Rubbish suit - 1st June 2022

This is Rob Greenfield. He takes care of the environment. He collected the rubbish from things he bought. He used it to make a suit.

Normally, Greenfield grows what he eats. But he wants people to think about their rubbish. He decided to eat the normal American diet for a month. Now, his suit has 28 kilograms of rubbish.

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 trousers have drink cans. They are noisy and heavy. The rest of the suit has food packaging.

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 bad about how much rubbish she's putting into the environment.

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."

In the past, Greenfield tried many ways to get people to think about the environment. But he thinks this rubbish suit had the best result.

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."