To Sign Up For HuffPost's No Impact Week, Click Here!
How do I make a difference?
We've all asked ourselves this. When we think about what we can do as individuals, especially related to the state of increasingly urgent environmental concerns, the idea that one person can change anything is difficult to imagine. With political and corporate forces getting in the way of large-scale change, the task is daunting. We think the first step is to get some perspective on the impact we're already having.
Enter No Impact Man. We first heard about Colin Beavan and his No Impact Project around the time many others did -- when the New York Times did a feature on him and his family's efforts to live with no environmental impact in New York City for a year. Our reaction: intriguing, innovative and seemingly a bit kooky.
As we learned more about Colin, and saw No Impact Man, the documentary film and read his book of the same title, about his family's year-long experiment, we were downright inspired. The documentary follows the Beavans' journey as they incrementally lowered their impact through phases, such as making no trash, only eating food grown within 250 miles, using no carbon producing transportation (not even the subway!) and finally, no electricity in their home. By year's end their impact was down to nearly zero.
We wanted to have that experience ourselves. And we wanted our readers to have it, too.
HuffPost Green and HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Initiative are thrilled to announce that we are partnering with the No Impact Project, a non-profit started by Colin Beavan, to bring our readers the first No Impact Week. This week will give people the opportunity to examine and reduce their ecological footprint by taking part in a short and intense period of conscious consumption supported by local and online communities.
For the inaugural No Impact Week, which we will be hosting, the No Impact Project has created a detailed guide -- which we'll post soon -- that describes in detail how to go about reducing your ecological impact one day at a time. No, not everyone has to completely give up their cars and shut off their power; the guide gives many achievable levels of reducing your footprint and you can pick the goals that are right for you.
We'd like to invite you to do this week with us (Sign up here!). Starting on October 18th, we want all types of people of all political persuasions across the world to take part. Throughout the week we'll be having HuffPost bloggers write about their experiences, and we'll invite the community to report by sending in photos, videos and commentary. We will also have a Twitter stream using the hashtag #nipweek and a Facebook group for people to connect to us and each other as they take the No Impact challenge. You can also follow the No Impact Project on Twitter for tips during the No Impact Week.
The No Impact Project will also be providing how-to content, video discussions with Colin and ways for participants to engage and connect with one another on its website.
During the week, HuffPost and No Impact Project will work together to provide a robust platform for for you to engage with other participants by sharing photos and stories of your experience. But we also recommend that you do this week with a local community. Invite your family, your school dorm, your spiritual community or your office to embark on the week together. The Huffington Post offices will be doing it with you. Your local community will be the people who can brainstorm with you on how to reduce the trash you create, they'll be the ones you carpool with, share ideas for places to buy locally grown food, and most importantly, provide a support network for the experience. We hope to create a global community through our technology for sharing your experience, but it always helps to have someone there in person as well -- It will make it even more fun.
Sign up here to join the shared HuffPost and No Impact Project mailing list and to learn more about the project. Tell your friends, family and coworkers and get ready.
Get HuffPost Green/Eyes&Ears On Face/book and Twit/ter!
Follow Katherine Goldstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KGeee
Arianna Huffington: HuffPost's "No Impact Week": Small Steps, Big Results
HuffPost's No Impact Week is a project we've launched together with Colin Beavan -- aka "No Impact Man." The goal is to demonstrate ways in which small actions in our daily lives can have a profound impact on our world.
No Impact Man: The No Impact Experiment
No Impact Project » The No Impact Experiment
"No Impact Man": The Movie Everyone Is Talking About (VIDEO)
Jerusha Klemperer: No Impact Man and the Pursuit of Happiness
Reduce 10% by 2010
regarding recycling garbage:
I read somewhere that, in Japan, they sort refuse into approx. 40 categories, all recycled~
Every tiny thing helps, even something as easy as turning off the lights upon leaving a room.
Unplug your toothbrush, router, computer, coffee maker, etc.... when you're not immediately using them.
Try not to use the clothes dryer. Dry clothes outside or hanging on a rack or bannister or hangers inside!
Ideas:
Buy all 100% recycled paper products, and only buy products that have recycleable packaging. Recycle and compost. Call your utility and get an energy audit. Change all your lightbulbs, inside and outside, to CFL's. Replace your toilet with a low-flow model. Eat one or two meatless meals each week. Dry your clothes on a rack rather than use the dryer. Buy local produced food when possible. Install power strips and turn them off at night. Read a book rather than watch TV a couple of nights each week.
OK...there are some ideas. Choose a couple and try them out. And stop whining. That will get you nowhere.
...but if millions of people did what they are doing....it would no longer be "no impact".
I did get one of the residents to load it in his old car and take it to the drop-off.
I visited someone in an affluent area in florida recently. They have curbside recycle pickup and they don't even have to sort it (don't have to separate plastic, paper, metals etc--just all the recycles in one blue bin). I noticed that many folks don't even bother - they just put out the one trash bin (full of lots that could have been recycled.). Sad. But most of the residents in that area are of a different generation, and perhaps don't value it.
I suspect that many who protest and screech about global warming don't bother to do anything themselves--they think it's a government problem.
Both of my parents will be 80 soon. They have adjusted and now use the blue bin for what can be recycled. I never got them to collect cans and take them to a recycler for money, but they do collect them and put them in the blue bin.
As for the different generation. Nope. It's laziness and indifference. No incentive, either as a reward or a punishment. And yes, they see no value in it and so there is no self motivation.
From a LiveScience article linked below:
"Under current conditions in the United States, for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible."
http://www.livescience.com/environment/090803-children-carbon-footprint.html
you might as well say that the earth would be better of if there were no humans. true, but most of us don't want to cease the human race.
We're trying to save the human race.
.
I think giving people this message that they have to give up everything modern and live like it's the 18th century is the wrong way to go. We want people to join in, not drive them away from the movement.
I have a garden and am slowly replacing my landscaping with herbs and berry bushes--lower food bills/healthier food.
I have a rain barrel for watering the plants--lower water bills, better water for the plants AND an emergency source of water (don't drink without filtering and boiling though!)
I walk wherever I go when it's reasonable, and sometimes even when it isn't!--Less money spent on gas, better health, better frame of mind, happier dog!
I purchase in bulk and try to make it mostly local--better for the local economy, and I practically have a supermarket in my basement. If I don't feel like going to the store, I don't have to. Also a great buffer for dramatic, temporary price increases.
My "houseplants" are lettuces and herbs. Useful AND healthy. I often give friends gifts of these--cheap, practical and always appreciated.
It's actually a very fun hobby and practical in so many ways.
One whole week
day one toss some hickory on the smoker with a nice big pork shoulder (16 hrs to smoke)
day two eat it w/15 of my neighbors whilst prepping for the day three meal mesquite smoked whole leg of lamb. (7 hrs to smoke).
This will be a yummy week.
Let's pause for a moment. What about our robber barrons and other citizens of ill-gotten wealth of 20 million dollar ocean liners and mansions? Will they sacrifice? Will they pay more taxes to support energy pollution remedies? Will they turn their furnaces down and bathe in cold water?
And where are all those job creating programs that furnish breakthroughs in science and technology that afford a reasonalbe standard of living without destroying our air, land and water? My solution: Put to work a couple milion unemployed workers to design clean energy producing systems at a reasonable cost. Then we wouldn't need suffocate and freeze and revert to manual labor to make ends meet. And we might still save the planet and ourselves.
It's a good idea, but it's not exactly a solution yet. It needs some meat on the bones. For example, for any particular clean energy project, there will be a high-employment phase (construction) and a lower employment phase (normal operation). That needs careful management, or we could end up creating boom-bust cycles, as we've seen before in the energy industry.
In any case, we're getting there. According to the Worldwatch Institute, America had about 200,000 people directly employed in the renewable energy industry in 2006, and 246,000 employed indirectly. ( http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5821 )
JMB
That being said, this sounds like an interesting project. I'm a big fan of microgeneration, so I hope to see some ideas along those lines.
JMB
I generate my own electricity with PV panels. Does that help?
I hope you'll join us.
I am agressively brownbagging with a reuseable bag, tupperware etc. No trash. And no meat.
Did I mention that I own a recycling washer? Yep. I can recycle the water from one load of laundry without losing cleaning ability. (Consumer Reports says so.) And I line dry. But I will not do laundry that week.
It made me a fan. ;)
I've been playing with some wind turbine ideas. Texas seems to be a perfect place for a wind-solar hybrid system.
JMB
My current car is a Prius, but my next car will be electric. I'll just throw a few more PV panels on the roof.
Don't forget to recycle the cans!