This afternoon I got an email from Michelle: “What should we do about dinner tonight? I think we might be out of food.” She was right, we were. Yesterday I forgot to go to the farmers’ market, and today it was a choice between picking up food at our CSA (community supported agriculture group) or […]
No Impact Man
The positive impact of positive impact
It’s impossible to reduce one’s negative environmental impact to zero, so the conceit of the No Impact project has always been to reduce our negative impact as much as possible and then to increase our positive impact. In other words, we reduce the harm we do to the planet and increase the good we do in the hope that, […]
Our squatters’ park on Seventh Avenue
Here it is: the little park we made last Friday on Seventh Avenue, right outside the Whole Foods on 24th Street, which has no place for it customers to sit and eat. As you can see, they came and ate with us instead! Over 100 people hanging out in a 12 by 8 foot park […]
What makes biking so cool
If you read this blog regularly then you know that the enforced biking of this project is one of the happiest adaptations we’ve made. We get to exercise, go places wouldn’t otherwise, get there faster and just plain have fun. That’s why I dedicated my spot on Good Morning America today to biking. But it’s not just me who […]
Park(ing) Day
In case you were wondering what I’ll be doing Friday, as part of the positive impact part of the project, I will be squatting in a New York City parking space and, with a group of friends, transforming it into a mini-park as part of an effort to demonstrate what cities could be if they were dedicated […]
When corporations co-opt the environmental message
I am grateful to readers Brett and Anne for reminding me how bottling and canning corporations promoted individual environmental action back in the 70s as a way to shirk their corporate responsibilities. Beverage industry interests told us all to clean up our own garbage through a front organization, Keep America Beautiful (KAB), so they wouldn’t have to. “People […]
Time to make a splash (with your help)
As you know, the idea of the No Impact project is to reduce our negative impact and increase our positive impact in order to have no net environmental impact. Of course, the scientists will tell you that this doesn’t work, but it isn’t intended to work so much scientifically as it is to work philosophically. […]
Happier people, happier planet
I harp on a lot about the opportunities in our environmental crisis. If there is one resounding lesson I’ve learned during No Impact Man, my one year experiment in extreme environmental living, it’s that being kinder to the planet can also mean being kinder to ourselves. Eating local and seasonal, part of the experiment, also means eating more healthily. […]