He's Living Off the Grid —in Manhattan

Josh Spodek has been testing the limits of his capacity to tread lightly on the planet since 2015, when he decided to stop purchasing food wrapped in any kind of packaging. Then in 2022, he disconnected the circuit breaker in his studio apartment. With just four solar panels and a 17-pound battery that he lugs up to his roof every day, Spodek tells the New York Times he can get enough juice to power his cell phone, laptop, and Instant Pot in about four hours, depending on the sunshine. While step one of going off the grid seems like it would involve moving into the wilderness, Spodek doesn't have plans to leave the city.

"People, forever, have moved to live off in nature," he tells the New Yorker. "They get this lovely little place. And then someone else moves there and someone else moves there and then, boom! There's a new city." In his new book, Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems, Spodek has a blueprint for anyone who wants to follow in his urban, eco-friendly footsteps. The New Yorker writes that Spodek has about the same carbon footprint as three house cats. To achieve this, he avoids both direct and indirect energy use. Along with not using wall outlets or gas hookups in his apartment, he eschews riding elevators, taxis, or airplanes (there's a running tab on his website about his break from air travel, 100 months and counting).

He also has a zero waste approach to his consumer and kitchen habits. He began throwing away about one bag of garbage per year, and now says he's whittled it down further. On his YouTube channel, he showcased one year's worth of trash, which fit into a small, reusable canvas bag. "A lot of people would say this is a small amount, but to me it's a large amount," he said. "Because this plastic is going to be here for over 500 years."

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Spodek doesn't take half measures—switching to candlelight and turning off his phone during periods of less sunlight, times he reads, meditates, and sleeps more. "I made some big advances because I had the time to think," he says. But he doesn't expect the same extreme commitment to clients he coaches—asking them to just try one change, with the hopes it will ripple. "I think Josh is unreasonable," client Lorna Davis says. "He's extreme and he's dramatic. But I think that the people who really make a difference in the world are not reasonable by definition." (We're on track for the hottest year on record ... again.)