Rob Greenfield Speaking in Gent, Belgium

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