Rob: Hey everyone, thanks for being here and
thanks for having me.
Does this all sound good? Cool!
It's so awesome to be here.
I had met Urlinda in San Diego about two
years ago, and that's how ultimately I
ended up here.
Tonight I am hoping to inspire you to make
some positive changes when it comes to
the environment and to the human race as a whole.
I will give you a little bit of a
background on some of the things that,
some of the projects that I have been
working on and what I have been doing.
I will give you a little bit of a
disclaimer, although this room is
probably pretty full of radical people, so
it is less needed, but I do a lot of very
extreme things, and the idea is to catch
people's attention, get them to stop and
self reflect and think about things that
they maybe have never thought about.
The things that I do are often are very
extreme, but my message is actually one of
moderation, of treating people with
respect, treating the earth with respect,
I just go about it in attention-grabbing
ways of doing it.
One of my project sis the Food Waste Fiasco.
We waste about a third of all the food we
produce around the world,
about half of the all the food we produce
in the United States where I live.
One of my campaigns I have dived into
about 2,000 dumpsters across the United
States in about 29 states, and a handfull
in other countries, like the UK, but
mostly the United States.
And the idea is to create a visual that
helps people understand how much food is being wasted.
This is about 2 days of dumpster diving
in Madison, Wisconsin.
You might have seen one of my videos, it
was called "People are Good", so I landed
in Panama with just the clothes on my back
and my passport, which was 7 countries
away from San Diego.
I landed there with the sandals on my
feet, some shorts, a shirt, a jacket, a
hat, and my passport, and that is
literally everything I had.
I had to make it back to San Diego, and
the idea was to put myself out there and
by doing that, show that actually there
is an incredible number of good people out
there, and that if you put yourself out
there, people will help.
The mainstream media often portrays
the world as this very dangerous, crime
ridden place, but the reality is that
generally, people are actually pretty good.
So that was that, and that turned into a
television show that was on the Discovery
Channel, I think it played here.
But with that one I flew to Brazil and
had to travel to Panama.
One of my most recent projects was "Trash Me".
This one was inspired by Morgan Spurlock's
"Super Size Me", where he ate just
McDonalds for thirty days.
I tried to look at some of the successful
campaigns out there and how I could apply
that to environmental activism, so I
thought "Okay, how can I do something
that will really get people thinking about
how much trash they are creating,"
Here, you do not create nearly as much
trash as we do in the United States, but
still a fair amount, but no where near as much.
In the United States the average person
creates about 4.5 pounds of
trash per day, about 2 kilograms.
And we throw it in the garbage can and we
never think about it again, most people.
They never think about it again.
So I wanted to create a visual that shows
people how much it really adds up to.
This is me for thirty days just living
like the average American.
I ate, shopped. and consumed just like the
average American does.
I had an specially designed suit to hold
every piece of trash that I created for entire month.
This right here is actually about one 1/3
less trash than the average American
creates in a month, so that is the idea of that.
And then for the last 13 months I have
been traveling the United States and
parts of the world.
This is every single possession that I
own, so everything that I own is here with
me tonight in the car.
Hopefully it is still there, because that is everything.
Birth certificate, passport, all of that stuff.
Every possession I own... so the things I
do are often pretty extreme, but the idea
of this is that the average person in the
United States and Europe has 10s of
1,000s of possessions, most that we never use.
By owning just 110 possessions, it get
people to stop and think about how much they have.
Really, it is about getting people to
think about "Am I happy? Am I healthy?
And are there things that I could do to
change my life to be happier, healthier,
more purposeful, more passionate, and live
in a way that is better for the earth?"
Those are a couple of my campaigns, and
really my life is my campaign, just
leading by example and showing ways of doing things.
I definitely have not always been an
environmentalist, and environmentally-
minded person, a conscious person.
If we rewind about ten years, this is me
here on the left.
I was a pretty drunk dude, I know Belgians
get pretty drunk, but I rivaled everyone in the room.
This was a typical night, drinking cheap,
cheap beer out of plastic cups.
During College I was very passionate about
drinking, women, material possessions, money.
My goal was to be a millionaire by the
time I was 30 years old.
I was very focused on that.
My car, I would shine it for two hours
every Sunday, spotless.
I had a part-time job which was basically
just going to the library and talking to
every girl in my path, telling her to come
to my parties.
That's what I was doing during college,
This is another typical night.
This is what you call a "duck bong", I do
not know if it has made its way to Belgium.
How it works is that it is like a beer
bong, except you cut the beak, and the
foot off of an ornamental lawn duck, which
is hallow, and you fill it up with beer,
that thing can fit like maybe 5 or 6
beers, you fill it up with vodka as well
if you feel like it.
That was another typical night.
And as I said, I spent, you know, 20 or 30
hours a week pursuing women, and I was not always successful.
On this particular night this was a
Christmas tree that crossed my path when
there was no women that wanted to come
home with me that night.
I have not always been very caring about the environment.
I did go to school for biology, with a chemistry minor.
Aquatic science was my concentration.
I actually always cared about the environment.
When I was growing up fishing and out
playing in the ponds and things like that.
But the thing was, I always felt like I
was actually living an environmentally
friendly life during this time because my
mom had taught me the basic things like
recycling, shut off the water when you are
not using it.
I would occasionally get in a fight with
my roommates about leaving the water
running or the lights on.
I was doing some of those things, but what
happened was that I realized in about
2011 after I graduated from University and
it was about two years later, I started to
watch a lot of documentaries and I would
read a lot of books and I realized that
for the most part my life was actually
causing environmental and social destruction.
I was doing a couple of things that were
sort of good for the environment, but the
reality was that I realized by watching
these documentaries that the food I was
eating was coming from these factory
farms, the gasoline I was pumping into my
car, all of the trash that I was creating,
all of the cheap products that I was
buying at the big box markets, all of
this stuff was causing environmental
destruction both in my community, but also
because of globalization, all the way on
the other side of the world, but also it
was causing social destruction by the
people working in really crappy condition
so that I could have my $4 toaster and
things like that.
So at that point I really decided that I
wanted to change my life from drunk dude
to someone that was living something beyond myself.
A lot of people at this point feel at
total sense of doom and gloom, like "What
can I do now?"
At that point I was 25 years old, I had
been doing this whole way of life for
quite a while so it can be... you can have
that feeling of "Well what can I possibly do?"
But I actually at that point felt extremely empowered.
The reason was that these documentaries
that I watched and these books that I was
reading taught me how I could change my life.
What I did was just make a long list of
all of the changes that I wanted to make,
and I hung it up in my kitchen in a
really prominent place, and then I taped
a pen next to it so that each week that
pen would be there and my goal was to
check off 1 thing each week.
Some examples of things that I did early
on... I mean at that time I was shopping
at Walmart, filling up my cart with
everything, using plastic bags, all of
that sort of stuff.
I was doing very little.
One of the big changes that I made early
on was going to local businesses.
This is a farmers market, just buying my
food locally from the local farmers
market or going to the local tool shop
rather than the big Lowes, or Home Depot,
Or Walmart, or things like that.
I changed my... I realized the food I was
eating, changed my diet, started to eat
more whole foods, more unpackaged
processed stuff, I actually started to
look at the ingredients on things and see
"Whoa, this is not even really food that I am eating,"
I started to eat actual food, switched to
a more plant-based diet.
And then the other thing when I really
started to unravel my life, I started to
realize that I had just been sold a whole
lot of things, sold this concept of what
the human body needs to exist, what we
need to be successful or happy or healthy.
"The Story of Stuff" was an early short
film that really inspired me.
They had another one called "The Story of Cosmetics,"
I learned that all of these things that I
was using, like all of the shampoo, the
conditioner, the face wash, the body wash,
the deodorant, the Listerine mouthwash,
the lip balm, all of these things, a lot
them were made with fossil fuel by-
products, petroleum by-products.
I was just putting all of this nasty stuff
on to me and I just really started to
think, "Wow, human beings have existed
for millions of years without this stuff,
so it must be possible to live without it,"
So I put it all on my curb and for the
most part stopped using most of those
things but found natural alternatives for
the things that I did want to continue to use.
I got rid of plastics and things like that.
I got rid of microwave so that I would
actually cook real food.
I just continued making positive changes
in my life for about two years, and what
happened was the more positive changes I
made, the more happy and healthy I became.
A lot of it was not something that I would
necessarily realize, but there were all
sorts of connections.
For example, when I got rid of my car and
I no longer had a trunk, I was no longer
able to fill it up with stuff, which meant
that I bought less stuff.
There are all of these ways that I did not
realize how one change would ripple into
other changes as well.
After a year and a half or so of doing all
of that, I decided that I really wanted
to take sustainable living and bring the
message out to people, and do it in a way
that was kind of fun and would get people
excited and hopefully inspire people to
make positive changes as well.
In 2013 I made my website for $100 online,
and made a Facebook page and decided that
I was going to be an adventurer, doing
adventures for the environment.
My first big adventure was called "Off the
Grid Across America", and I biked across
the United States on a bamboo bicycle, and
the idea was to bike from west coast to
east coast having no environmental inpact
whatsoever, no negative environmental
impact, while deeply immersing in
sustainable living and learning myself.
Because they say that it takes 21 days to
form a habit so I thought if I do this for
104 days, which was how long the ride was,
then I will really, deeply form this habit.
I set rules for all of the basics of sustainable living.
The key things of sustainable living that
we deal with every single day: food,
water, energy, waste, transportation.
These are things that every single one of
us in this room deals with basically every day.
We eat everyday, we drink water every day,
usually we have transportation wherever
we are going, we create waste everyday
whether it is garbage or something out of
our body, and then energy, we are using
electricity pretty much every day.
Diving into these key things that a lot
of us... like for me in the past I never
thought about in a given day.
For food the rule was that I could only
eat local, organic, unpackaged foods.
That meant food from whatever state I was crossing through.
Organic just meant that I... it did not mean
necessarily that it was certified but that
it just came from the farmer and I had
talked to them.
Then lastly unpacked, so nothing wrapped in packaging.
I knew that this was going to be really
hard because a lot of places, that food
just does not exist.
So I made one exception, and that was that
I could eat any food that was going to waste.
The reason being is, of course if it is
already in the garbage, the dumpster...
what do you call it over here? Bin. Yeah.
Bins. Huh? WHAT WORD DID HE SAY
I find your language quite funny.
So if it is in the garbage, the
environmental impact has already happened
so if it is in the garbage I figured "that
sounds weird, but if it is in the garbage
I might as well eat it," but that is what
I was doing.
I found the first dumpster that I ever
looked into, I was crossing the Sierra,
Nevada mountains, it was about 7 seven
days in, I looked in there, I was was
really nervous at this time because I
still had a good sized ego at that time
and for someone to know that I was eating
out of the trash would have damaged that
ego, but I had come up with this trip and
I had to do it.
I looked inside the dumpster, and sure
enough it was filled with perfectly good food.
In that particular dumpster, the first
thing I ever ate was a still-frozen, half
gallon of moose tracks icecream.
It was just melted a little bit around the
edges, I didn't have a spoon so I just
used the edge of my sunglasses and they
were quite sticky for a week or two.
Basically, for the rest of the trip
instead of going into the grocery store
and asking "Do you have anything local?"
because the answer was "what do you mean?"
Most of the time they just had no clue
where the food was from.
I got tired of that, so instead 70% of my
diet that summer ended up coming from the
dumpster.
It was about 3 pounds a day worth of food, 280 pounds.
For water, the rule was that I could only
use natural bodies of water.
For the entire summer I could not have
turned on a faucet, used a flushed toilet,
taken a shower, anyway that we use water
in a given day in the house I was not able to do.
Instead I had to use natural bodies of
water like lakes and rivers, purify the
water myself, go swimming, even in some
pretty dirty ponds.
But the exception again with that was that
I could use water that was going to waste.
This is a fire hydrant in Brooklyn, the
leak is right here.
I lived off of this fire hydrant for 5
days while I was in Brooklyn.
I bathed in it, that is what I am doing
here, I brushed.... I went over there to
brush my teeth, did my laundry in it,
used it for cooking, all of that.
This one leak alone is... I timed it, and
it was wasting two gallons of water a minute.
That is about 8 liters per minute.
What that means is that it is 770 gallons
of water per day, which is enough to meet
the drinking needs of 1440 people, just
out of this one fire hydrant alone.
Over the entire trip I only used 160
gallons of water, which is what the
average person in the United States uses
in about 2 days.
For energy I could only use electricity
that I created myself for the entire summer.
I would not have been able to give this
presentation, I would not have been able
to touch this, or use any of this stuff.
I could not turn on a light switch, or
use someone's refrigerator, or open an
electric garage door.
Basically every say that electricity was
involved in life I had to stop and think about it.
There was the challenging ones where for
example if I wanted to go into a store,
and there was only automatic doors, I
would have to wait there until someone
goes through the automatic door and then go in.
Or if I was biking and it was night and
an automatic light would go off, I would
have to go over there and unscrew that
light bulb and hope that they would figure
it out the next day why it was not going off.
It was really deep immersion, and what I
learned is that my life is totally
electrified at all points in my life
basically I was consuming electricity.
70% or more of electricity in the United
States is from fossil fuels, so I was
basically burning fossil fuels at most times.
Only by really deeply immersing myself
into this was I really able to start
understanding it more.
For example, my exception with
electricity was that I had a computer and
I had a cell phone, and they were both
charged by the solar panels.
My exception was that I could log on to
the internet, and I knew that by doing
that I was probably using some
electricity via the router probably using
a little more electricity.
But what I did not know and that I learned
on that trip, I visited a business called
"Renewable Choice Energy" in Boulder,
Colorado, and their job is to get
companies like Facebook and Google to
switch over their servers.
The servers are the places that host the
computers, where all of the data is stored.
So their job is to get them to switch over
solar and wind powered farms to produce
the electricity for that.
What they taught me was that when we are
storing stuff on the cloud, what the
cloud really is is just someone else's
computer, somewhere else.
What I learned is that every single time
that I uploaded a blog, or a youtube
video, or a picture or Facebook, that all
of that was being stored somewhere else,
so every second of my life, whether I was
asleep or I was awake, was actually burning electricity.
Only by really deeply going into it was
able to understand more deeply my
interaction with the earth.
For waste, the rule was I had to carry
every piece of garbage that I created all
of the way across the country with me.
If I had a candy bar in San Francisco,
that wrapper was coming all the way over
to Vermont with me.
Anyone who bikes, which I am guessing a
lot of you do, or if you have done long
distance hiking, you know that a little
weight really adds up.
I tried really hard to create as little
trash as I could, and this is what I
created in 104 days.
This is 2 pounds, which is what the
average American creates by about
one o'clock in the afternoon on any given day.
And then lastly, for transportation the
rule of course was that I could either
bike or walk the entire way.
Even on my off days I could not use public transportation.
What I learned during this time, which is
a lesson that I am sure a lot of people
here in Belgium know, you are far a head
of us when it comes to cycling, but
really I learned that cycling is for everyone.
On that trip I met 60 and 70 year old
women cycling all the way across the United States.
I met 10 year-olds cycling to school.
I met people that were way larger than
you ever would imagine would fit on a bike
that were biking hundreds of miles, or
were biking 30 miles back and forward between work.
I really learned on that trip that cycling
is something that is accessible to so many people.
After that adventure, I went back to
San Diego and I was in my apartment that I
had still, and I still was... still at
this time after a couple of years, still
picking up on ways that I was causing environmental destruction.
For example, when I got back to San Diego,
I had my money in a Chase bank account,
JP Morgan Chase, and I realized "Wow,
what is going on with my money?"
Well, they invest in... largely in fossil
fuel infrastructure projects.
Here I am trying not to use fossil fuels,
but my money is being used to invest to
make fossil fuels more accessible.
I had to take my money out of the big
banks, I had to take my money out of any investments.
I learned that my mutual funds were
invested in cigarettes and fossil fuels
among other things, so taking my money
out of those.
By this time I was creating so little
trash that I was able to take the garbage
can out of my house.
In 2015, in January, it was New Years Day,
I decided that I wanted to move out of my
apartment and live in a tiny house so that
I could live off the grid and not have
any bills or any debt to my name.
I went onto Craigslist on New Years Day
and I was going to buy myself a little
camper so that I could live in that while
building a tiny house.
I found this online, and it said it was
$950 and I thought "surely that must be a typo?"
I mean, $950, that is like one months
rent for a lot of people.
I put $950 in my pocket... well actually
a $1000 in my pocket, and I bike up to
this guy's house, it was about 6 miles
away, and I said I was not going to buy
it, but I do not know why I had the $1000
in my pocket if I was not going to.
But I realized why it was only $950, it
as basically just a little wooden box on wheels.
It was 5 feet wide..... this is actually
larger, this screen right here is larger
than the actual size of the house because
5 feet wide is substantially shorter than this.
It was about 5 feet tall, so I could not
quiet stand in it but I thought
"Okay, this is much smaller than I was
intending to live in," but I like to do
extreme things and one of the things that
really stuck out to me is that in the
United States and in many parts of Europe,
the average house size has actually
doubled in the last couple of decades.
In the States it has gone from 1,500
square feet, to 3,000 square feet.
This is where house sizes have been going.
And then at the same time, happiness and
health is just crashing.
Trying to show that correlation between
having a larger house and actually being
healthier and happier, a lot of the times
I see an opposite correlation with that.
Here, I practiced sustainable living, also
to the extreme, to really, again, do
things that would catch people's
attention, get the news to come out and
report, and be able to bring this stuff to
people that maybe have never thought
about any of these things before.
For food, I grew some of my own food.
You hear in Belgium have plenty of rain I
am assuming, but San Diego was a desert
and it was in a mega drought, so it was
not exactly easy living off of the grid
and being completely dependent on rain
water and growing food.
One way that I was able to do that, is
there is something called "wicking bed
gardens", and how it would work is you
fill... you create a little reservoir on
the bottom, and then you fill it through
a pipe, and then the water wicks up
through the roots so that there is no
evaporation at the top.
By using tricks like that I was able to
grow more food with less water.
While I was there, 100% came from
harvesting rain water.
The average American uses about 80 to 100
gallons of water per day.
The average European uses about 50
gallons of day, and the average African
uses about 2 to 5 gallons of water per day.
I was using 2 to 5 gallons of water, about
the same as the average person in Africa.
A lot of people would think that this...
most Americans would thing that this is
really extreme using so little water, and
one of the things that I really learned
over the last 5 years of really diving
into sustainability is that everything is
totally a matter of perspective.
In this scenario for example, an American
would see that using just 2 to 5 gallons
of water per day to be a really extreme
thing, but if you took someone from Africa
that has been doing that their whole life
and you brought them to the United States,
and they saw that we were using 100
gallons of water and are just pouring it
down the drain, to them that would be extreme.
The more that I looked at all of these
things, really everything is always a
matter of perspective, and when you change
your perspective you can totally change
the world around you just simply by
changing your mindset.
I was able to live on 2 to 5 gallons a day
by using it really wisely and really just
not wasting any of it.
For energy, the rule was... for
energy I was living just completely off
of solar there.
The reason I was able to do that was by
living pretty simply.
Another thing that I have really come
across a lot, is that a lot of people
think that sustainable living,
environmentally living is only something
you can do if you are wealthy or
privileged to be able to do that.
There are elements of that where I
understand where people are coming from,
and some truth to that.
But what I have learned is that the more
that you simplify your life and live based
on what you need rather than everything
that you think you want, the more
accessible it becomes to everyone.
With solar, if I had a huge
refrigerator and a flat screened T.V. in
every room, and a hair drier, and all of
these electrical items, then I would not
have been able to afford to live off the
grid with just solar, because I would
have needed a $10,000 or $15,000 system.
By simplifying my needs I was able to live
just off of solar.
This.... this is funny, we are talking
about poop for the second time tonight
after the first documentary, that is great.
Did you plan that? No? Okay.
This is actually my favorite thing to
talk about, and I feel actually very much
the same with the short film we just watched.
One of the things that I really learned
is that anytime something is easy, I have
learned to stop and think, "Why is this easy?"
Where is the ease... basically what I have
learned is that every time something is
easy, what that typically means is that
the burden is being placed elsewhere.
An easy example, for example everyone
here has probably driven a car, and you
know that when you are driving a car,
imagine that this is your ankle, you are
going zero miles per hour, and you just
move your ankle slightly forward and all
of a sudden you are going 60 miles an hour.
Very easy.
Where as biking or walking, you actually
have to use energy to do that.
So where is the burden being placed?
In that scenario, it is being placed on many things.
The extraction of fossil fuels causing oil
spills... there are 10,000 oil spills per
year as an example.
It is climate change, it is the emissions
of all if the green house gases.
It is the people that are getting sick
working in those conditions, the animals
that are dealing with those sorts of things.
That is an example of how the burden is
actually being placed elsewhere.
I started to think, "Flushing the toilet,
okay, where does it really go once I am
done with it, what actually happens to my
poop and pee?"
The toilet is an example of one of those
things that is really easy.
You just hit that leaver, and then
(whoosh sound) it is gone.
I started to think about what really
happens to it and look into it.
What I learned is that it is easy because
the burden is being placed elsewhere.
In the example of the flushed toilet, you
have all of the chemicals you have to
clean the water before you poop in it, and
then all of the chemicals that are used to
clean the water again after you poop in it.
You have all of the electricity that is used.
So 20% of all electricity is used just to pump water.
You are actually using electricity
indirectly just to flush the toilet.
You have the pollution that happens from
it because a lot of the time it overflows
into our lakes and rivers and oceans.
All of these things were happening, and
then ultimately you have a waste product
that you have to deal with, it is actually a problem.
When I learned about what we call
humanure", as in human manure, I realized
that instead of waste becoming a problem,
it actually is a resource.
One of the sayings in permaculture is that
"Waste is just a resource out of place,"
Rather than using 1.6 gallons of water
each time, which I obviously did not
have to flush, I was able to turn it into
a valuable resource.
This is the compost pile.
A lot of people would... who here has ever
pooped in a 5 gallon bucket? A couple?
Some back there? Yeah.
For me, this was sort of the holy grail of
sustainable living because it was taking
responsibility for all of my actions.
A lot of people have social media and so
on, there are a lot of people who have
said things like... well, first of all
they would assume that I was going to die,
and if I was not going to die then I was
going to kill the entire city of San Diego.
One of the things about composting, how it
works, is when you... a compost pile
whether it is human waste or not, what you
have is microorganisms like bacteria, and
then you have macroorganisms like beetles
and larvae and worms.
What they do is they are eating all of the
contents in there, and one of the
biproducts from all of that is heat.
A compost pile can heat up to 160 degrees.
All of the bacteria, and the pathogens
that are in our body are designed to live
at about body temperature.
Once they are in the compost pile, the
heat that is created by all that movement
of the micro and macro organisms kills all
of that off, so it is really safe.
I was at least able to tell people that,
that I am indeed not going to kill the
city of San Diego, but the thing that I
did not know at the time was that people
still would say "Ew, this guy is eating
food grown off of poop!"
And I was like "Yeah, but I do not have a
good response because I am assuming that
you are not doing that,"
But then I read a book called "Wasteland"
When I was doing "Trash Me" this fall, and
I finally really learned where our poop
goes as I looked into it deeper.
Take New York City for example where I was at the time.
What you have, is you have millions...
well 8 million people are still there,
about 8 million poops a day, maybe more
depending on how people are doing.
What is that? Anyway.
What happens is that all of that goes
into the waste water treatment plants, but
what you have going along with that,
the average person in the United States
has 13 prescription meds total.
Some people have zero, some people have
20, but it averages out to billions of
prescription medications, so you have all
of that going along with it.
But you also have all of the things like
bleach, and the Drano, and things like that.
So all of that is getting mixed together.
What you have is an extremely toxic
"poop slurry", that ends up with
millions of poops mixed with all of these toxins.
But then you also have companies that are
improperly disposing of things like motor
oil and things like that, that makes it
even more toxic.
That then is bio-digested in part, and
then what is left was turned into fertilizer.
Where that fertilizer went is it was
shipped down to Texas on rail, so
this very still toxic fertilizer, and
then that was used to grow the food that
people that were commenting on Youtube
and Facebook saying "Ew, this guy eats
food growing from poop"
Well, what I learned was that at least I
was eating off of fairly clean...
one person is not 1 million New Yorkers
toxic sludge poop.
Onto the next thing, done with poop now.
It might come up again though.
For trash, I created a little more trash
than I did on my bike ride.
This would be about a normal 2 to 4 weeks
of trash, it was a couple pounds a month usually.
And for transportation, one of the things
that I learned is that the average person
in the states, it is similar over here in
Europe, spends about $7,000 to $9,000 per
year on their vehicle.
What that means is that the normal, kind
of the median income is about $52,000 a year.
That means that the average person is
working January and February every single
year just to own their car.
Imagine what you could do for January
and February of every single year instead
of owning a car, and that is the reason I
got rid of my car because growing up I
thought that a car was freedom.
It was how to get away from the parents,
be able to go wherever you wanted.
What I learned is that the car was
actually the thing that was holding me
back the most.
It is what tied me to having to work to
pay the bills of the car.
Getting rid of the car was actually one of
the most freeing things I ever did.
In San Diego there is something called
"Car to Go", which is an electric car
sharing program, that made it easier for
me there, because when I did need a car,
I could get one.
But a lot of cities have things like
"Zip Car" and things like that.
How "Car to Go" works is there is a
little... you have your own little card
here, and then you touch it up to the
window here, and then you get in, it lets
you in, and you put in a code, and you
drive it away, and then when you are done
you just park it in a parking spot and it
just bills you by the amount of time that
you are in there.
For the most part I would ride my bike,
the "Car to Go" was for mostly when I was feeling lazy.
The whole idea of a lot of this stuff is
to create visuals that help people to understand things.
Talking about food waste, as I was
starting to dumpster dive, I had mentioned
that early on I was pretty timid about
talking about that, not knowing what
people would think about me and things
like that, but the thing was, the more
that I did it, the more that I realized
that this issue is far more important than me.
I started to talk about it, and I was
amazed that after a short period of time
I realized that generally, when you are
passionate about something and when you
are authentic about something, what I
found is that you do not lose friends, you
actually gain more friends.
The food waste ended up being something
that I became really passionate about.
I did not realize going into it how
important of an issue that it is, but I
have learned that it is one of the most
pressing environmental and social issues
of our time.
Worldwide, we throw away one third of all
of the food that we produce, while over a
billion people are in food poverty.
We actually have enough food on earth to
feed every single person.
Not all of it is healthy food, there is a
lot of Cheetos and things like that, but
we have enough food to feed the entire world.
In the United States we produce enough
food to feed another entire American
population while 1 in 4 Americans are food insecure.
This is San Diego, California, I was
trying to come up with a way to really
help people understand how much food was
going to waste.
In the United States it is $165 billion of
food per year.
To put that into perspective, that is more
than the budget for every national park,
every public library, all of veterans
healthcare, all of the federal prisons,
the FBI, and the FDA combined.
It is a massive number, but a lot of the
time it is still hard to wrap your head around numbers.
This is two days worth of dumpster diving
in San Diego, California, and I mentioned
early on that I was very timid at the
idea of dumpster diving, and one of the
reasons was this girl here.
4 years ago, and this was in 2013, I was
very much in love with her and she was
very much "get away from me Rob, I am not
interested in you right now".
She was actually someone who told me "do
not tell anybody that you are dumpster diving".
And I kind of listened to her advise.
This was us 4 years later, she obviously came around.
And what I learned is that you can eat
your trash and have the girlfriend too.
This project was called "Trash Me",
this is the one that I just finished up
in September, and as I said, with so many
of these things we just never think about
it because the infrastructure is there,
it takes things away and then we never
have to think about it again.
The average America creates 4.5 pounds of
trash a day, throws it in the garbage can,
and then where does it really go?
The idea of this visual was to just
really help people to think about these
things on a daily basis.
You have the frozen pizza here. you have
the Starbucks cups, the red beer cups,and
the packaging from buying stuff, the
batteries, the plastic bottles.
The idea was to create that association in
people's minds and help people to
actually think about that.
The whole idea of all of this is to get
people to self reflect and think about
what positive changes that they can make
in their life, and so these are some of
the things that I have been making over
the past 5 years that I have found to be really beneficial.
These are some of the suggestions for
anyone who is inspired to make positive changes.
I broke these down into the basic aspects
of sustainable living: food, water,
energy. waste and transportation.
Each one of these is on m y website,
there is a guide for all of these, so food
or example is robgreenfield.org/food, and
it goes more in depth there.
So for food, some of the things are
eating as much local food as possible,
eating as much food that is grown in
Belgium, or if not Belgium, more like
Spain rather than New Zealand or Chile.
Eating as much organic, natural food as possible.
Stuff that is not sprayed with
pesticides, unpackaged foods.
Are there any grocery stores here that sell unpackaged?
Una? Una!
Going to stores like that where you can
buy foods where you bring your own
containers and full them up.
Whole foods, so not the grocery store but
foods that look basically like they did
when they came from the earth.
For example, apples rather than apple
sauce, potatoes rather than potato chips.
Growing your own food.
It is life changing, planting a seed and
actually seeing it turn into food, and
then eating it, it can be a very life- changing experience.
Eating seasonal, so stuff that is growing in season.
If it is in the middle of January and you
see strawberries in the store, thinking
"Where are these strawberries actually from?"
One of the simplest things we can do with
food is actually eat it.
The average person wastes about 25% of
all of their food.
Actually eating the food rather than
throwing it away.
Another big one is eating a lot more
fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds,
grains, and a lot less meat.
This actually is the one that causes the
most environmental impact, eating meat and animal products.
That one actually should be more at the top.
Which leads into the next one, which is water.
The average.... sorry, to create 1
hamburger takes about 660 gallons or about
3,000 liters of water.
To put that in perspective, on my bike
ride across the country, I went 104 days without showering.
Imagine 104 days without showering.
Now image turning that into an entire
year, which is what I did, and 1 year of
not showering, that was the equivalency
of 6 hamburgers worth of water.
2 months of showering is the equivalent of
one hamburger, that is how much water it
takes to produce meat, well, that is
particularly beef that is the most water intensive.
Other things you can do, is flush the toilet less.
If it is yellow, let it mellow, if it is
brown, flush it down.
Do you have that saying here?
It is new? I brought it to Belgium!
Take shower showers.
Every minute off of the shower is about
2 gallons.
Grow food and not lawns.
That is really one of the most enjoyable
things is rather than growing grass,
actually just growing food instead.
Using that water to grow food instead of grass.
Harvesting rain water, some people make
these things really complicated.
One thing about all of these things that
I am naming off is they are all designed
to decrease your environmental impact. but
the nice thing is that they do not
actually cost you money, they are all
designed to save you money, which means
you can work less and spend more time
doing the things that you want.
And then lastly, besides the fact that
most of these make the earth healthier,
they also make you healthier, which is the
nice thing about it.
Harvesting rain water, some people make
that really complicated and they get like
a $300 system, I did that when I first
started to harvest rain water. but then I
realized, you literally just have to
stick a bucket under your gutter, and
collect that water, it is as simple as that.
Installing efficient faucets, you can get
little faucet heads that cost about $3,
they use 75% less water, so switching
those things out takes a couple of minutes
and then you are saving a gallon and a
half for minute that you have it on.
Planting native, planting things that
naturally grow in the area.
Installing greywater, another thing that
you can do really simple is for example
put a 5 gallon bucket under your sink and
unscrew the thing so that it goes out to
the bucket, and then that goes out to the garden.
That is the simplest form of gray water.
Switching to CFL or LED bulbs.
LED bulbs cost more, but after about 3
months to a year they already have paid
for themselves in the amount of
electricity that you are using.
Finding an electricity free alternatives,
for example getting a juice press that is
a hand juice press rather than an electric one.
Or investing in alternative energy, you
can put solar panels on your roof or you
can just invest in a energy COOP that uses
the COOP money from people to create...
basically investing in an energy COOP.
And then the last thing, nature, simply
put, the more time that you are out in
nature, the less time that you are burning energy.
And then for waste, the 5 "Rs" are refuse,
reduce, reuse, repair, recycle.
One of the things that I never knew, even
the 3 "Rs" are reduce, reuse, recycle,
are actually in that order for a reason.
First it is reduce, then it is reduce, and
then lastly recycle.
People like Bea Johnson or Lauren Singer,
some of the leaders in the zero waste
movement and the people that are
practicing zero waste, the idea is not
actually recycle more, it is actually to
recycle less, because recycling is
a very energy intensive process, that is
why it is at the bottom.
Carrying a reusable water bottle, one of
the big ones is saying no to disposable items.
Anything that you look at and you would
say "Will I use this just one time and
then throw it away", instead finding a
reusable alternative, instead carrying
your own plate or bowl or utensils rather than disposables.
Buying unpackaged foods, buying used stuff.
What kinds of websites do you have around
here for buying used stuff?
They have Gumtree, Freecycle, Freegle in the UK.
Do you have those here as well? Yeah?
Buying used stuff, which means no virgin
materials are needed for you to have something.
Repairing things, so when something is
broken or slightly functioning, fixing it
rather than throwing it away and getting a new one.
Donating stuff that you do not need
anymore. giving it to friends or a
thriftshop rather than throwing it away.
Buying high quality stuff that wont
break, and composting.
And then for transportation, which is the last one.
One of the huge ones is going car free,
not owning a car.
Joining a car share program if you still
need to drive a car.
Driving less is a simple one if you are
going to own a car still, just simply
driving less makes a huge difference.
If you ride a bike, which there is no
point in even talking about this here, I
saw like a million bikes.
It is just unique for me to see...
actually when I got here, when I got into
the train station, that was the most bikes
I have seen in my entire life.
In the United States if there is like 6
bikes in the same space, it is like "Whoa, bikers!"
It is pretty cool to see what is going on here.
I will take the lesson from you on that
one and be quiet about the biking.
Public transportation, which I think is
pretty good in Belgium, when you are
complaining about transportation just
imagine being in the United States for a
little while, because it sucks over there,
and think about it that way.
Living near the places that you spend
your time, so that you spend less time
banging your head or being depressed in
the car and in public transportation,
being closer to places.
And then simply walking.
One of the last ones is supporting
environmental organizations, supporting
environmental non-profits.
As far as philanthropy goes, only 3% of
all philanthropic donations go to
environmental nonprofits, 97% goes elsewhere.
Donating to nonprofits that are working
on environmental issues goes a huge way.
The other thing is just volunteering with
them, just getting involved.
A lot of the time that is much... that can
be much more beneficial than money to
them, just getting involved and volunteering.
There is a really awesome nonprofit
which was started by Patagonia, the
clothing company, about 10 years ago.
If you own a business, you can join
"1% for the Planet", and your company
gives 1% of all of the revenue to
environmental nonprofits.
You donate directly to the nonprofits, not
to1%, and they certify it, like "Rainforest Alliance".
But just a month ago they started that
or individuals, so now we can donate 1% to different nonprofits.
And again, it does not go to them, they
just certify you as a "1% for the Planet" donor.
Just supporting environmental nonprofits
by volunteering or donating.
That is everything, and we have plenty of
time for questions, right?
Who has questions?
Forwarding? On, voting.
The question is, is there a reason why I
do not put voting in the things that you can do?
No, I think that voting is one tool in
the arsenal of making positive changes,
but it is definitely not my focus by any means.
I think especially on the local level
voting can be extremely effective.
I do not know what the political
situation is like here, but I know that
voting at the local level is where often
it can be the most beneficial for your community.
I did not... enough people vote and are
not doing these things, so I focus on
these things too.
Yeah?
Actually, the biggest thing that any of us
can do to make the largest environmental
impact is to eat a lot less meat, and eat
a lot more fruits and vegetables, a lot more plants.
One thing as I have said many times, I do
a lot of very extreme things, but when it
comes to all of this, my message is very much moderation.
It is not go 100% zero waste, maybe it is
not be 100% vegan, maybe it is not 100%
never get into a car, but it is do things more moderately.
Eating a lot more plant-based, is the
largest thing that we can do environmentally, really.
That would be the biggest one.
Plus, often most people eat way too much
of it and they become a lot healthier
without it, and so you start to feel better too.
Yeah?
Everything has been a transitional process.
Back in 2011 I started a marketing
company, I was at that time still fairly money oriented.
My first campaign, the bike ride across
the country, I had money from running a marketing company.
My earlier projects cost more money,
because the more you have, the more you spend.
But during this whole time I have been
transitioning away from having a lot of money.
So currently, my yearly annual salary cap
is $5,000 a year to keep myself as
minimally involved with money.
Now, my adventures are funded by being
really simple adventures.
You can bike across the country, living
simply without spending a penny doing that.
For example, dumpster diving for a lot of my food.
Wherever I stay, I always just stay with
friends or family.
I carry a tent so I can camp outside,
never staying in hotels.
By focusing on the very basic needs in
life, like this year I am doing a project
where I am not buying anything new, or
being given anything new for an entire year.
The less you need, the easier, so now with
my campaigns, they are mostly about how
you can live more simply.
As I have learned, early on I had that
money from the marketing company, but
overtime it has become less and less
necessary to have money.
And also, largely by living a life that is about relationships.
Because the more... the thing is that
everyone in this room, if we work
together, we can meet most every single
one of each others needs.
By sharing stuff, sharing resources,
sharing time, sharing skills, there is so
much more that we can accomplish.
For example with my videos, a lot of times
I work with videographers who want to make
a positive difference through their film,
and I am able to do something where they
are going to get good viewership on it
and feel good about it.
Does that kind of answer the question? Cool.
I still fly.
I try to minimize my flying, I have flown
twice in the last 12 months or so, maybe 3 times.
What I am doing now is... for me
personally, I find the more that I give to
others, the more that I live in the
service of others. often the more my basic
needs are met.
Which has been one of the really positive
things in life, is seeing that when you
put yourself out there and you help
others, that they are more likely to help
you as well.
So as far as flying, m