World's easiest-ever green living tip

How, in a city like New York, can you not make trash but still have exactly what you want exactly when you want it? You know, like coffee, bagels, fresh juice... It all comes in throw-away containers.

My solution, in the beginning of the No Impact Man project, was to run out and buy a reusable cup. That took care of the liquids and drinks. Then, I shopped around for hours looking for a bowl with a lid. I wanted to be sure I could trashlessly pop into any food place for takeout whenever the yen for, say, falafel took me.

You know what, though? Humping around cups and bowls and other accouterments in order to quiet the need for immediate gratification got to be unbearably inconvenient.

So here is one radical solution I came to. If I didn’t have time to sit down and drink a coffee out of a real cup, I didn’t have it. If I couldn’t eat food from a real plate, I didn’t eat it. There was no need to buy a full table setting of portable cups and bowls to be green. Instead, I finally learned to either do without or wait until later.