 All right, well, it's very nice to be here with you all. This is actually the third time I've come to Stephen's point to talk, 2016, 2019. And here we are again. So thank you to Stephen's point for having me back so often. I feel like it's a sign that we probably have some things in common. How many of you were at either of those talks? All right, not many. That's ideal because I really don't like saying the same thing twice to anybody. I find that to be kind of boring. So I'm glad that most of you haven't been before. So and thanks to Dave for putting this on and to the Sustainability Department. And yeah, so glad that we're here in this room together rather than on Zoom. It is so much more enjoyable. So I'm going to share some of my projects with you. And some of you have seen some of my work before that Kenzie mentioned. And some of you will be the absolute first time. So I'm going to start by introducing some of those projects. And one of my goals tonight is to share simple things that you can do to get involved in living a life where your actions are in alignment with your beliefs. So I guess before getting started, I'll give one little disclaimer. And that is that I take on sort of extreme endeavors. I do things that are really designed to catch people's attention, catch mainstream media's attention, and get people to stop and self-reflect in these times that we live in. So the purpose of these is not that other people do, by any means, exactly what I do. It's not that other people need to do extreme things. It's really just about competing with the multi-billion dollar advertising budgets to get these other messages out there and show people how far you can go at the same time. So just remember that tonight, not to get overwhelmed by how much you can do, but starting with what you actually can do now. So one of my campaigns is called the Food Waste Fiasco. So I've dived into a couple thousand dumpsters across the United States. A good number of them in Wisconsin, from the Mississippi over to Lake Michigan. And the reason why is we waste about half of all the food that we produce in the United States while about one in seven Americans are food insecure. So I wanted to create a visual that would help people to understand this issue. So what you see here is just two days with the dumpster diving in Madison, Wisconsin, mostly grocery store dumpsters. And this is just a sampling of the type of food that we find. So I can tell you that in the United States, the amount of food we waste is equivalent to the budgets for every National Park, Public Library, the FBI, the FDA, and Veterans Health Care combined. It's a massive number. But it's hard to really picture that. So that's the idea is to create visuals that help us to understand the big picture and then plug in the solutions, what we can do about it. Another one of my projects was to bike across the United States on a bicycle made out of bamboo. And I've done that three times, actually. And the first time was the intention was to try to live out sustainable living to the extreme. When I was most of your age, I actually wasn't into sustainable living yet. So I had to dive into it and really immerse myself once I started to get into it. So this was 2013, and the idea was to bicycle across the United States off the grid and try to use as little resources as I possibly could. In another one of my projects, I wanted to create a different narrative to one that you commonly will see if you turn on the mainstream news. And that is that the world is this place to fear, that everybody outside of the United States, everybody who's not American, is someone to fear or to compete with or something of that sorts. So for a lot of my experience, when you turn on the mainstream media, there is this idea that the world is this dangerous, violent place. And I haven't watched TV too much lately, but for a while it was, when I was, it was like Mexico is this bad place. It's this dangerous place. So I didn't think that was true. And I wanted to show people. So what I did is I flew to Panama with no money, with just the clothes on my back and passport. And I had to travel home on the kindness of others through Central America, through Mexico, back to the United States. And 37 days, about 4,000 miles of traveling. And the only words that I could mutter out of my mouth when I got home were just people are good. That was the main central feeling that I experienced through the whole trip. One of my projects was called Trash Me. This was 2016. And we live in a time where our waste systems have made it very convenient for us to waste and not see it. For most of us, garbage is out of sight, out of mind. We simply put it into the garbage can. The garbage truck comes and picks it up. And we really don't have to think about it again. But what you start to learn when you look into our waste systems, there's this idea that we're throwing things away. But you realize there is no away. This is one earth. And everywhere we put our garbage is somewhere. There's another name for the landfill. And that's just organized littering. Just because we decided to put it all in this one space doesn't mean it's not basically littering this earth. So the idea of this project was inspired by Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, where he ate only McDonald's for 30 days. And I said, well, how can I get this that obviously works so well, and use this concept to apply to getting us to think about how much waste we create? And so I decided instead of eating McDonald's for 30 days, I would live like the average US American, eat, shop, consume like the average person. But the catch was that I had to wear every single piece of garbage that I created. So this is day about 30 of the project. The average US American creates about 4 and 1 half pounds of garbage per day, which is 135 pounds per month. This is about 87 pounds of garbage that I was wearing on my body for that month. And then over the years, one of my big focuses has been on simplifying my life. So this picture here is 2019. And this was after eight years of working on downsizing and simplifying my life. I got myself down to just 44 possessions, all of which fit in that backpack on my back. That was literally everything that I owned, nothing stored anywhere of any sort. Just 44 items down to the passport, the two pairs of underwear, the one pair of socks, a postcard, every single item kind of does an item. And one of the reasons for this is that we live in a time when one of the main narratives is that by having more stuff, you'll be happier and healthier. You'll be an important member of society. That's what we're often told when we see these commercials and we watch these movies. But one of the things that we've seen actually is that for the first time, even though we have more stuff than ever, and we have bigger houses than ever, our material wealth is increasing. You see that our health and happiness is actually decreasing. So while our house sizes have doubled from about 1,500 to 3,000 square feet, you would think, OK, maybe contentment would have doubled or purpose or happiness. But in fact, we're actually seeing those things on the decline. So it's about the purpose of this is not for anyone to own just 44 possessions, but it's about asking, how do we feel about our stuff? Is our stuff making us happier? Are these things giving us purpose? Are we living the lives that we want? Or are potentially they actually a trap that doesn't allow us to be who we really want to be and do what we really want to do? And then I've lived in two tiny houses. The one on the top was in San Diego, California. And I lived there for a year. And then the one on the bottom is in Orlando, Florida. So the first house was 50 square feet. So it was about five feet wide. So I couldn't quite stretch my arms out sideways. And it was about 10 feet long. So about from here to, I don't know, about here. And then it was just tall enough for me to like, not fully stand, but quite a bit stand. But then the second tiny house, this was built out of 99% secondhand materials for about $1,300. And it looks like a shed because I was illegally in a backyard in Orlando. And I wanted it to look like a shed so that most people would see it would just assume that it was a shed. So I was kind of blended in. And then lastly, one of my most recent projects was embarking on a year of growing and forging all my food. So when I first got into sustainability in 2011, food was one of the gateways for me, learning about our food system. And I kind of always had the question, would it be possible to get away from that food system, the global industrial food system? And is it possible in the 21st century in a Western society to actually live off the land to grow and forge all your food and not have to ever take a trip to the grocery store? That was a question I had for a long time. And it wasn't until the end of 2017 that I decided to finally answer that question for myself. And so for one year, I decided no grocery stores, no restaurants, nothing packaged or processed, nothing shipped long distances, not a drink at a bar, even my salt. I harvested from the ocean my vitamins and minerals. I had to harvest that as well, down to the oil, everything. No gifts of food from others and no dumpster diving. Because I had already proved that I could live off the waste of the industrial food system. The purpose of this was seeing is it possible to live independently of it. So that's what I set out to do. And that was in 2018 to 2019. And originally, I gave myself just six months to go from not growing any of my food. I arrived in Orlando with my backpack of possessions and basically very little money and no land. And I gave myself six months to be growing and foraging all of my food. It took me a little longer than six months. I met a lot of great people in the community. This, for example, is one of the gardens that I created. And this is in somebody's front yard. So I didn't own any land. What I did is I just made connections with people in my community. And I had six front yard gardens throughout the community. So one year was successful. It's ups and downs, but I did indeed see that it is possible to step away from the global industrial food system. So a lot of people see this work. And as I mentioned, a lot of these projects are a little bit extreme. So some people assume that maybe I've always been environmentalist, always been in this field. But I want to rewind a little bit. And this is me at University of Wisconsin La Crosse when I was in university, the one right here. And so what you see here, this is called a duck bong, which is a plastic ornamental lawn duck with a hole cut in the beak and one of the feet cut off. And you could fit about five beers inside of this. So this is largely what I was doing in university. I was very passionate about alcohol, binge drinking, partying, and the likes. And the reason that I was partly doing that is because I saw that as the way to be normal, to fit in. In this picture, I am seeing making out with a Christmas tree. And so you could maybe say I was always a tree hugger, but not exactly in the same way. I'll leave that one up there. No, I'll take that down. So the reason that I show those is that I just want to share a little bit about where I started. And I think it's probably similar to most of you in this room. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin in Ashland, 3 and 1 half hours north of here. And so as many of you, I grew up in a society where there's kind of just one way. This is the way that life is, the normal way. And I never really quite felt like I fit into that. So I grew up pretty low income. My mom raised us four kids. And my mom made something around $15,000 or $18,000 a year. We did have a lot of support from others. But definitely I felt very poor. And I found myself constantly comparing myself to others who weren't poor. My best, almost all my best friends happened to be, had parents who had money. And so that was what I was comparing myself to. Also, I'm Jewish. And in Northern Wisconsin, there's not many Jewish people. And so the only exposure that I had to Jewish people was through mostly stuff on the media. And that was mostly watching South Park. And I think it was Kyle. He never said anything nice about Jewish people. So I actually grew up thinking that Jew was a bad word. I actually thought Jew was like a slander. So because of these feelings of being different, one other one is that in Northern Wisconsin, a lot of people have a lot of relatives. Well, the Greenfields, they were just the five of us. And there wasn't a single other one in the state of Wisconsin. So I felt like an outsider, someone that way. So I had a lot of reasons that I felt different. And that, in my younger days, that led to me wanting to belong. Which, for me, in Wisconsin, belonging meant basically being relatively normal. So I decided that a fairly, I decided in my teens, late teens or early 20s, that my goal was to be a millionaire by the time I turned 30 years old. I was pretty focused on material possessions and financial wealth. Even when I got my first new car, I would spend up to two hours every Sunday shining it, cleaning every little part. I was very materialistic, very ego-based. And it was really just wanting to belong, ultimately. Which is, I think, what most of us are trying to do on a daily basis is be loved, love others, feel loved, belong, have purpose. And that was the way that I had learned through just osmosis from society around me, whether it's TV or at school or whatever. But then something happened, and I realized that I wanted to radically transform my life. And a lot of people would expect, OK, there must be some sort of big moment of enlightenment or some sort of like aha moment. But I didn't have anything like that. I just started to watch a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books. And I learned that almost every single thing that I was doing was causing destruction to the Earth. The food that I was buying that was coming from factory farms that was being shipped halfway around the world. The cheap junk that I was buying that was being made by people working in horrible conditions that I did not support but was buying from. The trash that I was creating that was filling up our landfills or making it to our oceans and rivers and forests. The gas that I was pumping into my car was part of the military industrial complex. My tax dollars were part of the prison industrial complex and police brutality and all these inequalities and injustices. My money was in Chase Bank, which is a huge investor in all sorts of destructive projects. And my investments were in IRAs, which included cigarettes and fossil fuels. Even the water that I was drinking in San Diego was being pumped a couple hundred miles across the desert where half of it was sinking into the desert or evaporating off. So to the point where the sea of Cortez is running dry. And this is every single thing I'm doing. Every single thing that I'm doing is causing destruction to the Earth, to people, and to other species. So I was 25 when I learned that. I had been fairly oblivious to that point of this. And at that point, I could have felt a lot of doom and gloom. I could have felt very hopeless and helpless. Like, I'm guessing most people in this room have experienced. Dave mentioned the term climate anxiety, which is, I haven't heard that many times, but apparently that's something a lot of people experience today. And I can understand and relate to that. But I actually wasn't feeling much of that because I was actually feeling excited and I was feeling empowered. Because as I was learning about all these problems, I was learning about solutions. I was learning that there was another way of doing things and that it was possible. I was young enough to take advantage of that and change my life. I didn't have a mortgage or kids or things that were tying me down. I was free to change my life. So what I decided to do was basically take it one step at a time. I saw where I wanted to get to, but I knew that I couldn't just get there magically. So I set practical goals. And what I decided to do was make a list of all the changes that I wanted to make. I was always a goal-oriented person, so now I was gonna take that goal-oriented person I was and put it towards something beyond myself, the earth, humanity, and all our plant and animal relatives. So I made a list of changes that I wanted to make. I hung it up in my kitchen. Did I talk so long that this thing went to sleep? Or am I just pressing the wrong button? There we go. Well, this was my kitchen. So I made a list of the changes that I wanted to make and I put them up in my kitchen, right by the front door, so that everybody who came over would see them, which would keep me accountable. And then I taped a pen to a piece of string and hung that up next to my list of changes that I wanted to make. And my goal was just to make one positive change per week. So imagine if you woke up tomorrow in like 12 hours and you were doing 100 things differently. That would be pretty radical. It'd be pretty crazy to be walking around and being like, whoa, this and this all these things I'm doing differently, like who am I? But by taking it one step at a time, my goal was to make one positive change a week for two years. That would be 100 positive changes in a relatively short period of time. So for example, this is going to the farmer's market. I stopped buying my food at Walmart and double plastic bagging it and I started to go to the local farmer's market. This is, you'll also see cash in my hand. I stopped swiping that credit card every single time and instead making local transactions. Starting to eat whole foods rather than the packaged processed foods. Starting to buy local foods from people that actually grew the food rather than from places that I had no idea where it was from. This was my food shelf. You can see all this food in jars. So I learned about, well I knew about this already because there's a co-op in Ashland where I grew up. But I started to buy food from the bulk section so I could fill up my own containers and not have any garbage. One of the nice things about doing that is that it's a lot harder for corporations to hide ingredients that you don't want in whole foods. Once the food is packaged in process, they can slip a whole lot of things in there but with whole foods, and I'm not talking about the grocery store, just like lowercase whole foods, you just eat simple ingredients that are more connected to the land. One of the early changes that I made too was not wanting to be covering my body with toxic chemicals as well as my counters and my floors and my bathroom. So I took all these toxic products out of my house. You could see the lip balm and the moisturizer and the Clorox bleach. Oh, I haven't looked at this picture in a long time. The Lucky Cologne and then I think that's the Old Spice deodorant. So why was I using most of this stuff? Because I had seen it on TV or I had seen my friends. Why was I wearing Old Spice? Because they have millions of dollars to sell me on the idea that I need their Old Spice. But as I was waking up, I was thinking about it and I thought, yeah, haven't human beings existed for like tens of thousands of years without Old Spice? Isn't it possible that maybe after all I don't need Old Spice? So I stopped using deodorant 10 years ago and you're welcome to come share a hug and see what 10 years of not wearing deodorant smells like and I think you'll find it very pleasant. So a lot of this is, it's about thinking holistically. So a lot of this exists because of what we're putting into our body. When our bodies are off-balance, we're more likely to be creating some off-balance smells. But when you are eating Whole Foods and you're exercising and you're spending more time outside and you're doing a lot of these things, your body doesn't need it anymore. So another thing that I started to do was just start to get involved in my community a little bit more. One of my big changes was in 2013 I stopped drinking alcohol. And I found that to be one of the absolute biggest changes because instead of going out drinking at night to meet my sense of belonging and my socialization with others, I started to do things that were more productive. Like for example, doing trash cleanups with people where we're socializing, we're having fun, but we're actually doing something for our community. And what happened as I was doing this, I found that being less hung over, not being hung over anymore gave me a lot more motivation to do most of the things that I wanted to and just made everything so much easier. You know, starting to ride my bike more and more and drive the car a lot less and a lot easier to eat healthy because when I was drunk it was just very common that I'd be eating all those greasy junk foods that I didn't want to be eating and all of that. So another early change was getting involved in my community. So I asked about what people wanted to hear about before coming and there were a few things that were shared so I'm gonna touch on a few of each of these things and then I'm gonna open it up probably and we'll see 10, 15 minutes for questions and I wanna leave a lot of time for questions because I'd really like to just hear whatever it is you're most interested in and my guess is that most of you will take joy in the questions that others ask as well. So one of the things that people were interested in learning about is how to live a more zero waste lifestyle. Well actually I think before I mentioned that just I wanna finish up with the changes. So what happened was I found it easier and easier to make more of these changes and as I built the foundation of a more sustainable life by doing one step at a time what I found is that the bigger changes that I thought to be not sure if they were possible became in the realm of thinking. So for example, one of the things that I really had been intrigued by was the idea of existing without a car. How many of you don't own a car? So maybe like 10% or so. So yeah, it's a pretty Wisconsin thing to own a car. I mean it's a pretty US American thing to own a car but here in Wisconsin it's living in the countryside. A lot of us it's like kind of our lives, the cars. To the point where even I remember growing up if you saw an adult man or woman riding a bicycle but wearing plain street clothes like not spandex I would assume they had a DUI. That was the reason they were driving because they weren't allowed to drive a car. Like that was my social stigma around it. So having a car was early on it was my freedom from parents, from being tied to a place and being able to get out and explore. It was freedom but it was also cars for many of us our image were often identified by our car. So the idea of being an adult who doesn't own a car also the social stigma is kind of like you don't own a car like what do you pour or do you have no ambition or things like that that's the mindset that I had. But after a year or so of making changes I decided I was gonna get rid of my car and so the thing that I did was I simply parked it for a month. The idea was I was gonna pretend for a month that I didn't have a car and see how it went and it went great and after a month I said okay I can do this so then I sold my car and after I sold my car I checked, you know I beating myself on the chest and I called my friends and they answered and I was like okay I'm still here you can't exist without a car this is great. So then that's after about about a year and a half or two of that that's when I decided to start doing activism the things that I mentioned earlier with the idea of showing people that another way is possible. And so my life has been a balance between just being who I wanna be, living my belief system. I had gone from maybe a level 10 or nine hypocrite down to maybe a level five hypocrite when I started that activism. I felt like sure I still have a lot of hypocrisies but I'm in a place where I can show people that another way is possible and teach. And so that's some of the balances that I have in life is just being who I wanna be living a good life but also being out there and showing people that another way is possible. So one of the things that people were interested in hearing about tonight is a little bit about living a more low waste lifestyle. You might have heard the term zero waste and that can be a little daunting sometimes to have it be zero but it's a hip term that you know it's out there and I still use it but a better way to put it is low waste because nobody goes zero waste in all reality so a more low waste lifestyle. So when I lived in San Diego, this bag represents the amount of trash I would generally create in a month. So if you compare that to me in that trash suit that was a month. So one little bag or 135 pounds. And so you can see that there's a spectrum, you know 135 pounds a bag but there's also in between and depending on our situations we can get somewhere in that range. So one of the really important, I'm less of someone to give exact tips because those are all out there. For me it's more about a little bit of the philosophy and the inspiration behind it. And you know when it comes to waste we live, one of the things that I see in our society is that it can be a very polarized society. Basically there's sort of this one way of doing it. There's like a right or wrong, a black and white. And one of the really important things that I've learned is that the reality is that things are generally a shade of gray not black and white. And so what a lot of us are is we are a creation of the normal situation around us. And what I started to realize when it comes to zero waste and many of these other things is that ultimately normalcy is pretty much an illusion. Because, I just lost my train of thought. Yes, so when it comes to waste, so in the United States we have about 5% of the world's population. So about 5% of the people in the world live in the United States. But we consume about 25% of the world's resources. So basic math says that that's not normal. It's actually very extreme to have 5% of the world's population and consume 25% of the world's resources. Yet to us it can feel absolutely just normal. And the reason it's normal is because that's what we've seen by most of the people around us day after day, week after week, year after year. So the idea for some people of going from creating a lot of waste down to creating none can seem basically impossible. But that's because they're basing it on their frame of reference of doing it the way that everybody else around them has done. So one of the most important things if you wanna make shifts whether it's zero waste or minimalism or growing your food and getting away from the grocery store or living in a tiny house is just stepping away from that feeling that you have to do things the way that other people have done them. Um, so a little bit about downsizing. I mentioned that I grew up very, that I wanted to have a lot of material possessions. When I was a kid I actually had 700 beanie babies. So I was very into stuff. And when I had woken up in 2011 that was when I realized ultimately that the more stuff that I had the harder it was to really live the life that I wanted. That I was basically stuck to my stuff continuously updating all of the applications getting the newest computer or phone paying all of my bills and all of these things. So a couple of the big recommendations I have for those of you that are trying to simplify and downsize is to simply start by looking at your stuff looking at what you have. And how I started was you probably have all heard of Marie Kondo, the what she says does it spark joy? Well, when I started in 2011 I'm sure Marie Kondo was at it for a long time but I hadn't heard of her yet. So, but what I was asking was simply does this add value to my life or does it take away? I would look at an item and I say is my life better with this in it or would my life be better without it? So one of my recommendations is to go through your stuff and ask that about each item. And if the answer is no, I don't want this and it doesn't improve my life that's where you can start. That's the easy stuff to downsize and get rid of. Now the ones that you look at and say these add incredible value to my life and I love them, there's no reason to not have that. So start with the things that are extraneous that are actually taking away from your quality of life. The other question that I ask is have I used this in the last six months or 12 months or so? And so what I started to do, I lived in a three bedroom apartment and I had the biggest bedroom in the apartment plus a closet. I started to go through everything and asked these two questions. And one of them was have I used this in the last six to 12 months? And if the answer was no, I'd get rid of it. And I did that every six or 12 months and each time I cut my stuff in about half and then half and half. Eventually I got it down to where I was living in the six by six closet of my three bedroom house and then eventually I got to living in the tiny house and then eventually I got down to 111 possessions and then eventually I got down to 44 possessions. So it was a little bit at a time and that's another really important thing with all of this is just remembering you can only be you, you can't be anyone else, you can only be in the moment that you're in and you can only be where you are at that time. So you have to start there. You can't start as someone else, you can't start somewhere else. You have to start exactly with who you are in that time and you can't look at someone else and say I want what they have 10 years, and they started at some point. So starting where you are and focusing on that. And a little tip with getting rid of things that might have sentimental value, but actually you don't want. This is a question that people often ask me, like for example, what about you have a guitar, you never play it, you don't really want it, but you love it and you hold that sentimental value. So a recommendation for that is find somebody who would love that guitar and share it with them and that way you can get joy out of giving it away and even follow up with them every month and say and have them send you a tune on occasion on the guitar. Okay, so a little bit about growing food. How many of you have interest in growing some of your own food? Almost everyone here. And how many of you are growing a little bit of your own food? All right, so not nearly as much. So I mentioned that when I grew and foraged all of my food for a year, I started with basically no experience. My mom had some mint and some chives and some snapdragons growing up and in San Diego I grew a little bit of food. But when I started this project, I was basically asking, I was going to the internet and typing in how much sunlight does kale need? How much water to put on a carrot seed? Do I put my plants in a greenhouse or do I put them directly into the ground? How much sun just in general goes on a garden? Like all of the absolute basics. And one of the big tips that I would say is that I started off just going to Google and asking these questions. But one of the most important things is to connect with your local resources. And here in Stevens Point, you have a lot of local resources. So one of my big recommendations for starting to grow food is not to do it alone. Volunteer at a local farm. Get a plot at a local community garden. Find a friend who has a garden and split the work with them in their garden and start with them. You don't have to do it alone. There's so many people that are doing it already and you will become a great friend to any gardener if you're happy to weed. That's something all gardeners need is someone to help them with weeding their garden. And a little wake up call, gardening requires work. A lot of people go into it with this magical idea that is just fun. But the reality is that it doesn't take long to plant the seeds. Most of the time is spent weeding or working with your soil or the things that people don't take the glory in. So knowing that in advance could definitely be pretty helpful. But yeah, so getting involved and starting to grow with others. And then finding local resources as well. So one of the big keys to success is growing what grows well in your area. So here's what I don't recommend doing. Walk down the grocery store aisles and look at all the foods you like and just say, that's what I'm gonna grow. Because those grocery store aisles are from a globalized industrialized food system where that food could be coming from anywhere on earth grown in any different season. So the key is instead go to the local gardens and gardeners and farmers and ask them what grows so ridiculously well that you can't kill it. What food becomes a problem because you just end up with so much of it and start with those. A lot of people start gardening and then they walk away calling them saying that they have a black thumb. But I think if you focus on some of these sorts of things rather than just saying, I want giant tomatoes because sure, that's cool but maybe giant tomatoes don't grow well in your area. So finding out what grows really well in your area is another way to do it. And now you, so this, I wish I had a before picture but before I started this was just a blank front yard a just grass front yard and this is two years later. So it went from a grass front yard to producing hundreds of pounds of food. But you don't have to have a whole front yard to be able to grow some food. It's amazing what can be grown just on a balcony or a small backyard or even just a window sill with herbs. So definitely I recommend starting small. It's great to have a garden of your dreams but the only way you'll get to a garden of your dreams is by starting a little bit at a time. And my recommendation is the first year just grow like a half dozen or so different plants. Things like some of the easy ones like some basil, some greens, some herbs, tomatoes and such. And then each year you can add on more and more. And one of the absolute ways that I recommend starting is with greens. They're one of the easiest to grow and they can produce a lot. So a little bit on that, we can talk more about that at the end. So I wanna talk a little bit about societal norms. This here is a compost toilet. How many of you have pooped into a compost toilet? All right, not as many people. And how many of you want to poop into a compost toilet? More people than have done it, so that's a good sign. I wish I had one here for you right now so you could do it. So in some places, pooping into a compost toilet is actually pretty cool. Like you might score some points with your friends for doing that. But in a lot of places, it's considered to be a pretty low thing to do in society. Like our society has basically said, we don't wanna deal with any of our waste. We wanna flush that down the toilet and have someone else deal with it. Have it be someone else's problem. And boy is it a problem. I was in Vero Beach, Florida back in 2016 and I picked up the local newspaper and it said three million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the river. And I was like, wow, that's a lot. And underneath it said, fourth largest spill in two years. And I was a bit shocked. I did not realize. I had bought the idea that our sewage systems and our water cleaning systems were doing their job. But not so much. When we poop into that water, a lot of times that makes it into our waterways. So for me, this was the pooping into a bucket and dealing with my own waste. That took me about five years from the time that I woke up and I started making those hundred plus changes. This took me a while. One of the main reasons is because of the social stigma. Because I didn't know, like if people would still take me seriously if they knew that I was crapping in a bucket. And then two, just the ego element of it. Dealing with your waste in many societies is considered to be something that people that are less than you do. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about is a little bit about social norms. So I was doing some math when I was thinking about how I was spending my life based on people thinking about me. And I used to spend a decent amount of time gelling my hair. I remember when I, back when I had wings, I would like get my hair wet, put a hat on and bike around the block just to have my hair going out like that. Or putting on the clothes, not liking them, putting on other clothes. And I realized that if you just spend one hour every day thinking about what other people are thinking about you and designing your life based on that, that that's five years of your life. Five entire years of your life if you just do that for one hour a day. So I said, whoa, what could I do with that? One hour a day, which is five years. So instead of thinking of life from what will other people think, I decided to think about life through the lens of is this beneficial to the earth? Is it beneficial to my community? And is it beneficial to myself? And by changing that single frame of reference that was really what set me free to be able to do a lot of the activism work that I've done and simply be myself in a society that doesn't always make it easy to be yourself. So there's a lot of ways to do that. Dump surviving is a great way to humble yourself, reduce your ego, so is crapping in a bucket. That'll definitely help. But I did little experiments like even one week for a week I only ate with my hands. Whether I was at a restaurant or at home or at a friend's house because it got me out of my comfort zone and it had me doing different things. The more times you do things differently the more it becomes normal to you to be different and the more normal it is to be different the easier it is to go against the grain of society. Because what most of us in this room are doing is we're kind of consistently going up the grain of society which makes it very hard to be who we really wanna be. But the more you get used to going against the grain of society the more you realize you could never go back to that. Like my hell would be waking up and all of a sudden being normal. That would be a bad day. But that wasn't the way before. So you know, okay. So I think the last thing I wanna share before we take time for hearing everything that you wanna ask is so I've definitely heard from a lot of people recently that they experience a bit of anxiety because of the state of the world which is very reasonable. Because the state of the world is a little bit crazy a lot of the time. And so because of that and you know I know for a lot of college students and people my age as well like our demographic we're waking up to these problems and we don't wanna be the problem. We wanna actually have a chance at a sustainable future. And that can be daunting. And so there's a lot of anxiety out there and there's a lot of stress. So one thing that I wanna say is just because you were born in this time doesn't mean that the weight of the world belongs on your shoulders. We don't have to solve the world's problems. We don't have the responsibility to solve the world's problems. And none of you can solve all the world's problems. It's nice to know that actually rather than live in a delusional state of believing that you can solve all the world's problems because that creates a lot of stress. So a lot of people ask being one in billions of people I think it might be eight billion now close to that. You know, can you actually make enough difference where it's worth it? Because we don't need to just stop using plastic straws if we're talking about living in an equitable, just, regenerate, sustainable world. We need much bigger changes than that. So a lot of people because of that they can get their head focused on only the big picture but they forget that they are a part of this world. So my recommendation, both for the sake of being able to make an impact and also for the sake of maintaining your sanity is to start with yourself. If you can focus on the things that you can control rather than on the things you can't control you can work on becoming a more empowered human. So many of these changes in themselves are, they're small and they certainly are not changing the world. Like starting to use a reusable water bottle that in itself is not going to save the world. But when you do that and you've made hundreds of other changes it's much more than those individual changes. What it is is it's empowerment because what corporations and governments don't want corrupt governments and corporations is empowered people because when you can actually stand up to a corporation and say I don't need you because you've no deep inside yourself that you don't need them, that's powerful. And I believe that by becoming the change we wish to see in the world there's the actions but then there's also that empowerment that comes behind it and that is a way that you can help galvanize people around you and that's where you can really stand up to the corporations and the people that need to be stood up to. So it's really important to remember to look at things in a holistic manner rather than piecing little things out. So this was the last day of the month of wearing all of my trash and I was in Union Square Park and I started, I had a bit of a realization I started to think to myself, imagine this is how much garbage one person creates in a month. Now imagine a year. Now imagine 10 years and now imagine one lifetime. In a lifetime you can create a small mountain of trash to leave behind for future generations or no mountain of trash at all. That to me is proof that our actions really do matter and do add up. And that's just one of the ways that we interact with the world. Now if you look at, if you expand that out to all the ways that we interact with the world and then you apply it to maybe we're entrepreneurs and we start a business or maybe we're politicians, maybe we're teachers, maybe we're in healthcare, maybe we clean places, maybe we're activists, maybe we're people that just live. If we then apply that into these places then we can even have even more of a change. So there are about a billion hungry people in the world. Are any of us gonna make sure everybody's fully fed? No. Can we solve world hunger? As individuals, no. But can you start a garden and provide food to a few of your neighbors that don't have access to healthy food? Absolutely. Will that change the world? No, but will it change their world? It very much could. Can we clean up all of the garbage in the ocean? Probably not. But can we come together as a community to clean up the nearby lake or river to be able to enjoy it and improve quality of life for ourselves, for the plants and animals that we share this earth with and for our communities? Absolutely we can do that. So I don't know what's gonna happen in 10 years, 100 years, 300 years, 500 years. I don't know how long humanity will be around but whether humanity's around for one more day or one million more years doesn't affect for me the simple belief that life matters and that's what drives me every day. I believe that my life matters. I believe that the life of everyone here matters, that the life of all of the millions in plant and animal species out there matter. And if we simply believe that life matters it's reason enough to wake up each day and do our part to live the lives that we fully want while helping others on earth to be able to live that as well. So that's it. So questions, any question is on the table. I'd love to hear one that I've never heard before so maybe pop something creative up. But I just want to say that for me like my life is my message so anything you're interested about when it comes to sustainable living or anything you're welcome to ask. There's no weird questions right here. So the question was how do I do what you do for a living? Well, what do I do? Okay, how do I do what you do for a living? My answer to that is find what you love and do that because I'm just doing what I want to be doing and the reason that I do it well is because I'm doing what I love. So if what I loved was taking people on fishing trips that's what I'd like to do that as well but not as much as this. That was my childhood dream. But anyway, my recommendation today is if you have a way that you thoroughly enjoy life and you feel like you can apply that to also improving the world around you that's the path that I would recommend going on. Rather than trying to fit yourself into a framework of what other people are doing like truly find your little niche in the world. So it really depends on the person. Everybody's in very different scenarios. So yeah, I think I'll leave it there. So the question was out of all the projects that I've done which has been the most impactful. I would say trash me where I wore all my trash for a month. I know that that had about a billion media impressions and every day it was just interviews all day long with media all over the world and that message really, people got it. It was simple, you know, that's one of the things today is that like simplicity can be a big tool for getting messages out there. The more complex you get them a little bit harder it is to get people's attention. You know, people need a break a lot of the times and so seeing a guy covered in trash kind of does the job. Like you don't have to be interested in sustainability to wonder why this guy's covered in trash. So that was a really good one. And then the year of growing and forging all my food was also definitely one of the most impactful as well. Yeah, yep. Yeah, so the question was have I ever felt pressure you know from people close to me and what do I do about that? So yes, yes. I grew up in Wisconsin around the concept of like just simply not having meat at lunch. People would be like, where's the beef? You know, you would get beef for everything. So I've definitely experienced a lot of pressure and when I really started to change my life I had only been gone from Wisconsin for about a year so I was still coming, I still come back a lot but I've definitely faced a lot of pressure. There's been a few important things for that and one for me really has been to step away from the pressure. You were all free humans and we all have the choice to step away from relationships that are not serving our best interest and ultimately the best interest of the other person because if they're not serving our best interest they're probably not serving the best interest of them either. So to give a bigger example, my dad who has never been a big part of my life when I was about 25 all of a sudden decided to take up problems with most of what I was doing. He was living from a place of fear. He watched the mainstream media a lot and he took fear to almost everything that I was doing which was ironic because he's a hippie and he grew up, well, here's the problem. He was doing a lot of the things that I was doing but he was doing a lot of drugs too and he made a lot of mistakes and he lives in a lot of regret. So he was associating what I was doing with that but I wasn't doing all that stuff. I was actually making a difference and so he was nagging me for enough time and I told him politely enough times that I wasn't going to continue that to 2013. I finally blocked him. His phone, his email and from social media I think for two years or so I had completely blocked him and because that was not serving me and it wasn't serving him at all either and well, he learned and now we're at least a little bit friends that I wasn't going to have a toxic relationship but that's more of a little bit more of an extreme example. I think maybe potentially the most important thing is to simply like work on yourself to build yourself up to the belief that you are a complete human being because when you're a complete human being it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. The thing that most of the time when we think people are thinking something about us they're not, it's in our heads. Most of these things are in our heads so if we can simply drop that even just start there and not be making up things that other people are thinking about us that's a huge amount of freedom but if we can get to the place where we actually believe that we are complete whole human beings then it doesn't matter in the slightest what anybody else thinks and it really doesn't matter what other people think. Now the really good news about that is that today people are actually seeking authentic genuine human beings so as you do that sure you might lose some friends but there's like seven or eight billion other friends that you could possibly have out there. There's so many people and today people really are wanting authentic quality deep relationships and that's absolutely out there so another big thing would be surrounding yourself with like-minded people. Finding people that are supportive where when you're together you're growing rather than being torn down and the more time you spend around people I believe the saying you are your surroundings to a large degree surround yourself with who you wanna be as much as you can and like one little tidbit and opportunity I'll mention is that there's a website called Woofing Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms and you can go work on an organic farm generally five hours a day, five days a week in exchange for food and lodging and get to immerse in growing food on an organic farm you get the education so that's one way to like get outside and go somewhere you can do that all over the United States of the world there's so many opportunities to get out there but there's also so many opportunities within your own community to surround yourself with like-minded people. Yeah so the question was when I was downsizing and going off the grid how did it feel like kind of getting rid of things and not having some of the things that I had before. Generally it was almost always liberating because that was my path I wanted to really simplify and I wanted to break free from a lot of the lies that I was living and that I was taking part in so for the most part every bit that I downsized and simplified it was very liberating. It was definitely also challenging too but really for me one of the big things is that a lot of people when they think of simplifying, minimalism, downsizing they think of getting rid of things and when they think of getting rid of things they think of like an emptiness, a space potentially a void that's been created where something once was but that's not my strategy. My strategy is getting rid of what I don't want to make space for what I do want so I wasn't living any void I was filling it with exactly what I wanted I was getting rid of all the possessions I didn't need, all the bills that I didn't need so that I could do exactly what I wanted to be doing which for me was pursuing a more sustainable life it was activism it was quality relationships with other people it was cycling and swimming and being outside so I was filling my life as I was emptying it of the things that I didn't want so for the most part it felt really good. Sometimes daunting, sometimes challenging but for the most part very liberating. Did I have to work any jobs? Well a lot of people think I must be some trust fund hippie that's what I see on the websites like Breitbart and stuff like that I am indeed not a trust fund hippie. That being said the last job well the last job I worked was at Human Resources at UW La Crosse in 2009 as part of my grant. After that I actually in my summers of college I worked for a book sales company called Southwestern selling educational books door to door I did that for like three years and I was pretty good at sales and I made about $18,000 every summer doing that so I learned to be pretty financially independent from a pretty young age and after college I started my own marketing company so I haven't had a job so much but I did work a lot and then in about 2015 is when I dissolved my marketing company and I guess you could say I haven't had a job since then public speaking is what I do to make the little bit of money that I need I've committed to making less than the federal poverty threshold per year which is $11,000 the reason why is because I've committed to not paying federal taxes ever again because so much of that goes to the military industrial complex and police brutality and all of these things so because of that but also just because I don't want to have a lot of money so I don't need to work a lot for money because I've simplified my life enough to not need a whole lot of money what kind of so yeah what kind of going against the societal grain what kind of daily problems do I face oh I just want to mention one thing before I answer that before I forget philosophy what is it the philosophy club is having a little discussion afterwards where do you see basement brew house and so if anybody wants to join I'll join for a half hour or 40 minutes or so and I look forward to that so you can continue the conversation over there what time is it oh so we got like 15 more minutes that's great so the daily challenges yes so I have removed a lot of challenges from my life by removing myself from consumerism because I find that consumerism creates a lot of just completely unnecessary problems day after day after day but I have definitely created by by living the way that I do I have problems I think that one day I will become obsolete from society as I have no credit card or bank account or debit card or driver's license or cell phone and all of these many things I do have a computer though so I'm very keep you know very able to stay in touch but you know go into places in mind to buy something and they only take credit card and I only care carry cash is just a you know one of the examples of the types of little nuisances I deal with being barefoot a lot of places kick me out or don't want me on definitely you know some days when I'm not feeling my best I can notice when people are looking down on me like walking barefoot and people think I'm you know a homeless or something like that where that in their mind they're thinking oh this guy is some bomb or something like that and I can I can feel that that is you know that can be challenging at times bike trying to bike everywhere as much as possible you know the the whole going against grain of society definitely can be challenging every single day but for the most part I keep doing it because I know that the other way is challenging to I pretty much believe that life is hard whatever we do life is going to be hard so it might as well be hard doing what we actually love and feeling good about it because I know what would be way worse would be going back to that way of life I would be miserable and I don't think I'd ever become unmissable again like I don't think I'd be able to transition back to that I would just be committing to a life of not feeling so great so the challenges are always worth it whatever they are yeah so the question was when I was biking across the country how many miles a day was I biking and how sore would I get the average day was about 70 miles which at first seems very far but you are you would be amazed at how powerful the tool the bicycle is in fact the third time I bike across the country my partner at the time joined me and the first two times she had zero interest no way it was happening had not done almost anything athletic in the last decade or so she biked all the way across the country it was absolutely amazing and I was I was I was astounded by it and I've met people you just never would have expected and the lengths that they bicycle and it's bicycles are very powerful and efficient tools and then so 70 miles is a normal day 50 miles was was common and then like 100 would be a decent day the longest I ever did was 194 miles and that was from Ashland to Minneapolis and the reason I did that is because there was a group of us biking and I decided to stay back for three days and then just do four days in one day but I paid for that for the next four weeks I was in a lot of I was in a lot of pain but as far as pain I remember on the first bike trip I would be sitting down and just to stand up it was so much pain that I'd have to scream as I was standing up and that was the seat on the area from the front to the back or that be called anyone yeah that region hurt a lot it takes a little while to get used to your bike seat and I remember my partner Cheryl and two on the third bike ride she was dealing with a lot of butt pain for the first like 1500 miles then she got the right seat and that changed things big time if I recall I know it got better I think it's because she got the right seat so yeah it can be pretty it can it can hurt quite a bit but you get used to it as you do most things whoever wants to that's an interesting question when I pass like as when I die how do I want to be remembered and do I want to be remembered I definitely do want to be remembered I still have enough of an ego to want to be remembered so how do I want to be remembered well what I want to say is that my one of my absolute top goals in life is to time things right where I can walk into the woods and and die that's one of the that would be like the absolute success in life if I managed to do that of course it would be an all-natural fiber clothing so that I would come both me and my everything on me would biodegrade back to the earth and I'd also like that to be the case for my house where if I was to walk out of my house one day and leave basically the earth could take it back and it wouldn't be littering at all so I would say that for me like an impermanent design to my life is very important to me and I do think about death a fair bit but as far as how I'd want to be remembered well okay I'd want to be remembered as a person whose values and actions were in alignment where I where I was the person who I projected myself to be that I would I lived in integrity and honestly and authentically definitely for someone that makes people self-reflect that it makes people think and challenge the status quo definitely not normal do not want to be thought of as as normal so definitely doing things differently I think those you know I'm ideally a nice guy be better if people didn't hate me you know I'm trying I'm working on my communication skills I'm taking non-violent communication right now also called compassionate communication which is something I have been really loving and just yeah having good relationships is another one of the most important thing where we where my relationships are are healthy and we all uplift each other not everyone of course I'm gonna have problems but as much as possible so those are some of the things that come to mind yeah so my thoughts on you know sustainability and intersection with disabilities well so my belief system is that we don't actually like okay so the large focus of tonight has been the focus on my different way of being different from society but the truth so the true solution is not an individualism at all the true solution is in community I believe that just about every one of our problems can be solved through community not through individualistic thinking so we absolutely need structural change and societal change if we don't do that we're not well I really don't think we can solve our problems without doing that so my belief is that we need that if we're talking about a sustainable just equitable future what we need to do is shift our systems and they have to be systems that are that exist in a way that work for the diversity of our humanity so that leaves room for every person of every type in order to be a part of that site and I really do think that's that's possible with that being said it's not necessarily possible within the confine of the current way that we exist I think a lot of the progressive ideas that we have are actually extremely destructive and not possible on a society that would be that would actually be equitable or just there are challenges like for example in our western healthcare system where 90% of healthcare goes into the last 10% of human life so there's the challenges there of some people's opinion would be yeah you put all the energy into that last 10% for people to get those last years and that would be the fair thing to do other people might have the perspective that last that 90% going into the last 10% is actually what's killing us as a humanity is trying to hold on to every last day that we can and that that may be what's actually robbing from future generations where those they won't get any of the days because because of our of the way that we are existing as society so it's uh basically when it comes to that my belief though is that we need to shift society and we need to shift our systems in a way that things are accessible and when you you know another big part about that is I say community but another part about that is actually getting back to intergenerational communities where people actually take care of each other because it is a fact that before corporations we existed and we took care of each other in which whichever way we were and so I really think the solution lies in people caring about each other depending upon one another and changing our structures and in our society so like there yeah so my thoughts on when I'm older if I become older time will tell so well I yeah one little note is that I've definitely experienced a fair number of people who are decades older than me that say okay you can you can do this because you're young and in good health and that's a reasonable statement time will tell whether I was young delusional kids spouting this stuff off time will tell once I'm older and we'll see what happens if I live through with my belief system but my belief my simple belief as far as my my time when I'm older is that community will take care of me as I take care of community I believe that if I dedicate my you know I don't have health insurance I don't have a savings fund of any sort I just have the cash in an envelope back in my drawer and I don't but I have a massive life insurance and that is community it's also skills and community is not just humans it's it's my community with this earth and with the plant and animal relatives so I but I truly believe that if I dedicate my life to humanity as I am that when I am in need I will also be taken care of I don't consider that mooching I don't look at the world in a linear way of I give you that so you give me this and that it has to be a linear transaction I truly believe in living in a way of giving and receiving where it is just through whether it's reciprocity or whether you never see anything in return and that may go very well for me I think most likely it will or I die alone in a ditch somewhere and nobody cares but I highly doubt that's going to happen and if you're a complete human being it's fine you know you'll be ready to go if you like if you become a complete human being which is definitely one of the things that I that I like to focus on so yeah good question thank you and oh I write about more about that at robgreenfield.org slash health insurance that's a blog called on an old I think on age healthcare and death or something like that and there's a video on that as well it's about 45 minutes so I go more into it there right here where do I live now and how do I find places to live well I currently live in Asheville North Carolina I've lived there since June and so right now I run a non-profit it's called regeneration equity and justice and through that non-profit I rent a house for a team of about four people that work with me and I wasn't planning on living there but there's a little mud room and I put a bed in there and that's where I'm living right now just makes sense like I'm working with them and and there was an unused little spot so but I want to get back to living in a tiny house my next tiny house I want to build completely out of almost completely out of materials from the land and I might do that in the next year or so and in Asheville but so that's where I currently live and how do I find places to live sometimes I'm work trading like I'm just doing an exchange sometimes I have a tiny house in someone's backyard and that's generally a work trade as well as I'm traveling I generally stay with people so it kind of varies a lot I think do we have time for one more question what time is it now all right one more question right here hmm so the question was when I'm foraging for food do I ever run into problems with local law and do you mean dumpster diving foraging or foraging for like plants and cool yeah so for for plants and such so there are places where it is illegal to forage I pretty much focus primarily on following earth code rather than city code and that doesn't mean that I don't follow any laws but when they're absurd and they actually don't protect anything and actually can do the opposite I simply am not going to do that so there are different national both state parks or national forests or places like that where foraging may be completely illegal and I'm not going to go in there and forge something that harms that forest I'm not going to be pulling plants that are scarce but if there's an invasive species that I can eat in there for actually I don't want to use the term invasive species but a non-native species that is over competing and really crowding out the forest like garlic mustard for example me going in there and eating that is beneficial so I think one of the most important things is critical thinking it's not looking at a black and white rule and saying that means that one thing's right or wrong it's always about thinking critically so I've never had any trouble with foraging at all I know some people that have and definitely when you're foraging mushrooms that can be a little trickier because there's definitely some old-timers who think all mushrooms means you're tripping on psilocybin which 99% of them aren't well maybe not 99 but the most aren't most most of the mushrooms we are great you know lobsters chicken in the woods my talkie boleets like chanterelles they don't they don't they don't well they do get you high on life because they're so amazing but so I haven't been in any trouble for that but I think that that I do want to acknowledge one thing that I always I like to have an opportunity to and that one of the reasons that I haven't I do believe is being a white male in this society I am generally considered to be by this by this society the way it's been sort of the status quo which means that I get away with a lot of things that other people wouldn't get away with and I've I've talked to a lot of people and I was very resistant to this idea first growing up in Wisconsin being poorer than some other people being Jewish being different I never saw myself as privileged because I was always comparing myself to other people I see other people in society they they compare themselves even they might have two houses but they can compare themselves to the people with the mansion and they say well I'm not privileged and I see that what we can do is we can compare ourselves to the people around us or the people above us and then say oh I don't I don't have any privilege and enough people kept posting you know commenting on things that I was doing from 2011 to you know 2015 and I was resistant generally to the idea of having privilege because I don't know exactly if that meant that I didn't earn everything that I thought I did but eventually enough people said it and I checked myself enough times and I started to understand it whether it's you know dumpster diving where the people most likely to get harassed by the police are people experiencing homelessness the people who actually would benefit the most from the food and then I both being a white man but also being you know having being very fairly eloquent with my words feeling generally their idea of what's safe all of these things have made it a lot easier for me to do what I'm doing so that's why again it's so important for us to positively impact society to create it so that it's not just people that passes the status quo that are able to do these things but I just think it's really an important thing for us to acknowledge and in no way shape or form is it a matter of having shame for oneself it's not any form guilt I don't feel either of those two things it's simply just acknowledging who I am and the situation that I'm that I am in and I believe that one of the most important things today is for those with privilege and wealth is to utilize it properly to redistribute it to create more equity and as college students a lot of us may feel broke but the reality is that all of us in this room are the top few percentage of the wealthiest people on earth when you really look at it and we're pretty much in the top percentage of the most privileged people on earth and so I do believe that it's our job to take control of our lives and to do our part to exist in a way that instead of stealing from other cultures and future generations we can actually be living in a way that is in reciprocity so I feel like we could talk for another hour and a half but that's the end but come on over to that spot and what's it called again basement of the brew house and come share a hug oh I'll hang out here for a little while so come up and share a hug and anything like that that you'd like and so yeah I love you all very much and thank you all for being here and yeah