Rob ​Greenfield: Be the Change in the Messed up World at TEDxIHEParis (Transcript)

It’s like a beer bong, except it is an ornamental plastic lawn duck, and you cut the foot off, you cut a hole in the beak, and you can fit about five beers in there.

This was my passion during college. I was – I was partying, chasing women, very much into material possessions and money. I had a part-time job during college, and that was, basically, talking to every girl that I saw. When I wasn’t successful, I found things like unlucky Christmas trees to be my mate for the night.  So my Sunday routine was that I would spend two hours shining my car, making sure that it looked as good as possible, and my goal was to be a millionaire by the time that I was 30 years old.

These were my focuses in life. But the thing was, at this time, I actually thought that I was sort of living an environment-friendly life, and the reason why is I was the one who was recycling the beer cans and the beer bottles after all our parties. I was the one who when Ricky had his faucet running while he was brushing his teeth, I was the one telling him: “Shut that faucet off, Ricky!” And I was the one who put in the energy-efficient bulbs at the house, so I thought that I was doing pretty good.

But then something happened after I graduated, and I realized that I had to totally transform my life. This is the part of the story where I’m supposed to tell you about some sort of near-death experience, some sort of moment of enlightenment; you know, an aha moment! But, actually, there was nothing like that, not for me.

I simply started to watch a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books, and started to realize that all of my little daily actions were causing destruction to the world around me. To everything that I loved: to people, to animals, to the earth, to the environment as a whole.

At this point, I could have felt that deep feeling in the stomach, the total doom and gloom, the total helplessness and hopelessness: “What can I possibly do? I’m just one guy.” But instead, I felt empowered because now I knew I’m a part of the problem, but now these documentaries and these books told me the solutions. I knew that I could change my life and be a part of the solution.

I started small, simple things, like carrying a reusable shopping bag to the grocery store instead of the disposable plastic ones. I started to ride a bicycle more and drive the car less. I started to shop at local businesses, the local farmers market rather than the big-box chain stores.

I changed the food I was putting into my body, no more of that packaged processed junk; instead, whole foods more plant-based foods, food that was actually good for me. And the thing was, as I made these changes, I thought that I was trying to live a more environmentally-friendly life, which I was, but what I found was, every time that I did something that was good for the earth, it was also good for me.

With these changes, I was becoming much happier and much healthier, and that made it easier to make more changes. What I did was I made a long list of all the changes that I wanted to make, and I hung it up right on my fridge, with the goal of just making one positive change per week. Just checking off one positive thing at a time.

And I learned something really important: Great change doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with one small change, and then another change, and then another change, and another.

And these changes are basically bricks in the foundation to a more environment-friendly life. Those things that in the past seemed like impossible feats, seemed like giant leaps, well, once you build that little foundation, they just become another step.

After about two years, I had made about a hundred positive changes in my life; that’s one change a week for two years. I started to really feel like I was becoming the change that I wanted to see in the world. But I felt like I needed to do more and show this way of life to more people and inspire more people to live a more environment-friendly life.

Keep in mind that at that time, I had no social media following that one person, I didn’t even have a website, and of course no media was reporting on what I was doing. So I came up with a crazy idea: I was going to bike across the United States on a bamboo bike, leaving no impact, no negative environmental impact whatsoever. That way I’d be living sustainability to the extreme while bringing this message to everybody that I met along the way.

In order to do that, I had to set basic ground rules for all of the aspects of sustainable living. Food, water, energy, waste and transportation; the things that we deal with on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not, and that cause environmental destruction.

For food, the rule was I could only eat local organic unpackaged food, which basically meant almost nothing that you could get at a typical grocery store. Actually, across the state of California that was fairly easy because they produce about half of the United States food.

But once I got out of there, I learned the term “food desert,” and that’s a place where there’s no access to healthy food. So I made one exception, and that was I can go dumpster diving. I probably would have felt like you, the first time: nervous, what are people going to think about me? And just the ego; I felt that ego.

I’m going to eat something out of a dumpster? But I went up to the dumpster, I looked inside, and, sure enough, it was full of perfectly good food; it was basically a treasure chest. And the first thing that I ever ate out of a grocery store dumpster was a still frozen, half gallon of Moose Tracks ice-cream. I didn’t have a spoon with me that day, so I just dug in with my sunglasses and ate it right there on the spot.

After that point, dumpster, after dumpster, after dumpster was filled with perfectly good food, but I wasn’t about to tell people about it, and here’s why. There was a girl who I was very much in love with back in San Diego; we weren’t together, but I was madly in love with her.

We talked on the phone and she told me, “Whatever you do, don’t tell anybody that you’re dumpster diving.” So I didn’t, for a little while, but we’ll get back to that.

For water, I could not use water from on the grid, for the entire summer. That would mean no taking a shower, turning on a faucet, using a flush toilet, any of these ways that were accustomed to using water on a daily basis. Instead, I got my water from lakes and rivers and rain, and I purified it so that I could drink right out of the natural sources of water.

For electricity, I couldn’t use any electricity from on the grid. That meant: no turning on a light switch, no using air conditioning or a fan, no plugging into an outlet for an entire summer. If I wanted to go into a store that had automatic doors, I had to wait till someone walked in and then hop in behind them. And by stripping my life back to the ultimate basics, only then was I able to start understanding how my actions affected the world around me. I started to realize how I was using electricity at every moment of the day.

For trash, the rule was I had to carry every piece of trash that I created all the way across the country with me. If I had a candy bar or a bag of potato chips, let’s say in California, that meant that wrapper had to come all the way to the finish line with me.

In 104 days, I managed to just create two pounds of trash, which is what the average person creates by about one o’clock in the afternoon, on any given day. And of course for transportation, the rule was no fossil fuels to cross the country. I could only use human power: cycling.

As you can imagine, 104 days of living sustainability to the extreme really ingrained this way of life, this philosophy, into me. When I got back to San Diego, I continued making more positive changes, but I really ran into a barrier. And that was that in my apartment electricity came when I turned the lights on and water was seemingly infinite on the tap, and I found myself wasting resources. So I decided I wanted to do what I did on the bike ride but do it in the city and live off the grid in a little tiny house. I went onto Craigslist, and I happened to find one online, and it said it was 950 dollars.

I thought, “Surely that must be a typo I mean, that’s less than a lot of people pay for rent, for a month, for a whole house.” I put the 950 dollars in my pocket, I biked up to the guy’s house, and I quickly realized why it was 950 dollars. It was basically a glorified shed on wheels. It was five feet wide – not quite wide enough for me to stretch fully – ten feet long, so not quite two of me long, and it was not quite tall enough for me to stand in.

But I thought I like to do extreme things, this would be a great way to get people to think about the size of their houses and a great way for me to simplify my life. At the tiny house, I was living completely off the grid. All of my water came from harvesting rainwater. A lot of people would think that maybe that’s impossible, given the normal way of turning on the tap, let alone in San Diego, which is a desert, let alone in a mega drought, which we were in at the time. What I’ve learned is that basically everything in life, whether it’s about environment- friendly living, anything in life is a matter of perspective.

The average American uses about 80 to 100 gallons of water per day. The average European uses about 50 gallons of water per day. And the average African uses 2 to 5 gallons of water per day. So to the person in Africa, it’s crazy to use 100 gallons, and to the person in America it’s crazy to use just the 5 gallons.

So what I learned is that since everything is a matter of perspective, once you change your perspective, you can change so much of the world around you overnight.

At the tiny house, all of my electricity came from these small solar panels. I learned another really important lesson. A lot of people, when they think of sustainable living, they think it’s only accessible to the wealthy because they think of the really expensive electric cars and the giant solar panels on the roof, and all these gadgets. But what I learned is that sustainable living is a spectrum. For me, the reason I was able to make it work is by simplifying my life.

I could create all the electricity I needed with very little money because I needed less. And by doing it that way, it’s something that was accessible to many more people. OK, so if you asked that guy that was doing the duck bongs and chasing every girl in sight in college, what he thought he’d be doing in five years, he certainly would not have said this; he would not have said that he’d be pooping in a five-gallon bucket and composting his own poop.

But something happened through all of this, and I learned that every time something is really easy, really convenient, what that means is that the burden has been outsourced elsewhere. Flushing a toilet: you hit that lever, poop is out of sight, out of mind, you don’t have to think about it; it’s someone else’s problem to deal with.

Composting means I have to do the work. But rather than making a waste product that someone has to deal with, it turns into a valuable resource that can be used to grow food. I’d love to talk about poop for another 10 minutes, but we’ll move on.

So I lived a near zero-waste lifestyle at the tiny house, and this is the amount of trash that I would typically create in a month. It was more than on the bike ride because I didn’t have to carry it with me everywhere I went but still about 30 times less than the average person.

As you can see, it’s very obvious, I really take things to the extreme; I do a lot of extreme things. The idea behind it isn’t for you to do extreme things as well, the idea is really just to get you to stop and think about all of these environmental and social issues.

When I first started to do all of this, I said that I was very worried about what people would think about me, and there was this girl who told me on the phone not to tell anybody that I was dumpster diving. Well, here we are hosting a food waste fiasco. We have now been together for about two and a half years, and she doesn’t get in the dumpster with me, but she’ll stand next to it, and I pass the food out to her.

And this is proof that you can eat the trash and have the girl too. Talk about worrying what people think about you – Imagine wearing your trash around New York City for an entire month. What would people be thinking about you? I’ve always believed that as individuals, each one of our actions matter, and that each one of us can have a positive impact on the world.

Sure, we’re all one in seven billion, but I truly believe that our actions matter, but never did I feel it this strong as till the last day of this project, when I was sitting there, covered in trash, and I started thinking: Imagine, this is how much trash one person creates in a month.

Now imagine one year. Imagine ten years. Imagine a lifetime. In one lifetime, you can create a small mountain worth of trash or no mountain of trash to leave behind for future generations at all. Proof that our actions as individuals really do matter and can make a hugely positive impact. So the point of all this isn’t for you to run out here, wanting to wear all of your trash or dive into every dumpster you see or own just 111 possessions.

The point is what can we all do as individuals to have a positive impact on the world around us. So, I’ve got a challenge for you. Remember how I said when I first started all of this? What I did is make a long list of changes that I wanted to make in my life, I hung it up right in the kitchen with the goal of checking off just one thing a week. My challenge for you is to take out a piece of paper, think of one positive change that you can make – just one.

Write that down on that piece of paper, and when you get home, hang it up, right there in your kitchen. Wherever you see it every day. And then make that change. Once you’ve made that change, make another. And when you’ve done that, make another, and then another, and another until you become the change that you wish to see in the world.

Thank you and enjoy!

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