New York City's trash is this woman's treasure, and she's using her platform to fight our culture of too much waste.

Working at a bank in New York City, Anna Sacks was living the life — just not the life she wanted. Sure, she was happy. But she wanted to do something that felt important. She packed up and moved to Connecticut for three months to participate in Adamah, a farming program that focuses on sustainable (可持续的) living. When she returned, it was with a new purpose and a variety of new skills to make her dreams a reality. 

"One of the things that really stuck with me from Adamah was how little waste they produced and how they handled the waste," she says. "And I just thought, ‘Why aren't we doing that here?' I'd walk around my neighborhood and was shocked at how many bags of waste were piled up. I began to wonder, ‘What is actually in all those bags and recycling bins?'"

Instead of getting stuck in a never-ending cycle of climate anxiety, she started a mission. In 2016, she took a master composting course and started working with a food rescue program. She found her calling in 

2017. To satisfy her curiosity and to help her get food and household supplies, she began what she calls "trash walking". During outings around her neighborhood, Sacks picks through garbage to look for reusable items. Surprisingly, she discovered a wide array of really great stuff — like clothing, dinnerware, and food — all of which she documents on Instagram and TikTok.

Under the name The Trash Walker, Sacks quickly gained popularity for her educational and funny videos that bring out the problems with consumerism and share information about how to live a more sustainable lifestyle. "The root issue is overproduction, which leads to an immense amount of waste," she says. Sacks's main focus is simply getting people to pay attention to how many unnecessary things they buy and then throw away. "Once you become conscious of the way you consume, you can see ways you improve," she says.