By: Jocelyn Schwalm
Imagine not having to, but wanting to, jump into a dumpster for your food supply. Or consider willfully going a year without showering. For Rob Greenfield, these are just some of the lengths the social activist boldly goes to in order to bring public awareness to the kind of havoc we are daily wreaking on the environment.
Rob Greenfield’s focus is on the good he can do for others. Having just 111 possessions to his name and taking a vow to never be worth more than 15 000 dollars, he takes minimalism to another level. Rob is a self-described “Dude Making A Difference,” and at 29 years old, he has a lot going for him. His aim is to demonstrate how even the smallest actions contribute to positive global changes, and he leads by example. Rob has accomplished multiple feats that most wouldn’t even attempt, to help our planet.
Living in a 50 square-foot minimalistic house, riding around the world on a bamboo bicycle and going a full year without a shower are just some of the achievements in his repertoire. On top of all of this, he even owns his own company, which brings awareness to just how much food we waste in North America.
His business, The Food Waste Fiasco, aims to lower food waste globally by making the public aware of just how much food gets thrown out. By dumpster diving, Rob has been able to bring attention to the fact that this food is still edible, and the waste it causes is not only terrible for the environment. Instead, it could help feed those who don’t have enough to eat on a daily basis. Once he collects enough, he makes a display of all the wasted food in local parks all across the United States to show consumers just how much good food is being wasted. Every year, on the trip from the farm to the time we consume it, 165 billion dollars of food is being wasted.
Rob has even vowed to demonstrate our overuse of water by refusing a shower. He stays clean by using only natural bodies of water (as well as one leaky fire hydrant in Brooklyn, New York.) He has now managed to stay clean naturally since 2013, without using a man-made shower. While continuing with his mission to lead by example, he rode a bamboo bike across America to put these issues he cares so deeply about into the public eye. To stay true to his sustainable roots, Rob now lives in a 50-square-foot house, where he only keeps his bed.
He uses solar panels to charge a single light that hangs above hs bed, and refuses to get Wifi in his house, so he can choose when to be connected and when to be off the grid. After getting his own show on Discovery Channel, Rob donates 90 percent of his income to nonprofit organizations. He is on a mission to save the planet by showing us the way that we can help, albeit in less extreme ways. He shows how it is not an impossible task to do a little better in the world every day. With a particular interest in the ways that we can live a happy life with less and help the environment, Rob Greenfield serves as an inspiration to anyone fearful of the fact that they might be too small or too insignificant to make a difference for our planet.
