I'm trying to set up a Django/DRF application on Elastic Beanstalk, and for whatever reason, Django just can't see the desired environment variables. When I log in, I can see them just fine, by using 

```
$ eb ssh
$ cat /opt/python/current/env

```

I can also see them, except relatively sensitive ones involving RDS, simply using `$eb printenv`.

All that appears to be set up and working properly. However, Django likes to read the environment immediately on starting up, and it appears that the environment variables just aren't set yet. I've experimented with simply inserting `print(os.environ)` in `settings.py`, and when I do that, I discover a whole bunch of environment variables which I don't need (i.e. `'SUPERVISOR_GROUP_NAME': 'httpd'`), and none of the ones I've set myself, like `DJ_SECRET_KEY`. 

I've since changed the code to report the absence of specific environment variables when it loads the settings, and from a recent run, it generated this:

```
[Wed Nov 23 15:56:38.164153 2016] [:error] [pid 15708] DJ_SECRET_KEY not in environment; falling back to hardcoded value.
[Wed Nov 23 15:56:38.189717 2016] [:error] [pid 15708] RDS_DB_NAME not in environment; falling back to sqlite
[Wed Nov 23 15:56:38.189751 2016] [:error] [pid 15708] AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME not in environment; falling back to local static storage.

```

Again, those variables are set in the settings, and they show up with any other reporting tool EB gives me. They just aren't set in time for Django to read them when it launches and reads `settings.py`.

[This](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24562714/elastic-beanstalk-custom-ami-cant-see-environment-variables) looks pretty close to this issue, but it's not really the same: I know how to see / load the environment variables into the shell when ssh-ing into the eb instance; they're just not showing up when I need them to for the actual project. 

[This](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14206760/how-to-set-an-environment-variable-in-amazon-elastic-beanstalk-python) is almost exactly the issue I'm having, but the accepted-correct answer makes no sense to me, and the top-voted answer doesn't apply; those files are already in git.

How should I configure things so that Django can see the environment variables?