Trash suit - 1st June 2022

This is environmentalist Rob Greenfield. He's walking through Los Angeles and other US cities wearing all the trash he's produced for a month.

Greenfield's one month challenge is almost finished, but his suit's already weighing 28 kilograms from all the drink and food packages. He usually lives a zero waste lifestyle but, for a month, he's decided to eat a normal American diet to make people think about their waste.

Rob Greenfield: "So this is a specially designed trash suit. Because the average person creates about five pounds of trash per day, this needs to be able to hold onto a lot of weight. So today's day 27, and I'm up to 63 pounds of trash on my body. So this suit has clear expandable pockets that grew with me through the last 27 days."

His suit is full of packages and wrappers from all he's bought. Now, the trousers, full of drink cans, are loud and difficult to walk in.

Rob Greenfield: "It was about day 12 that I got into this and I started to really feel the burden of consumerism. I really started to just myself feel the weight and see the visual and just say wow, it's astounding how much our trash really adds up."

Anne-Marie O'Connor feels ashamed of the amount of waste she might be responsible for creating.

Anne-Marie O'Connor: "I think it's inspiring that Rob is taking this journey. I think it's also kind of embarrassing in some ways that, to learn - cause I don't know much about that - to learn how much trash I, as an individual, am actually contributing to the environment on a daily basis."

Greenfield's come up with different ways to make people aware of the environment. He's even grown all his own food for a year. But he says that his trash suit has been the most effective way to spread his message.

Rob Greenfield: "People can understand this message, and it helps me to really reach people from, from all walks of life. Now, there are some people who think that I'm someone who's experiencing homelessness or that I have a mental health issue. But for the most part, people have just been really positive, very inspired."