My college magazine profiled me: Joshua Spodek ’93 Found Connection by Disconnecting. The piece begins: On May 22, 2022, Joshua Spodek ’93, GSAS’99, BUS’06 disconnected the electricity in his West Village apartment. Nearly a year later, it’s still off. For Spodek, an environmentalist, executive leadership coach, motivational speaker, author, professor and podcaster, living off the grid is the latest effort in his mission to encourage personal and corporate sustainability. “You[…] Keep reading →

April 20th is the cannabis holiday and Washington Square Park attracts people celebrating it. I have no problem with people growing a psychoactive plant and smoking it. I think it’s legal anyway. But trashing our shared environment becoming standard for every occasion is tragic. I could cry. Plastic doesn’t break down on human time scales. Unlike, say, fruit peels that become plants later, the doof wrappers everyone dumps make their[…] Keep reading →

If doing something kills people and you don’t want to kill people, you have to stop doing that thing. I’m not talking about morality or suggesting guilt or blame. I’m saying something as simple as if you don’t want to break a glass, don’t drop it on the ground. This situation couldn’t be simpler, at least for people who don’t want to kill other people. If stopping doing that thing[…] Keep reading →

I’ll help man the table for The Carbon Almanac in Union Square, Manhattan tomorrow. Podcast guest Seth Godin started The Carbon Almanac and I’ve participated in the community, including appearing on its podcast. I plan to bring my solar kit for anyone interested in seeing how I make it work. I’ll help set up before noon, then have to step away to run my sustainability leadership mastermind group for a[…] Keep reading →

Every interviewer asks like a robot: “What’s one thing everyone can start with?” For context, people don’t pollute and deplete because they want to pollute. We do things we value and enjoy that our culture has made polluting and depleting necessary to do. Our culture has also engineered those activities to trigger the mechanisms of addiction. We are addicted to doof, social media, flying, etc. We don’t think of flying[…] Keep reading →

Today marked one month since I last plugged in at NYU. I made it a whole month without plugging my computer, phone, or anything else to the grid. I still used power, and plenty, taking subway trips, train trips to New Jersey and Philadelphia, and more. How? The days got longer. My skills to avoid polluting developed. The company whose power station (battery with many charging ports) I used sent[…] Keep reading →

I avoid doof even when presented as helping the environment, but volunteering, a store was throwing away this product not because it had gone bad but because stores get rid of old inventory for new; I instead delivered to the community center for people to eat for free. The small question: why do they use more packaging than product if they claim part of their value is helping the environment?[…] Keep reading →