No Impact Man

If you look on the left sidebar of my blog, there is a listing of blogs I "follow". I pretty much read all of these regularly, at least once a week. One that has been there pretty much since I've had a blog is "No Impact Man". It's an interesting blog, written by a man who took himself, his wife, his dog and his daughter through an experiment of living without an impact for one year. They unplugged from electricity for 6 months, did not buy anything new except food (all produced within 250 miles of their home), they didn't take any mechanized transport (with few exceptions) and learned a great deal about themselves and their environmental footprint.

I just watched the documentary about this, and what I love is that Colin wasn't a diehard environmentalist when this started. It was an experiment, he was also honest that it was a focus for him to write a book...and he was curious how much they could live without. Even more fascinating, is that his wife was almost the opposite of an environmentalist. She was a hardcore consumer. She loved to buy clothes, stuff, loved her coffee in the morning, took cars and trains everywhere, didn't think twice about where things came from or where they went.

And while some of the changes were hard, she was able to adjust surprisingly well to a majority of the change. I think once we break a habit, it often isn't hard anymore...it's that 3-4 week time frame when you're "breaking a habit" that is just painful! I definitely felt that when I stopped drinking caffeine recently. I hadn't admitted to myself that I could possibly be addicted, but jeez...I was. Once she stopped buying things, it seemed like that wasn't as much a "need" for her. Once they started eating locally, her blood work came back much improved (she had precursors to diabetes before the change).

There's a lot this family did that is way over the top and truly unrealistic for anyone, including myself. I would never live without electricity. It is a modern day convenience that is wonderful. However I strive to reduce my use of it and feel I'm relatively successful at that. I still daydream about a house with solar paneling - utilizing that energy for the majority of my home. I think that was a tad more realistic in sunny Colorado, but who knows?

There's a lot I know I do that has an impact, and it is a succession of small changes my family and I have made. We don't buy much, if anything, new. I get "new" books/clothes/etc from craigslist, resale stores, swap websites like "SwapMamas"...I actually find that to be fun! It's a refreshing challenge to think "I want/need XXX" and go find it used and cheaper somewhere. We've used homemade cleaning products for years now. We use laundry detergent that is as close to homemade castile soap/borax combo as you can get. The same 5 gallon tub has lasted us almost 2 years and is only half empty. I have a goal to grow a majority of my own produce someday, and until then will utilize our local farmer's markets as much as possible. I think in all honesty our food consumption is the next focus for me. For a family that doesn't eat a ton of processed foods, we still have a huge bin of recycling each week from packages and containers from the grocery store. I'm proud our garbage is fairly minimal, less than one bag a week, but I believe we can do even better.

In the end, I felt the movie had some inspiring messages:

• Without community, none of us feel accountable to anyone else - the best thing you can do, if you will only make one change, is to volunteer with a local environmental organization to reconnect to your community and its needs
• The most radical political act there is, is to be an optimist - believing if each of us as an individual changes, we will have an impact
• We can create substantially less environmental impact, without adversely affecting our happiness

If you have time someday, I recommend the movie as an interesting 90 minutes. You can also check out the website for some ideas: http://noimpactproject.org/