Rob Greenfield on Going Green

Rob Greenfield, Activist and Humanitarian was recently interviewed on the Amazon Prime television show, Going Green. Check out Rob’s interview below.

Dylan Welch
Welcome back to going green. I’m your host Dylan Welch. We’ve got a great guest with us. Say Rob Greenfield adventure and environmental activist. Rob, thank you so much for being here. Hey Dan, thanks for having me. So first off, just kind of give us a little bit of background about yourself and what you’re currently working on. Sure.

Rob Greenfield
So yeah, I do a lot of environmental activism and adventures and the idea is I want to inspire people. I want to wake them up to the, to the problems that exist in the world today, but not just focus on the problems, really focused on the solutions. What can we do as individuals to live in a way that’s better for the earth, our communities and ourselves and uh, you know, making the world a better place while making ourselves better people.

Dylan Welch
Nice. And why do you think, uh, this topic, you know, sustainability, climate change is such an important thing for people to talk about.

Rob Greenfield
Well, it is our life. Our life doesn’t exist without, uh, the ecosystems that are dependent upon that there were dependent upon. So, you know, it’s easy to be disconnected in the 21st century society where life is so busy and we have so much modern conveniences, it’s very easy to be completely disconnected from where our food comes from, how our water gets to us. Um, how it purified naturally or in our own cycles. Uh, just the basic things that make us exist.

Dylan Welch
So it seems almost like it’s such a big topic to really tackle. Um, in terms of an individual person, what can they do to make a little bit of a difference?

Rob Greenfield
Yeah. So when I first, uh, you know, back in 2011, I was living a fairly normal, average American lifestyle and I wasn’t really doing anything very little in regards to trying to live in a way that was what, quote, environmentally friendly. And then what happened was I started to watch, watch a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books and just started to realize that, wow, my life as an individual is causing a lot of harm to the things that I love to people to plan it to the other species. And that’s when I decided, all right, I’m going to start making changes. And I had to start with where I was. I had to be, you know, I can only be myself. And I realized that. So that’s when I decided, okay, I have to change myself. So I started with small things, you know, some of those small things included the basics. You have your early first steps like, you know, carrying a reusable shopping bag and ditching plastic bags or ditching a bottled water and, uh, just getting a purifier for at home if you don’t like your tap water and purifying that to make it better and not using plastic bottles. Um, other earlier changes. Starting to ride a bike more and drive a car less starting to shop at local farmers markets, a support local farmers rather than buying food from the big industrial agriculture. Um, along the same lines, starting to support local businesses rather than, uh, all the corporate businesses that ship the money out of our communities rather than keep our money in our communities. So all of these things are tied in. It’s not just about living in a way that’s better for the environment, but all of these things are about living in a way that’s better for our neighbors and better for the, the other species that our neighbors are as well. And that’s the thing. The more you start making these positive changes, the more you realize it’s all connected and our actions can provide benefit to, to everything around us, uh, through those changes.

Dylan Welch
That’s such great information because it seems like such simple things, but when a lot of people start to do them, it really does make a big difference. I’m thinking kind of bigger picture in almost kind of getting to the root of the issue. What is something that people can just kind of start thinking about, you know, down the line? What’s something facing right now which can make a difference 10 20, 30 years into the future?

Rob Greenfield
Well, I look at our problems holistically. You know, some people really isolate the different problems and say, for example, climate change is the biggest threat to humanity currently. And sure it’s a huge threat. But the reality is is that all of these issues that we’re currently facing are huge and they don’t exist without each other. There is no vacuum on earth. Everything is connected. So the way that I really look at things is the, you know, one of the best things that we can do is think on a holistic manner. And what that means is thinking about our entire lives, analyzing our entire lives and starting to understand them. And so you’ll never be able to do that from day one. You have to start somewhere. We all have to start somewhere. And so it’s the big picture. You’ll never imagine how big of the picture you can get to in the future unless you start with the small pictures of the little things and then it grows and then it grows and then it grows from there. So as far as the big picture, 10 2030 years out, I would say it’s about starting small, focusing on ourselves and letting that grow and, and continuing on and on. From there,

Dylan Welch
you’ve got a pretty big social media following. How does that kind of, how can you use that as a tool to, you know, reach a lot of people to start spreading this message?

Rob Greenfield
The good news is that we have a power that didn’t exist in the past and that is our voice. Even the everyday average person can have such a bigger voice than in the past. In the past, media was fully controlled by a very small number of sources. But now we each have some power through social media and a lot of us are able to gain an incredible amount of power, not by through any corporation or an s or needing to have a lot of money, but by having information that the people of our time crave, desire, want. And that is where social media is an extremely powerful tool. Something that I’ve harnessed start, you know, I started really using it about seven, eight years ago. So, uh, the great news is that we can not just be the change that we wish to see in the world today, but we can also really reach millions of people through social media. And you know, one thing that I really recommend is do what you’re passionate about. So, you know, don’t just start some page because the, maybe it feels like it’s what’s needed. Find what’s needed and that you’re passionate about. And that to me is the most organic way to really grow today is to be focusing on what you love, what you deeply care about, what you wake up in the morning and you want to be doing that day. And that’s the, you know, one of the big keys to me to successfully using social media today to, to have a positive impact.

Dylan Welch
Well, Rob, we’re really only just scratching the surface. This is such an important topic to be talking about. You’re really making a big change. So we’ll have to get you back on the show, uh, again in the near future.

Rob Greenfield
I would be happy to, and maybe by then my tiny hustled me fully complete.

Dylan Welch
There you go. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We’ll be right back with more going green.