So I start traipsing around the stationers (since buying online means packaging) and no one has recycled notebooks. Not Kate’s Paperie, not anyone. It’s dispiriting. They don’t have them because there is no demand for them. Meanwhile, here in the USA, we cut down a huge number of trees for paper, most of which ends […]
Consumerism and Materialism
Stopping the junk mail tree killers
It’s two months since I began the no impact man stage concerned with stopping trash, but my recycling bin is still filling up with paper I never bought, never used, and never wanted. The junk mail pours in. Five years ago, I bought my step-mother Beth some flower bulbs. The company has sent me two catalogs a year […]
Day one and the whole thing is a big mistake
My journal entry from Nov 20, 2006, the first day of No Impact, when learning to make no trash was top of the agenda: The first shock is that you can’t buy any individually packed items, walk into Bagel Bob’s and get an everything with tofu to go wrapped in tinfoil, or even get a coffee in a […]
The Year-Long Plan
You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth […]
The No Impact Philosophy
None of the practical questions about no impact living would be relevant if my wife Michelle, my daughter Isabella, our dog Frankie and I intended to approach the challenge by becoming ascetics. Until now, we have been your typical convenience-addicted, New York City take-out slaves. Asceticism is not a realistic way forward, not for my family and not for the […]
The Personal Impact of No Impact
My wife Michelle and I decided, before jumping in at the deep end of this year-long project, to try no impact living as an experiment for a week. No garbage. No greenhouse gasses. No toxins. No water pollution. No air pollution. No electricity. No produce shipped from distant lands. No impact. Or so we naively hoped. We started one […]