Activist wears month's worth of trash to visualize our wasteful habits
Ever wonder how much trash you accumulate in a month?
Rob Greenfield, an adventurer and activist in New York City, is on a mission to show you.
In a specially made suit, Greenfield will be wearing every piece of trash he creates for 30 days while living like the average American, creating around 4.5 pounds of trash per day.
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"We live in an era when it’s so easy to have no idea of how any of our daily actions impact our community...or the earth as a whole," he told Mashable in an email.
His project, titled "Trash Me," hopes to challenge the, "out of sight out of mind mentality," and provide people with a visual understanding of how much garbage we create, especially on an individual level.
"[We've] seen the images of overflowing landfills and oceans littered with garbage," Greenfield pointed out, "But there are very few visuals I've seen that help us understand how much garbage we create as individuals and thus how much we are a part of the problem."
Greenfield's suit could gain up to 135 pounds of trash weight by the project's end date, Oct. 18.
"One of the bigger contributors to my trash so far though has come from food," Greenfield said, "food packaging such as bottles, boxes...as well as food waste." The Ad Council/Natural Resources Defense Council reports that the average American wastes 20 percent of the food they purchase, so with his food, Greenfield is trying to do the same.
Greenfield says he hopes that his project will inspire people to start taking steps to reduce the amount of trash that they create.
"Every single one of us as individuals can be a positive influence on the...world around us by making positive changes in their lives," Greenfield said.
You can follow Greenfield's "Trash Me" adventure on his Facebook, YouTube, and blog.
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