Congratulations No Impact Man!

On this day in 2006 one man and his family began to live making zero impact upon the planet. They ate vegetarian and bought local. They biked, walked and scootered their way around town. They took the stairs instead of elevators. They did without a laundry machine and a refrigerator. On the rooftop, one small solar panel powered Colin's lap top.

Colin Beavan blogged it all, and today marks the end of his experiment and the beginning of making many decisions about how he, his wife, young daughter and dog choose to live on the island of Manhattan.

His end of year post is a must-read. Looking forward to the book!

Congratulations Colin. Your comments are heart-felt and honest -- I'm so glad to read that you plan to continue blogging. It will be interesting to read about how your family adjusts to the temptations of comfort and convenience.

We all have seven years to lower our carbon emissions or learn to live on a greatly altered planet. If we don't start making a lower impact, the day will come when we will be living in perpetual drought with water a scare resource, surrounded by ever growing pollution in air, water and earth.

No Impact Man has turned off the electricity

If you haven't been following the adventures of Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, you are missing out on some very fine writing. Here are the first two paragraphs of a post lamenting that nothing is special any more because every need and every whim can be gratified instantly:

"In my imagination, people used to live like this: you had most of the bare necessities but then every so often a relative managed to get hold of, say, some coffee or some salt and pepper or a guava fruit. That day that it came would be special. These things were called “luxuries” or “delicacies.” If guests came over you’d say, “Hey, you know, cousin John sent us some coffee beans. Shall we have some for a treat?”

Or you’d dazzle your guests by putting salt and pepper on the table. Didn’t salt and pepper used to be a special thing? Today, is anything special? Is there anything so inaccessible that you get a buzz when you acquire it?"

You can read the rest of this post by clicking here.

Colin and his family are attempting to lead a No Impact life in the middle of NYC. They don' do it by buying carbon offsets. They are doing it by eliminating consumption/use of items that take a negative toll on the environment. They have been going in steps, from not buying any item that creates trash, to buying locally, to not taking elevators or public transportation and now to turning off the electricity.

When the sun goes down, they use candles. To maintain his blog, Kevin powers his laptop with a rooftop solar panel system. One thing he didn't figure on, was that his gas range depends upon electricity to turn it on. So when he bakes his bread (made from locally grown and milled flour). he has to turn one circuit breaker on to fire up the oven.

Colin shares an intriguing recipe for whole wheat sour dough bread that I plan on trying out. There was a time in my life when I was really into the bread baking ritual and I'm thinking I might be a good habit to renew. The next step of course will be finding locally grown and milled flour. Anybody have any tips?

No Impact Man on The Colbert Show tonight!

I've become a huge fan of No Impact Man over the past few weeks. I check his blog every day, because it is filled with great ideas for lowering one's impact upon the environment. No Impact Man walks his talk -- not taking elevators is just one of the ways he has changed his lifestyle.

In today's entry, he talks about taking his own cloth napkin to restaurants instead of using the paper products that are invariably offered. What a great idea! He also takes them to shops and wraps his cheese purchases in the handy cloth instead of accepting a plastic bag or container.

In the days before paper napkins, tissues, towels -- everybody recycled their old fabrics. In the 50s, remember my dad had a pile of pocket handkerchiefs that were duly laundered and ironed every week. In centuries past, the English called them "nose rags." I will be cutting up old sheets and clothing and making a pile for myself. Thanks for the tip, No Impact Man!

This summer, I plan to redesign my lifestyle so that I am not purchasing food products in plastic containers. One of my major goals is to convince The Mustard Seed to either stop selling items in #5 plastic containers or else taking responsibility for what they are sending out into the environment by collecting used containers for recycling. Akron's recycle trash collection will only accept #1 and #2 plastics.

BTW, I stopped at the Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in Montrose for the first time, after reading about the chain in Peter Singer's The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (to be reviewed here soon). Singer stated that this Mexican food chain has taken steps to provide cruelty-free pork and chicken (not yet beef) in its food. I ordered a vegetarian burrito, but didn't think to ask them to not put in a paper napkin. I did notice that the container of guacamole that came with my meal was made out of plastic #1 and did an excellent job of holding its contents without spills. Why can't The Mustard Seed provide #1 or #2 containers like Chipotle? I will be asking them that question, as I regularly purchase brewer's yeast from them and the only way it can be purchased is in the non-recyclable plastic #5.

So tonight -- we actually get to see No Impact Man on The Colbert Report! I'm looking forward to it and hope you all will check him out as well.