont, California, United States. I was raised in Pomona, California, an underrepresented and marginalized community with a majority Latiné population. I have always had a passion for business and the environment since a very young age. I was raised in the corporate world and had somewhat of an absence of the 'natural' world. Coming to CMC, I thought I had my path all figured out: to become an accountant. I debated applying for the Appel Fellowship due to the nature of the finance culture at CMC and the 'need' to have a corporate internship every summer of college. However, I thought to myself and decided I couldn't let a chance like this pass me up, so I applied and submitted my application 15 minutes before it was due!
Welcome to my Appel Project. The goal of my travel was to figure out how different cultures tackle one of the largest problems currently facing the world: waste. Since humans have existed, we have created waste through survival, the building of empires, capitalism, and the habits we grew up with. Our world is in desperate need for help and I aim to focus on one 'small' aspect that actively contributes to the harm that faces our planet, communities, and our individual health.
My goal through my project was to try and find what works, what doesn't, and why and how that is, in respect to waste. Below you will find 'Subpages' to each of the destinations that I traveled to for my fellowship. Each of the subpages will include photographs of my trip along with some captions and my journals/field notes that I wrote in my 'little brown book'(my general-use journal: a brown Italian leather Journal I received as a gift from my best friend of a couple years back). I hope you enjoy the snippets of the amazing time I am very grateful to have had through the Appel fellowship, along with my findings and conclusions.
Thank You
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to pursue this independent research through the Appel Fellowship. Thank you to the Claremont McKenna Appel Writing Scholars Fellowship, its donor community, and the amazing people who run the program for making experiences like this possible for CMC students.
I would also like to thank the professors who supported me during this process and all the lovely people I had the pleasure of meeting over my summer.
Finally, I am thankful to be part of a wonderful community of Appel Fellows whose work continues to inspire me. To explore the projects of my peers, please visit appelwritingscholars.com.
(This section was inspired by my friend Kathrine Dennis's project website)
