Picture your average day and the amount of stuff you put in the dustbin. Now imagine wearing all that stuff. Yes, as in clothing yourself with your trash. The very idea makes us shudder but that is exactly what Rob Greenfield plans on doing.
Greenfield is the same guy who sold all his property and began living minimally with just 111 articles of possessions. His possessions have since come down to less than a 100 things, and his new mission is to make people understand the value of the environment and create less trash.
For his new project, he has volunteered to wear all the trash he generates over 30 days. According to Greenfield, an average American consumer creates 4.5 pounds (or 2 kg approximately) of trash every day. Given that, by the end of the 30-day challenge, he will be wearing almost 60 kilos of trash.
"I will be wearing all the recyclable and non-recyclable trash created by me," Greenfield said. "Nancy Judd of Recycle Runway has created a special Trash Me suit that is designed to hold 135 pounds of trash. It has12 expandable pockets so that it can handle all the trash as I add about 4.5 pounds per day."
He will also be making a television series on the project with the help of Chris Temple & Zach Ingrasci, founders of the award-winning production company, Living on One. The idea is to create awareness about the amount of trash generated every day.
During the course of the project, Greenfiled will don his special suit everywhere he goes, with a crew filming him. He will act like an average American for the duration, who consumes packaged food in sizable quantities.
"In order to make trash like the average American, I am eating like the average American because that's where a lot of our trash is made," he explains. "The primary way that this trash will be made is eating a lot of packaged, processed foods at home."
Also, to makes his trash less smelly, Greenfield will clean it before putting it in his suit's pouches. The trash generated by food will first be sealed in Ziploc bags and then placed in pouches.
"I'm always looking for ways to get people to think about how their actions affect the world around them both near and far," he says. "I try to keep things very entertaining so that it reaches people whether they care about the environmental or social issue that I'm focusing on. Because we live in such a visually oriented generation I look for visual ways to make a point or grab people's attention."
Greenfield and his team have also created a guide to living an almost waste-free life.
The details have been laid out in a blog post in the form of simple points to help people adopt an environment friendly lifestyle.
As of now, there are no plans to include compost-able trash in the suit. Greenfield and team are mainly concentrating on the trash that goes into dustbins everyday. You can learn more about the project on his website.