Robin Greenfield at UNICEF – Living Simply for a Sustainable Future

“The New York Staff Association Green Team is pleased to invite all UNICEF staff to a special talk with Robin Greenfield, renowned environmental activist and humanitarian, on: Thursday, October 16, 2025 9:00–10:00 AM ET

About the Talk:
Robin Greenfield will share his journey of radical transformation, from a conventional consumer lifestyle to one of deep simplicity and sustainability. His talk will explore how individuals can live in harmony with the Earth, reduce personal waste, and challenge exploitative systems through everyday choices. Robin’s message is both inspiring and practical, offering a hopeful perspective on how we can each contribute to a greener UNICEF and a healthier planet.”

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Robin Greenfield at UNICEF – Living Simply for a Sustainable Future, part of Robin’s foraging series during his Earth Provides Us With Everything We Need Tour.

I feel very grateful and very enlivened to be here with all of us together here at UNICEF this morning. I know that for many of us in our work and in our personal lives like to get very busy and it can be easy to lose track of what we’re very passionate about, but I … for me, it’s a real honor to be here because I know that every single one of us cares deeply about humanity, cares deeply about all the children on this planet and cares deeply about having a livable, sustainable home for everyone to live on. And so, for me, it’s a real … it’s really energizing and I feel very warmhearted, just to be here together. We could be anywhere and here we are using our lives to be of service.

So, today I’m going to share my journey of sort of awakening from a life that was not focused on what we’re talking about today to a life that’s very deeply dedicated to being of service. And so … and then I’m also going to share what we can be doing to transform our lives for those of us who desire to, and share just about some of the campaigns and the work that I’m doing that I invite everyone to be involved in.

In 2011, I was living a fairly typical US American lifestyle. I was very focused on material possessions and financial wealth. I had a goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30. I was 25 at the time. I was on that path. I was running a marketing company that had a team of people and we were bringing in that kind of money to get to that place. I was very focused on material possessions, my car. I would spend every Sunday shining it. The rims and the dash. And I was very focused on achieving what many people call “The American Dream.” To be loved, to be accepted, to be well-regarded in the society. And I was on track. I was happy. I was healthy. I had many friends, a great social life. I had romance, I had … I was traveling the world. I was really living my dream. And I could have continued that for the rest of my life and life would have been good.

And then something happened where I realized that I not ‘had to,’ but really wanted to totally transform my life. Radically transform my life. And, what happened was, I started to watch a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books and I learned that the way that I was living was causing such destruction to the Earth that almost every action that I was taking was tied to systems of oppression, exploitation and destruction. The food that I was eating, the car that I was driving, the gas that I was pumping into the car, the stuff I was buying, the trash I was creating, every dollar I spent, my investments, my money in the banks. I learned that I had wrapped myself deeply into this web of consumerism, which was a web of not what I believed in.

I realized, to a large degree, that my life was a lie. I realized that I was living a hypocrisy, which, with a hypocrisy, another way of saying that is that your actions are not in alignment with your beliefs. And so, I never believed in causing such disparity and destruction. I never believed in supporting systems of oppression and exploitation. But sure enough, here I was doing that with almost every one of my daily actions. We live in a time of such complexity with our globalized industrialized systems that, without realizing it, we’re tied to it with most every single thing that we do.

And so, at that time, I could have felt a great level of despair, depression, overwhelm, disempowerment, that every single one of us, I’m sure, all of us have experienced that at times. And many of us are experiencing that right now, and a lot of us experience that every single day. But I did feel that. I did feel some of that. But actually, more than that, I felt empowered and excited. Because these documentaries, these books, these activists, humanitarians, organizations, people: they didn’t just tell me the problems of the world, they also shared with me solutions for a new way forward. And, what I wanted was simple. I wanted to see if I could live in a way that was in harmony with the Earth. There’s the pictures of us from 2016, very nice to see. So I wanted to see if I could live in harmony with the Earth. And if that sounds almost impossible to many of us, given the situation that we’re in. And it’s quite radical to actually live in harmony with the Earth. But it’s also quite simple. It’s just a simple concept of, hey, what if we lived in a way that doesn’t destroy the only home that we have? That’s what I’m talking about. What if we could learn, and relearn, forget and relearn, a way of being so that we actually are servants to humanity through our daily being and our daily actions?

So, what I set out to do was to take my life back. I’m a person of a very substantial amount of privilege, being born in the United States, having access to education. Even though I grew up very low income, in reality, I have a substantial amount of privilege. And so, the way that I looked at it is, there’s something I can do. And that’s I can take responsibility for my own actions. And so, what I decided was that one step at a time, I would unravel the web of consumerism and destruction that I had wrapped myself into, and with each strand that I was breaking, I would create a new strand. A new strand of sustainability, of equity, of justice, of harmony. Which are all, maybe to some people they’re buzzwords, but they all have a deep meaning to them, which for me, as again, living in a way where my actions don’t cause unnecessary harm.

And so, I set out to make one positive change at a time. I made a goal of making at least one positive change per week for two years, with the idea being that if I did that, I’d make over 100 positive changes in my life. So, I wrote up and printed out a long list and I hung it up in my kitchen. I had a pencil that was taped and hanging there and my goal would be to check off one … one change per week. So, that included small changes like, ditching my paper towels which were, chopping down the forests, and using a reusable washcloth instead. Or ditching plastic bottles of water and using the reusable bottle. Going to the local farmer’s market more and stop … minimizing my shopping at the big box stores. Starting to walk and ride my bike more and get in the car less. Starting to go to a shop where you could fill up your own containers with food rather than all the plastic containers. Starting to harvest rainwater and minimize my usage of water. I was living in San Diego where the water was being pumped across the desert, so I could harvest instead the abundance from the sky. Starting to use my spare time when I wanted to socialize, instead of it being just socializing, volunteering. Using my time in a way that’s still meeting my needs for belonging and acceptance and meaning and purpose, but finding that in a way that is of service and benefit. So, I was making many small changes. Many accessible small changes, but also making substantial large changes as well.

So after a year, I got rid of my car, which maybe for people in New York is no big deal, but for me, I grew up in a place where, if you were an adult and you were wearing regular street clothes and you were riding a bicycle, then people would assume only one thing and that was you got a DUI, a ‘driving under the influence,’ and you couldn’t drive, and that was the only reason you would bike. And so, I was up against a lot of societal norms and social stigmas, and that was the hardest part. It was, “What would people think?”, how would I be perceived? Would people still take me as credible? And so, but yet, I continued to push. After a few years, I took my money out of the big banks and switched to a local credit union, got rid of my credit cards. And after a few years, I actually simplified my life down to having not a bill to my name, and to just continuously simplifying and downsizing so that I could really use my life in the way that I want rather than be caught in the endless trap of bills and just of all these daily things that take so much time just to manage life.

And so, Mahatma Gandhi was one of my earliest inspirations and he said, “Live simply so that others may simply live.” And I took that very deeply. When he says, “Live simply so that others may simply live,” what I hear is, if we step outside of the systems of destruction by no longer needing them, then just through our daily actions, others are free to be able to thrive rather than being oppressed and exploited through these everyday, common systems. And so, that’s been the core … that’s been the absolute core of me, is to live very, very simply. And some people, of course, look at that and they see that as an act of passivity, but as many of us know, that’s what many of our great leaders have done. It’s being the change that we wish to see in the world. It’s embodying our message and it’s stepping outside of these dominator society ways and bringing a new age of peacefulness and mindfulness. And so, that’s what I spent …. It was basically a full-time job to unravel what I had started and to create a new life. I was easily spending forty hours a week on changing my life. And so, I was fortunate that I was young, and I didn’t have children yet or a mortgage, so again, I had that privilege that I could dedicate so much of my time to that. And so, at the same time, from the very beginning, my objective was yes, to embody the change, to be the change. But from the moment I realized the way we were influencing the Earth, I knew that I wanted to dedicate my whole life to helping others who are wanting to live in harmony as well, to live in service. And so, first, it was, I wanted to reduce my hypocrisy, before I went out and started to talk about this. So, when I started out, I got maybe a level 10 hypocrite, and after those two years, I had made over 100 changes. Now I was down to maybe a level five hypocrite. Still lots of hypocrisy in my life, but now I really felt that I was being the change that I wished to see to a fairly substantial degree.

So that’s when I started out on my environmental activism. My first campaign was to bike across the United States on a bamboo bicycle and try to have no negative environmental impact. That was in 2013, and I biked right here past UNICEF from San Francisco to Vermont. And so, from the beginning, my activism has been sort of, you could say, stunts, as you can see from these photos of wearing my trash, which I will talk about shortly. They are stunts. They are campaigns. And so,some people could definitely not go deeper and sort of just write them off as, wanting attention. And I do want attention. Attention for the Earth. Attention for our humanity. Attention for the plants and animals. And so, my strategy has been to sort of embark on these extreme adventures that are designed to capture the mainstream media’s attention that disproportionately reports on these important issues. And also to capture the attention of the everyday person who is in a sleepy state, who doesn’t realize a lot of what we’re talking about.

And so, my second campaign was the Food Waste Fiasco. In that one, I biked across the country again. And in each of the major cities, I dove into dozens of grocery store dumpsters, pulled out perfectly good food that’s going to waste and I laid it out in a mandala, a display, to show the tip of the iceberg about how in this country we have 165 billion dollars’ worth of food going to waste per year. Half of all food in this country is wasted. Globally, one-third of our food is wasted. So, I’m able to create this visual that would help people understand the big picture of food waste.

Another one of my campaigns was landing in a far off country with no money, with just the clothes on my back and passport. That was … the first time I did that was in Mexico. The second time was in Panama, and the third time was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is where I landed. And so, each time, I had to travel on the kindness of others, the goodness of others. And the reason for that is because, when you turn on the news, often you will be given a picture that we need to fear our global neighbors. Fear in the United States is often a picture that we need to fear our neighbors to the south in Mexico. I don’t believe that. I believe that the reality is that the vast majority of human beings are … they’re good, they care about one another. And so, in my first travels, it was 37 days to get home, and when I arrived home with literally ten cents in my pocket, my passport, and just my clothes, the only words that I could mutter out of my mouth were just ‘people are good.’ That’s all that I could feel. That’s all that I could feel.

And now, the visual that you see on the screen now, this was from a project where, for one month, I lived like the average US American; eating, shopping, consuming, just like so many of us are used to, but with one big exception. And that was that I had to wear every single piece of trash that I created. So there was no ‘away.’ Most of us know there is no ‘away.’ We live on this one Earth. There is no ‘away.’ But I made that very up close and personal. So every coffee cup, every straw, every wrapper, I had to wear in this clear suit that was designed by a designer to be able to hold up to 135 pounds of garbage. Because the average US American creates about 4 ½ pounds of trash per day, or about two kilos of trash per day. And so, at the end of the month, I was wearing 87 pounds of trash as I was going to the grocery store, riding the Metro, going … I tried to go to the movies, but they wouldn’t let me in. So just living a standard life, standing in the grocery store in line. People would come up to me and say, “What are you doing?” And I would say, “Oh, I’m just living like the average person, but I’m wearing every piece of trash.” And people would … they would look at me and they’d say, “Oh, so that’s me.” “That’s what I would look like if I held onto my trash.” So, my activism is designed to … there is no right or wrong. There is no good or bad. To the best of my ability, there’s no judgment even. It’s just about critical thinking. It’s about asking questions.

So, a few of my other campaigns have included living in a 50 sf and 100 sf tiny house, with the big idea: does more stuff make us happier? Does a bigger house really make us happier? And my belief is that to some degree, yes. Having our basic needs met is absolutely essential for thriving as individuals, as communities. But, for the most part, we’ve gone so far that our stuff is resulting in depression, anxiety, overwhelm. Some people say, “We don’t own our stuff, our stuff owns us.” And, for most of us, that’s more along the lines of where we’ve gotten today. Annie Leonard, who wrote The Story of Stuff says, seven tee shirts? Like, at that point, maybe one more tee shirt helps, but once we’re at fifty tee shirts, one more is not going to give us any more happiness or meaning or purpose.

And so, in 2020, I simplified my life down to just having 44 possessions, all of which fit into a backpack. And that was about deeply embracing community. It was my way of saying, “I need you.” I’m not going to own everything that I need. I’m not going to be able to go to my home and forget the rest of the world exists, and hide away. This was my way of saying, “I absolutely need you.” Because my belief is that we will only … we will only create sustainable community when we embrace that we truly need one another. All of the communities that I’ve seen that thrive in the world is because they embrace … we need each other, we are dependent upon one another and it’s intricately built into our lives.

Now, my current project, that I believe I’m seven days into right now, is for one year, I’m foraging 100% of my food. So, no grocery stores, no restaurants, not even eating from my friends’ gardens or gardens. I’m only eating what I harvest, not from the wild per se, because as you start to deeply connect with the Earth, you see that humans and the Earth are fully interconnected. There is no separating us. And my belief is that humans are not inherently bad for the Earth, that humans can be inherently beneficial to the Earth. We are a wonderful species for … for actually being a keystone species for helping ecosystems to thrive, and we see that clearly by looking at many Indigenous cultures. But, so this is for me, a deep experiment of my belief that the Earth can provide us with everything we need in a way that doesn’t exploit, that doesn’t extract. And I did do a year, in 2020, of growing and foraging all of my foods. So, I have a fair bit of experience in that regard, but now nature is my garden for this year.

So, again, all of these campaigns, all of these projects, they’re designed to do multiple things. One: for me to embody the message. Except when I wore my trash. That was the opposite. That was me showing the problem. Most of the time my objective is to show the solution. My objective is to help us to critically think, to ask deep questions. To open our eyes to what is around us and start to really see it. For me, that includes having relationships: relationships with the Earth, relationships with the plants and animals, the fungi. It includes having relationships with the bacteria. We now know that we are more bacterial cells than we are human cells. I mean, think about that. We are more bacterial cells than we are human cells. We are, as individuals, an interconnected culture of species and if those bacteria go, we go. So, we’re starting to really realize how deeply interconnected we are. We are a walking culture in every single moment. And so, it’s so easy to forget that. But my deep activism is designed to stop us in our tracks, to get us up and out of our sleepy states, and to really question.

And so, my number one question that I’d like for people to ask is this. It’s really simple: “Am I living in alignment with my beliefs?” “Am I living the life that I really want?” And if the answer is, “Yes,” great! No further work is needed. You’re done. Keep going. But if the answer is that, actually when I ask that question, there is this pit in my stomach and there’s this lump in my chest of just knowing that this isn’t the way that I want to be in relationship. Then, what can we do differently? And that’s where it’s about using our lives effectively as change. For me, I’m celebrating every single one of us here, because here we are at UNICEF. Every single one of us cares deeply. I have no doubts about that whatsoever. Even when we get wrapped up, it’s a lot to maintain a career, and a home, and the bills and family and everything. But I know every single one of us cares deeply and already asks those questions. So, with us, this is a reminder, to remember asking those questions. And so, I’ll tell you a handful of more things, maybe speak for another ten or fifteen minutes, and then I’d love to open it up to questions.

I want to share a little bit more about my life in regard to how I go about existing on this Earth and using life as a means of service. I also with that want to share that I feel somewhat self-conscious talking about myself so much, but my thing is that, as I said, my strategy is for my life to be my message. And so that is, when your life objective is to take responsibility for your own everything, it needs a lot of focus on that. The whole focus is to be of service and to be involved with community. So, as far as my form … my objective from the beginning was to see if I could use every ounce of my being to be of service. That’s been the last 14 years of my life. And I have found that it’s very hard to do. Because the society has set it up to be the opposite. We’re set up to where there’s often so few minutes left in our day after all of our tasks.

And so, some of my objectives … some of my ways of going about that …. In 2015, I started to make a series of vows. Some of them are lifetime vows and some of them are vows that I make every four years, along with the presidential cycle. I’ve made a lifetime vow of earning below the federal poverty threshold, which, in the United States when I made that vow, was $11,000; to keeping my net worth to a bare minimum; to donating 100% of my media income to grassroots, nonprofit activists who are doing this work, primarily Indigenous and Black-run organizations and individuals. And that is all the strategy of living simply. The other aspect of my vows is transparency. I believe that if all of our politicians and all of our corporations and all of our municipalities acted with deep transparency, that a lot of our issues would be solved overnight. Transparency is such a key one. And so, in … just last year, through multiple years of working on this, I’ve … as I mentioned, I downsized my physical possessions, but I also did substantial work to downsize my mind. And, as of last year, I accomplished sharing every single thing that I had in my mind which I was guarding, hiding, anything I was embarrassed of, a secret. So, as my dedication as a leader, my mind is fully accessible. So, if you’ve heard of the term ‘creative commons,’ ‘creative commons’ means that it’s publicly owned. Well, my mind … I’m experimenting with making my mind publicly owned. I’m experimenting with not owning my own mind. And the best way I know how to do that to start is to have nothing in here that is not freely accessible. Now, I will say … so, I accomplished that last year. And for four months, I had nothing. Nothing that was hidden. I was offline. I hadn’t … which … my team managed the internet things. But then once I got back online, I now know the passwords to our accounts, so technically, I do have a little bit in here that’s not currently public. But beyond that, that’s it. And so, I believe deeply in the practice of transparency and truth.

So, I’d like to share a few of the projects that we’re working on. Many of them are very in alignment with the projects that you’re working on. One that we started in 2019 was … it’s called “Seeds for the People.” We provide … what we started is a seed pack where in one little pack, there’s a variety of 20 greens and vegetables and herbs, as well as flowers that are beneficial for pollinators and bees. And we send this to anybody who doesn’t otherwise have access to seeds to grow food. Whether it’s financial barriers or physical barriers, our priority is always on providing this to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to grow food. And over the last seven years, we’ve sent these packs to 40,000 people in the United States because shipping internationally seeds is very difficult, so this has been a US-based program. And so, we’ve turned $80,000 into three million dollars’ worth of seeds. If they … if you … if all of these 40,000 people had purchased the seeds themselves, it would have cost three million dollars. And then, those seeds have created the potential to grow sixteen million dollars’ worth of food.

So, what I try to do with our programs … we work on a very grassroots budget, very small. My nonprofit, which is called Regeneration, Equity and Justice, we generally have a budget of, like, $150-200,000 a year. So, we try to use our resources really, really effectively. So, that’s one of our programs. We shifted to … recently Seeds for Schools, so primarily providing seeds to organizations that benefit children to help them to grow their own food. We really believe in the power of nurturing the children through relationships with food that they’re growing. We really believe that’s one of the most empowering things … to have that autonomy and to see the miracle of a seed that’s growing into food that’s nourishing ourselves, some of the most nourishing food that there is.

Another program that we started is called Gardens for Single Moms, which is, we would provide guidance for single-parent families to help them to grow their own nourishing food and have empowerment in that way. A program called Community Compost. So, we would like to see composting on a small, grassroots level that has no real strong infrastructure needed, that can be done ideally …. There’s, community compost programs within walking distance or cycling distance of everyone’s homes in different cities. And so, we started a program called Community Compost, which has a template step-by-step that shows others how they can start these programs in their community, whether it’s a high school with a little bit of spare time, and that just has a bicycle, or someone who wants to create a business from it, using a pickup truck and a larger program.

We … two of our … one of our more unique programs is our Grow Your Own Toilet Paper initiative. And we grow a plant called Plectranthus barbatus, which is also called the blue spur flower. In Kenya, it’s actually called Kikuyu toilet paper, because the Kikuyu tribe has used it as a toilet paper for many years, hundreds of years. And it grows natively from India through parts of the Middle East, down through much of Africa. I was fortunate to live in Orlando, Florida, which has a very large, diverse population of Caribbeans, and Africans, and Asians. And I came across this plant and it’s the most wonderful toilet paper plant. It produces leaves that are about the size of a piece of toilet paper. They’re as soft as can be. They’re durable. And they have really, generally been used by millions of people around the world. In Brazil, it’s called Boldo, or Boldo gaucho, and you can actually make tea from it as well. Of course, separate leaves for tea and toilet paper, of course. And so, a big part of that program is about raising awareness about composting toilets. So, the concept of humanure, which is, when you have limited fresh water and, in many places, there isn’t fresh water. And sanitation can be a very large issue when it comes to human poop and pee, and compost toilets are really powerful, effective, with low infrastructure, low cost. I believe that if there was one change that I could initiate in the world that I think would make the largest change practically overnight, or within a year, it would be that eight billion human beings are composting their poop, meaning all of that would turn into soil that would nourish the Earth, which would mean you no longer need chemical fertilizers and we would no longer have to be exploiting the Earth for these and we would actually be building our soil, reducing erosion, growing food. And it could all be done safely and sustainably. If you’re really interested in learning about that, there’s a book called The Humanure Handbook, which teaches us all about it. If you enjoy me, you’ll enjoy that. The author’s name is Joseph Jenkins, and he goes by “The Duke of Duty,” as well.

So. And then, we also have a program called The Food Forest Starter Bundle. So we’re very passionate about food forestry. So, basically, a food forest is mimicking what nature does. It’s seven layers, from food growing on the ground all the way up to the upper canopy that creates ecosystem services for the plants and animals, for the humans. And it can be done in cities. I was just at the Boston Food Forest Coalition a couple of days ago, where they have 15 food forests in Boston. So, these are designed to be spaces for community. When I say community, I’m talking about humans, but also the plants and animals are a community. And so, we created this program called the Food Forest Starter Bundle where we provide about 30 varieties of seeds and cuttings, where you can receive this as one package and it’s enough to start a food forest with the teachings of how you can then duplicate those seeds and cuttings and you can start to be your own little hub of spreading food forests throughout.

And then, the last of them that I’d like to talk about is called Community Fruit Trees, which I know that many of you are passionate about, planting fruit trees, and see how important a solution this is. So, Community Fruit Trees we started in 2018 in Orlando, Florida. We planted 2,000 trees over the last handful of years. Community fruit trees are designed to be publicly accessible. Anyone has access to the food. Of course, our objective is to provide for the people who don’t have access to delicious and nutritious local fruits. And … and then also to be planting in areas where just the existence of those trees really provides joy and meaning and purpose. And so, our limiting factor has been money, because buying trees is … well … they’re $20 to $40 a piece. So, if you want to plant a million trees, we’re talking $20 to $40 million just for the cost of trees.

So recently, I just launched the One Million Community Fruit Trees initiative. What we’re now doing is, we are growing our trees through a grassroots collaborative effort through a community … a micro nursery initiative. And our number one inspiration is Wangari Maathai. Many of you know of her. She started the Green Belt Movement. She was a UN Messenger of Peace, and the Green Belt Movement has planted 51 million trees, and in a very grassroots way. So we are modeling ourselves off of that. What we have is, we create these 4’ x 8’ raised beds, that you can plant about a thousand trees in. So imagine the length of this table, you can plant about 2,000 trees in these nurseries. Using seeds and cuttings, so the cost is almost nothing. You harvest these seeds and cuttings right in your own community. And then, it takes one year for the trees to be ready to plant. And then you distribute these trees locally in the community to anybody who wants to grow them and you can also ship them as well. So, over the next year, our focus is to create a hundred of these micro nurseries. So, anybody who wants to create them, our objective is to provide the template, the exact details with video and written templates on how to do this. And our objective is to do a very grassroots collaborative effort to plant one million fruit and nut trees over the next decade. And that’s about food security. It’s about food sovereignty. It’s about environmental restoration. So this is going to help with decreasing heat in urban environments. It’s going to help with reducing erosion and runoff. It’s going to create a sense of community. That’s the name: Community Fruit Trees. It’s about bringing people together and having a shared sense. That’s why we like to plant in public spaces, where we dissolve the idea of public ownership and, instead, it’s community ownership.

So, a few …. So, I would like to share a few notes on some things. As far as bringing sustainability …. As far as bringing sustainability to your personal and professional life, I’ll just share a few things, because I want to leave more time for questions. But some of my top things for bringing into our own lives would be reducing our waste. Looking at all the ways that we’re creating trash and seeing if there’s ways that we can do things differently. A great way to do that is look in your garbage cans. See what’s in here, and then see how we can do things differently. We can compost. That’s a really big one. Making sure that our plants and animals don’t go into the landfill. Think of all the plants and animals as our friends, making sure we don’t put our friends in the garbage can. We can shop local. So minimize the money that we’re sending outside of our community and as much as possible into our community. We can grow some of our own food. Even if it’s just tomatoes and herbs on our back balcony, growing a little bit of our own food. We can forage! So, we can learn the plants that are growing right in our community. Right here in New York City, outside of UNICEF, I could show you a dozen plants within a block of here that are growing food that many people walk by every single day and don’t know it. We can divest. So, we can take our money out of destructive investments and invest in the now.

Some other … this is a beautiful practice: Nonviolent Communication. This has been one of the most powerful resources that I encourage you to look into. This is a language of life for existing in a way that is compassionate with our colleagues, with our friends, with our family. Other books that I really love: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book is a guiding force for living in harmony with the Earth. Thich Nhat Hanh. One of his practices is to walk as if with every step is we’re kissing Mother Earth. We’re kissing the Earth through every step. Imagine if we walked down our cities with every step so mindful. So, I like to put it also as a greeting to Mother Earth with every step. So, Thich Nhat Hanh, I’m sure most of you are quite familiar with. And I love this little book called The Thanksgiving Address, which is by the Haudenosaunee people. They’ve been giving this Address for a thousand years. And I believe if we lived our life by this very simple Address – if we led our organizations, and our … our … our movements by this … by this simple, simple greetings to the natural world that so many of our problems would be drastically decreased. On my website, robingreenfield.org/books, you can see a list of books that I recommend. I have at robingreenfield.org/100, that is my top … that is the first hundred changes that I made. So it’s all right there. You could print that out and use that as your own checklist. And at /timeline, that’s my timeline of transformation documenting all of this to help others who are, wanting to go on a similar journey. If you’re interested in partnering with Community Fruit Trees, we’re looking for organizations, individuals, communities around the world that would like to plant trees together, you can go to robingreenfield.org/communityfruittrees. My current project of foraging, that’s at: /foragingyear. And my website has an absolute plethora of resources for being things which you wish to see in the world. I will say though, it’s a rabbit hole and you might get … you might end up spending quite a few hours once you’re there.

So, on that note, what I’d like to say is … to kind of close this, is that I’m really, really passionate about investing in our future as humanity. But not through IRAs, not through personal savings, but through clean air, and fresh water. That is what we need now. And it’s what we’ll need in the future, too. So, when we divest, it’s about putting all of these into, like … our future is uncertain as humanity. There’s no question about that. But we know, all of us believe that life matters. We all value life. And some people would say, with the daunting times we live in, why try? Every single one of us believes though that the life of every child on this planet really matters, and we truly value that. So, what if we can use our lives in a way where we invest in the present moment and do that in a way that also invests in our future? So that would be one of my encouragements – is to … is to find a way to use our lives both here at work and at home and in our schools so that we’re investing in our future while making that positive impact in the now.

And the last thing I’ll say along that is my … my … a big focus is that we have so much in harmony and alignment as embracing biodiversity. The Earth runs on biodiversity. On diversity within our humanity: those two things are completely interconnected and community. An activist in New York … her name’s Amanda David … really powerful when she said to me, “The solutions to all of our societal woes lie in community.” So, embracing community is part of the solution, and a big part of that is finding a home. Finding a home on this Earth. Really believing that this is our home. This is our home. And right here, inside of ourselves, this is our home as well. We can find a home inside of ourselves, we can love ourselves. As Mister Rogers says, “I like you just the way you are.” We will never like others just the way they are unless we accept ourselves. So there’s so much work for us to do as individuals as well. To find that home inside of ourselves, to love ourselves. And, as we do that, the hate will be dismantled and I believe we’ll find ourselves to be more powerful and effective servants here through UNICEF, through our daily life if we could act from a place of … of … of truly loving and … and caring for the Earth.