This email from a first-grader at Brooklyn’s PS 58 came in this weekend: Dear Colin, We have to work harder the ice is melting and some people believe that in fifty years a few places are gonna be flooded alot. I want to meet you. I like what you are doing. I want to ask […]
Environment
Plastic bags are the devil
An estimated one percent of thrown-away plastic bags never make it to the landfill. Instead, in New York City, too many of them become street litter which first gets washed into the City’s storm drains and then, when a heavy rain comes and the system overflows, gets dumped through one of the 450 “outfalls” into […]
I’m not dead, so Michelle didn’t kill me
So Michelle and I had the talk about the consumption phase of the project last night, the one I was worrying about yesterday (see If I’m dead tomorrow, you know my wife killed me). But before I get to that I want to add something about the consumption rules that I forgot yesterday. The idea is that we […]
If I’m dead tomorrow, you’ll know my wife killed me
Michelle, my poor wife, has been dragged through this project, sometimes appreciating it, sometimes hating it, usually resisting a new restriction but often discovering its benefits. She loves the local food, loves the scooter to get to work, loves that we spend more time together because of TV, has a constant caffeine withdrawal headache. Tonight, […]
Do a dance for yogurt that isn’t in plastic tubs
What do you get when you combine no throwaway packaging with local food only? Not too many tasty treats, I can tell you. So the other night, I trundled along to a party thrown by the environmental magazine Plenty and bumped into David Kistner, founder of the Green Apple Cleaners, which uses CO2 instead of […]
Eating local vs organic
A couple of weeks ago, we had a potluck brunch for a bunch of friends and we set them the challenge of bringing only local food. We thought it would be fun to give people a taste of the No Impact experiment since stage two of No Impact Man is sustainable eating, which means, in […]
In which no impact man finally finds recycled notebooks
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 […]
Politics isn’t working–case in point
Referring to my previous post about not trusting politicians to fix the world, I forgot to mention a case in point: the Democrats folded on the Iraq war and voted for it. So, if I believe that the war is fought for oil–and I do–does it not make sense not to use so much oil […]