Transcriber: Rob Greenfield Team Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Ahhh.
Uhhh.
Whew!
For the last month, I have been living just like the average person -
eating, shopping, consuming,
just like so many of us are used to,
but with one big exception:
I had no garbage can.
Instead, I had to wear every piece of trash that I created.
Every coffee cup,
(Mmmm)
(Ahhh)
every plastic bottle, every shopping bag, every to-go container,
every Amazon delivery.
Every single piece of trash that I created.
“But what about toilet paper?” you might be wondering.
Toilet paper went down the toilet as usual.
(Laughter)
And don’t worry, I cleaned everything before I added it to this suit.
I mean, I didn’t want to have flies chasing me down the street
everywhere that I went.
From the shopping mall to the grocery store,
out to eat or on a date -
yes, I did go on a date;
her name was Jessica, and we got ice cream,
and here’s the container right here.
(Laughter)
I have been a walking billboard of consumerism,
from Hollywood to Beverly Hills, from the shopping mall to the beach.
So why would I do something like this?
Well, for most of us, our trash is out of sight, out of mind.
We simply throw it in the garbage can and never think about it again.
So I’m here to take you on a little journey
so that you have the opportunity to ask a question.
Is this what your trash suit would look like?
And where does your trash actually go?
But, before I go any further,
I just want to take you back to a little day in my life.
At home, I try to create as little trash as I can.
You’ve all heard of the three Rs, I’m sure: reduce, reuse, recycle.
Well, I try to follow at least 7 Rs:
rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, rot,
and then, as a last resort, recycle.
I compost; I buy secondhand items; I share things with my friends;
I fix items when they break; I grow some of my own food; I forage;
I carry my own reusable containers wherever I go;
I've ditched most disposable items.
And I’m going to talk about one little thing
that maybe we’re not supposed to usually talk about in public: our poop.
So I actually compost my own poop and grow food with it.
(Applause)
So I've gone to pretty great lengths to live sustainably,
whether it’s a year of growing and foraging
every single piece of food that I ate,
or living in a 10x10 tiny house built out of secondhand materials,
or biking across the country and creating just one small bag of trash,
I’ve made it my life’s mission to break free from consumerism,
show that there’s another way
and live in harmony with Earth, humanity and all our plants and animal relatives.
But for the last month, (Oohh)
I have set my normal life behind,
and I have immersed in the consumer lifestyle.
I didn’t try to create trash, and I didn’t try to avoid it.
I simply floated along in the breeze of consumerism.
I would go to the grocery store
and look to see what was in other people’s shopping carts,
and that’s what I’d buy.
I’d go to a restaurant and I’d ask,
“What’s the most popular meal on the menu?”
and that’s what I’d get.
That’s where this McDonald’s wrapper came from
around day 12, the Big Mac and fries.
So,
this suit is pretty heavy,
and I did come up with sort of a genius way to let the weight off my shoulders.
I simply rest these front bags on my legs,
and I can kind of just sit here and take the weight off my back.
Oh, that feels good.
So it was about two weeks into the month when I had my first realization.
I knew that I was going to be creating a visual of how much our garbage added up.
But what I didn’t realize
is that I was also going to feel the weight of our consumerism
with every step that I took.
For me, there was no “out of sight, out of mind.”
I had the burden on my shoulders.
Ooh.
So, forgive me, I may have to rest once in a while.
So it was about three weeks into the project
that I found that I could no longer fit into the car.
But,
(Laughter)
I was still able to get into the hatchback of the Prius that we had
and show up at one of the fanciest Hollywood restaurants
where I knew the paparazzi would be waiting.
And they were.
And I found a very unlikely place to fit in: Rodeo Drive,
(Laughter)
because this is actually a custom $2,500 trash suit.
So,
is this Gucci enough for you, Hollywood?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Ahh.
Ohh.
There were days where, honestly,
I just couldn't bring myself to put on the trash suit.
And so what I would do on those days is I would just stay home
because I didn’t have to wear it at home.
But even there, the trash continued to add up,
especially with the delivery meals that I was getting delivered to my door.
And
around day 25, I just, honestly,
so badly wanted to stop creating the garbage,
but I couldn’t because I really wanted to finish the month
and be a mirror for society to look at.
What kept me going every day
was the connections that I was making on the street.
Everywhere that I went, I was being met with curiosity and intrigue,
and that was turning into conversations with people from all walks of life.
And through these conversations,
I could really see the wheels just turning inside of people’s heads.
In spaces where you don’t usually see critical thought and self-reflection,
I saw it happening.
There’s one other thing that really kept me going,
and that was the trash hugs that I shared.
So does anyone want to share a hug with the trash man?
(Audience) Yeah!
(Laughs)
(Applause)
Awww.
Chantal: I love you, Rob. Rob Greenfield: I love you, Chantal.
(Laughs)
C: You’re wonderful. RG: Thank you.
So that is where the lavender essential oil was key on the hot and sweaty days.
(Laughter)
Ooh.
But there is a very real serious message here.
This is one month of living the average consumer lifestyle.
Seventy-two pounds of trash.
The average person creates about five pounds of trash per day
here in the United States.
That adds up to about 150 pounds per month,
and that's close to one ton of garbage per year.
So now imagine for a moment what 10 years of trash might look like.
That could cover this whole auditorium.
And now imagine a lifetime of trash.
That could be a small mountain of trash to leave behind for future generations.
But what you do see here is really just the tip of the trash iceberg.
According to “The Story of Stuff,”
for every garbage can that we put on the curb,
the equivalent of about 30 to 70 garbage cans of waste
are created up the production line.
Because of our globalized industrialized systems,
most of this stuff is all out of sight, out of mind,
all along the production line,
from extraction, to production, to distribution,
to consumption, to disposal,
destruction is happening that we are not seeing.
Ooh. I might need one of those rests.
Uhh.
So, one thing that was consistently happening on the street
is people would see me and they would say,
“Are you picking up litter?”
And I started to understand why.
It's because most people, when they see garbage, it's littering the streets.
Or maybe it’s the pictures of all the trash piling up in the oceans.
In fact, about one garbage truck worth of plastic
is dumped into the ocean every single minute on Earth.
So it is a lot.
But most of our garbage ends up in the landfill.
And I have another name for that:
organized littering.
It’s just piles of trash being put into the earth.
Out of sight, out of mind.
What does go there, sits there for generation after generation,
leaking out toxic fluids into our earth and releasing methane into our atmosphere.
Now, some of that trash, though, does go to incinerators where it’s burned,
and some of that is even turned into energy.
But that creates something called fly ash, which is very toxic,
and it releases chemicals into our air.
Plus, it’s not a very efficient process.
A lot of you might be looking at me and saying,
“Well, Rob, maybe you should just start recycling!”
But the reality is,
is that about 90% of plastics produced aren’t actually recycled,
and that’s by design.
Most plastic was never designed to actually be recycled.
And even when we do recycle,
it’s still a very highly resource- and energy-intensive process.
And you know those clear plastic,
well, not plastic, bio-plastic compostable cups you get your smoothies in?
Well, those don’t compost in a landfill,
and most cities don’t even have facilities to compost them anyway.
So whether it’s the landfill, incineration or recycling,
these are not solutions to the root of the problem.
These really exciting and expensive ideas
like bacteria that will eat our plastic and vacuums that suck up our trash,
although they are exciting, they also don’t get to the root of the problem.
I’ve really felt the weight of our consumerism over the last month.
But the truth is that I’ve just felt an absolute small portion of that burden.
The reality is, is that a majority of that burden is outsourced,
and our waste and our toxic production
is disproportionately put into marginalized communities
and communities of color.
The communities that actually contribute to the problem the least
are the ones that are paying for it the most.
So I want to talk a little bit about solutions,
because the solutions are out there.
True solutions go to the root of the problem.
They benefit the communities that are most affected by oppressive systems,
and they are accessible and available to us, the people.
True solutions work with reusing things
and reducing all of the trash we create in the first place
rather than dealing with it once it’s created.
Millions of people are breaking free from consumerism,
are taking power back and are becoming a part of the solution.
We need massive systemic change.
And the good news is that that is happening.
There are examples of governments and corporations around the world
showing that it is absolutely possible.
The solutions are out there, and they are waiting for you to join them.
So it’s all possible.
So now that you know that there is no away,
I invite you to remember this:
And next time you’re reaching for that consumer good, ask yourself,
if you had to wear that piece of trash,
would you still reach for it or would you find another way?
(Applause) (Cheers)