One way we keep our local food diet—which we do to keep down carbon-producing “food miles,” among other reasons—is by getting our veggies from the West Village CSA. A CSA—community supported agriculture—works by a bunch of people buying “shares” in a farm’s crop. If it’s a good year, you get lots of stuff. If it’s not so good, you […]
Environment
Free bikes all over New York?
“Congestion pricing came to a halt after a head-on collision with Albany on Monday,” wrote David Haskell, founder of the New York Bike-Share Project, in an OpEd entitled The Path of Least Congestion in Wednesday’s New York Times. “The New York State Senate decided not to take up Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to charge a fee to drivers entering the […]
Slimy pets to eat your garbage and entertain your kids
When I first told my wife Michelle I was going to keep worms in a bin to turn our food scraps from garbage into compost, she said no way. She was like “Worms in my kitchen? Forget it.” But guess what? We have a bin full of worms in the kitchen and have had for several months. Isabella, my […]
What am I for?
There are some big questions that used to keep me up at night when I was a kid, before I made the mistake of learning how to ignore them. Why was I born? Where is it that I’m hurrying to before I die? What is the thing in this life that has true value? Does anything endure? […]
Entertaining Isabella—Update
Since we have no mains electricity as part of the No Impact experiment, we also have no TV. Last week, someone asked me how we entertain Isabella without one. In the comments to that post, someone said that they like to take their kids hunting for fireflies. Coincidentally, that day, my friend Mayer, whose community garden plot I help […]
How we avoid making trash
In case you’re new to the No Impact Man project, you should know that we’ve broken down our lives into six areas and tried to figure out how to live with as low an impact as possible in each area. The six areas are: trash (as in we try to make none), carbon-producing transportation (as in we don’t use […]
Do carbon emissions make countries happy?
Never in my life, when I’ve heard politicians say things like “we have to make sacrifices for the economy,” could I understand what they were talking about. As far as I can tell, the economy is here to serve the people. More specifically, the economy is supposed to support the well-being and happiness of the people. So I’ve just […]
No Impact update
In answer to some questions from No Impact Man reader Phil Brady: How are the earthworm castings faring, and to what uses are they being put? For those of you who don’t know, I prevent my food scraps from ending up in the landfill by composting them. But because I live in an apartment, I use a technique […]