No Impact Man

Innovating business greenly

Meet Trevor Paque. He's landscape gardener meets local food farmer. He rents himself to homeowners, but instead of planting and growing pretty flowers for them--and using the requisite water and chemicals--he grows them organic produce and leaves it in a box on their back porch.

This apropos, partly, of yesterday's post about innovation vs conservation.

It seems to me--and I get that this service is rarefied and elite--that is this the kind of innovative thinking we need from business in general? A way to improve people's lives while helping the planet? A way to make helping the planet seem cool and trendy? A way to make money doing it?

The point is there are opportunities and jobs to be had that assist the healing of the planetary habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security. Pitting economic well-being against the environment is just plain wrong.

PS I know, we shouldn't have to make helping the planet it cool and trendy, but it's all hands on deck, no? Besides, isn't this the quintessence of "green business?"

PPS Meanwhile, while Trevor helps the rich to grow local food, the excellent NYC organization Just Food helps neighborhoods grow good fresh, produce to which they might not otherwise have access. Check them out!

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

LV GRN: How to eat seafood sustainably

I've been writing the section of my book on the sustainable eating part of No Impact Man, and I came across this post on the blog. I thought it would interest those of you who call for more posts on individual lifestyle choices.

A fish is an animal that livED in the sea… at least that’s how the song is going to go about 50 years from now if nothing changes. The oceans are going to turn into liquid deserts. Goodbye sushi for the up market and fish and chips for the down. If you follow eco-topics at all, and you read the New York Times or The Independent or the BBC’s website, you probably already know all about this. But what no one offered was what we individual fish-stick eaters can do to help. That’s going to be the main point of this post. But first a little background for those who missed the November stories.

That we have only five decades left before our fish menu shrinks to zero is the scientific conclusion of a team of ecologists and economists from a dozen research centers who have studied detailed records on fish catches going back to 1950. Their study, published in the November issue of the journal Science, found that the number of commercial fisheries that have collapsed is accelerating and that the total eradication of all fish stocks in the world is due to be completed by 2048. This comes when just about everybody nutritionally inclined is saying that fish is the best food going.

Already, 29 per cent of the world's fisheries have collapsed. In some habitats, over fishing has led to the extinction of a number of species. "This isn't predicted to happen, this is happening now. If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life, indeed it may not be able to sustain our lives at all," said Nicola Beaumont, an ecological economist who took part in the study from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, according to The Independent.

The good news is that the trend is reversible if the fisheries are managed responsibly, which means, largely, taking fewer fish out of those parts of the ocean where stocks are depleted. The study participants called for the establishment of an international approach to protecting the oceans along the lines of the coastal waters of north-west America and Canada which are one of the best-preserved fisheries in the world. But until that happens, individual action—you know, by us—is particularly important.

As for my little family, for the purposes of the No Impact experiment, we have given up eating anything that, in my wife Michelle’s words, “wiggles or has a face.” That’s one way to ensure the oceans aren’t over fished. But if you are worried about your Omega-3s, it is also possible to obtain seafood sustainably.

The Worldwatch Institute advocates:

• Eating less of the big fish such as salmon, tuna, swordfish and sharks, which are the most vulnerable populations.
• Eating lower on the marine food chain, including smaller species that are less endangered such as clams, oysters, mollusks, anchovies, and sardines.
• Choosing fish caught by line, pot, or net (or other artisanal methods) and avoiding fish caught in massive trawl nets which pull everything out of the ocean whether it is the intended catch or not (see the poor turtle courtesy of World Wildlife Fund at the top of the post?).

On top of those tips, the World Wildlife Fund recommends that you only buy sustainably-harvested fish that has been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and bears its logo (shown here) on the packaging. You can find MSC certified fish suppliers here. If the restaurant or grocery store you frequent doesn’t carry MSC certified fish, you can download a letter to send to the manager here.

[Since I posted, early commenters have added some excellent further resources which I thought I should move into the main post:

• Monterey Bay Aquarium's guide to sustainable seafood choices (Thanks Jason)
• Ocean Alive's best and worst seafood choices (Thanks Susan)
• An issue of Mother Jones devoted entirely to over fishing (Thanks Sara)
• Dr David Suzuki's page on ocean ecology (Thanks Tony)]

Finally, let me leave you with a Worldwatch Institute video on the subject. Click the arrow.

Urban rooftop farming will save the world

I dedicate this post to the staff of Just Food, an excellent organization that works to ensure the availability of fresh food in all New York neighborhoods by supporting community gardening and forging connections between communities and local farmers. Read about Just Food here, but more importantly, throw money at them here. I am proud to say that I recently joined JF's advisory board.

Here in New York and in other big cities we have the heat island effect. The lack of vegetation and the black-top roofs mean that extra heat is absorbed so more energy is required to cool buildings.

Another problem, because of all the cement and asphalt surfaces, is that storm water ends up running off the ground and into the sewers, often causing raw sewage to overflow into the waterways out of what are called "combined sewer overflows" (read more here).

This is why I love green roofs--the use of vegetation to cover roofs in cities like New York. They both keep the buildings cooler (and warmer in winter)--substantially reducing energy use--and absorb storm water so it never reaches the sewers. Not to mention reducing outside noise, restoring bird and butterfly habitat, and increasing the life of the roof.

Synergy (or, for long term readers who know my turns of phrase, happier planet, happier people). I love synergies--solutions that solve more than one environmental or social problem.

But listen. If I dig green roofs (pun unintended but credit still deserved), imagine how much more I dig green roofs that also provide vegetables (more synergy). As you know, part of No Impact was also eating only local food (for reasons explained here and here). How much more local can you get than your roof?

But also, growing food on urban roofs may have the potential of turning local food from a hobby of the elite to a lifeline for the urban poor (even more synergy). Because the quality of available food in underprivileged neighborhoods is often appalling (KFC and MacDonalds but no fresh vegetables). Indeed, my friend Kerry Truman has a story on Huffington on urban food justice here.

I'd love to see vegetables growing on roofs all over New York (hint, hint, Jacquie, and you know who you are).

But I'm going on. What I wanted to do here is give you a glimpse of some cool photos by my eco-hero Kate Zidar of the green roof vegetable garden that she built with my other eco-hero and green roof expert Atom Cianfarani. At the bottom of the post, I include some links to do with urban rooftop farming.

And by the way, this roof that Kate and Atom built is on the top of Habana Outpost, a Brooklyn restaurant that works darn hard at sustainability (and is fun as all hell, too!). It's part of the work of the restaurant's associated non-profit, Habana Works.

Below is Atom. She's already laid down a rubber membrane that protects the conventional roof from water and infiltration by plant roots. Then she put down a polypropylene felt-like layer to cushion the membrane from footsteps and to absorb water. Now she's putting down another layer that looks like egg cartons that serves the function of both providing drainage and retaining water. All Atom's materials, with the exception of the membrane, are 100% recycled or reused.

After the drainage layer comes very lightweight "Gaia soil," produced by New York's Gaia Institute. Because it is so light, Atom covers it with burlap. The burlap will, in turn, be covered with compost. When Kate, who's in charge of the gardening, puts in the plants, she'll cut holes in the burlap.

Voila! In this case, the garden supports strawberries and herbs, in part because Kate did not want it to have to require irrigation. But she and Atom are planning another rooftop garden with a more extensive collection of vegetables that will harvest and store rainwater for irrigation.

Now for some cool links:

• A story about a vegetable garden on the roof of the Environmental Science building at Trent University featuring some pretty darn cool photos of what a roof can look like.
• An excellent study of the potential of roof top gardens to provide food.
• A really excellent guide for low-cost gardening on roofs using children's plastic wading pools as containers. This method may not retain the same amount of storm water but may be more feasible in low-income neighborhoods.
• Another guide to rooftop vegetable gardening using containers.

Is it in your nature to try?

Can the way I live really make a difference?

That's one of the things we worry about, right? When it comes to figuring out whether to get involved in the political process or to make our lifestyles more sustainable, we all wonder if, in fact, we will make the slightest bit of difference. Is it worth the effort?

Well, I have a friend, Mayer Vishner, who has been a peace activist since the 1960s. I help him grow vegetables on his plot at Laguardia Community Gardens in New York's Greenwich Village.

I once joked with Mayer, "Hey Mayer, you've been working for peace for 40 years. Don't you think it's time you looked for a new cause? I'm not sure your peace idea has any traction."

You know what he said? He said, "I've given up on worrying about the results. I have a vision of the way the world should be, and I've just come to accept that it's in my nature to keep trying. So I keep trying."

Michael Pollan, in his New York Times article on Sunday, makes a more rational case for taking action:

"If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries."

I completely agree with Michael. I have faith. On the other hand, maybe he's right. Maybe he's not. How can we know for sure?

So sometimes, the question of whether we can make a difference or not may be the wrong question. I think another line of inquiry might just as productively go like this: Do I want to be the kind of person who tries or the kind of person who doesn't?

It took me 42 years to realize it, but I want to be like Mayer Vishner. I want to be the kind of person who tries. Whether Michael Pollan is 100% right or 50% or 10% right, when the game is over, I want to be one of the people who tried. Whether the world is saved or not, whether I'm still alive to see it or not, I want to be able to say I tried.

And I'm not saying I'm perfect or that I'm never selfish or that I don't ever want an iPhone. I'm saying that given my set of circumstances and my temperament, within those limitations, not willing to martyr myself or anything like that, I still want to be the type of person who tries--even if the chance of results look slim.

So today, writing this blog, given all the effort I spend trying to affirmatively answer that question of whether each of us can make a difference, what I'm much more interested in today is this question:

How can I be the kind of person who tries?

PS For those of you who care, I finally have a profile on Facebook. It's here.

Forced to face the big questions

For the longest time, for me, it was easy to live by default. To go along living like everyone else. Not to question.

But the reason I started the No Impact project was because the crisis in human safety, security and health as it relates to the grave problems of our planetary habitat forced me to begin to face the big questions.

For me the big questions are:

How shall I live? What is the truth of my relationship to you and our community? What should I do? In short, what is this short life of mine really for?

This humane society video of the treatment of beef cattle at a California slaughterhouse is like that, too. It forces me to ask the big questions. How shall I live? What should I do?

More pointedly, taking this video alongside all the environmental impacts of raising beef, how should I eat?

Don't watch it if you are queasy. If you can't see it in your email or your news reader, go here.

Too many Big Macs?

As you know, the eating part of the No Impact project required my family to switch to eating only local, seasonal, vegetarian food. We are lucky in that local food is not difficult to get in New York City and swearing off meat has not been too hard on our palates.

If you're wondering what you could do on the food front to help the environment, here are some facts that might motivate you to eat less meat. The come from Mark Bittman's article "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler," published in Sunday's New York Times.

• "Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost."
• "At about 5 percent of the world’s population, [Americans] “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total."
• "An estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation."
• "f Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius."
• "2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days."
• "Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens."
• "Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency."
• "We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein...It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources."

Meanwhile, meat is also a contributor to  health problems from obesity to heart disease. Eating less meat is definitely a case of happier people, happier planet. Professor Eshel of the Bard Center told Bittman that when it comes to lowering meat consumption, “The good of people’s bodies and the good of the planet are more or less perfectly aligned."

Photo by Gary Kazanjian, courtesy of the New York Times.

Never mind CFLs, says LA Times, eat less meat

Thought you all might be interested in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, “Killer Cow Emissions,” related to sustainable eating.

Basically, the article says that livestock is responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gas emissions worldwide (in the form of mostly methane and nitrous oxide), more than the entire transportation sector, and that, to add to the bad news, global meat production looks set to double in the next 40 years.

“…A recent report in the Lancet led by Australian National University professor Anthony J. McMichael posits that available technologies applied universally could reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions from livestock [such as methane and nitrous oxide] by less than 20%. The authors advocate another, fringe approach that has long been embraced by dietitians and vegans but is a long way from going mainstream in the United States: eating less meat…

“…as evidence mounts that cutting back on beef would both improve our health and help stave off global warming, a campaign urging people to do so is clearly in order. It's understandable why political candidates are wary of bashing beef, but less understandable why environmental leaders with nothing to lose are reluctant to raise the issue. They would be more credible in targeting polluters if they were equally assertive in pointing out what all Americans can do to fight global warming, and at the very top of that list -- way ahead of more commonly mentioned approaches such as buying fluorescent lightbulbs or energy-efficient appliances -- would be eating less red meat.”

PS Personally, I think it's good to do the CFLs, too!

Image courtesy of Native Radio.

A day in our life

One of the questions people ask me again and again is to describe a day in the No Impact life. I always think it’s a funny question, because I’m so used to it now and it seems so routine. All the same, I thought I might as well answer it:

1. If I get it together, I wake up before the girls when my wind-up alarm clock goes off (no electricity) and take a little quiet time to meditate. If not, I wake up with Michelle when Isabella, the two-and-a-half-year-old, makes the short, two-foot trip from her toddler bed to our bed (we live in a one bedroom). How I miss the cage…I mean, crib!
2. Michelle and I contort our bodies to fit into the space allowed us. We sleep on one quarter of the bed; Frankie, during the night, progressively takes over three-quarters. When Isabella arrives and insists we don’t touch her, our share reduces by another half.
3. Eventually, after noisily sucking her thumb for a while, Isabella gets up and starts running around after Frankie. The windows are open (no air conditioning) and Michelle can’t bring herself to believe that the window guards—which could stop a gorilla—are strong enough to prevent Isabella from cart-wheeling out. We have to get up, too.
4. We brush our teeth (baking soda) using a cup of water (rather than letting the faucet run). We may or may not take a bath—one at a time in the same water—depending on whether it is bath day (we’re in the water conservation stage). We use homemade unscented beeswax soap to wash and baking soda for shampoo.
5. Breakfast consists of marvelously fresh cantaloupe and toast, both from the farmers’ market. I haven’t been able to bake my own bread for the last few weeks because the combination of a 400 degree oven, 90 degree weather and no air conditioning could potentially overwhelm my family’s ability to live with me.
6. One of us—depending on who wins the “discussion”—walks Frankie down the nine flights of stairs, around the block and back up the nine flights of stairs (no non-self-propelled transportation which means no elevator).
7. We all get dressed in clothes that are just this side of fermented (thanks to the combination of perpetually putting off washing our clothes by hand and our attempts to conserve water).
8. We stumble down the stairs, Michelle carrying the bags and bike helmets and Isabella riding on my shoulders.
9. We stop at the Gray Dog with Michelle’s reusable cup and my glass jar. The no coffee part of the local food stage has fallen by the wayside. Michelle couldn’t cope with the caffeine withdrawal. I couldn’t cope with not hanging out in coffee shops.
10. One of us delivers Isabella to her new Montessori nursery school, using either the tricycle rickshaw or a seat on the back of my bike. Sadly, Isabella this week left her childcare provider of two years (We love you and miss you every minute, Peggy). Thankfully, the nursery school is on the ground floor (But we don’t love your six flights of stairs, Pegs).
11. Michelle rides up the very substandard Sixth Avenue bike lane to work on the rickshaw, eliciting smiles and comments all the way. I ride over to the Writers’ Room, where I work.
12. Michelle gets a pass and takes the elevator to her office because she works on the 43^rd floor. The Writers’ Room is only on the 12^th Floor. I take the stairs to the 11^th and then take the elevator the last flight because there is no reentry on 12. My brain wonders every time whether that is idiotic (my legs are quite sure it is).
13. At the Writers’ Room, I sit very quietly tapping on my keyboard and giving the impression to anyone else that I am working instead of procrastinating. Then I actually get some work on the book done. Then I procrastinate some more. At Michelle’s office, she produces about fifteen articles to every one page I manage to write.
14. After lunch (generally fruit and cheese which we both bring from home), I go up and down about 563 more flights of stairs in order to shop at the farmers’ market, take the food home, take Frankie for her walk and get back to work at the Writers’ Room.
15. I write the next day’s blog post and make phone calls to friends about how slow the book writing is going (To my editor: Just joking!).
16. One of us picks up Isabella, again on our respective bike. If it’s me, Isabella and I either “see what happens”—which means we ride around searching for adventure—or we go to the Hudson River and watch the sunset.
17. We meet Michelle back at the apartment when it’s just getting dark. Dinner consists mostly of salads and eggs or cheese (simple fresh food that makes us happy and thin). We chat around the table. We spark up the one solar-powered lamp and read.
18. Michelle and I flip to see which of us will wrestle Isabella into her bed. Isabella says she’s not tired. We ask when she will be tired. She says, “Not today.”
19. If I lost the toss, I sit on Isabella’s bed and tell her stories: about the day she was born, about the day we got Frankie from North Shore Animal Rescue, about pretending to go alligator fishing with my favorite uncle when I was a kid. “Another story, please…another story, please,” Isabella says.
20. Michelle and I brush our teeth by beeswax candlelight. We talk a bit. One of us humps Frankie out. We talk some more until, by 9:30, our bodies, apparently cued by the darkness, tell us bedtime has arrived.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “And so it goes.”

Why eating less meat helps the environment

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s November, 2006 report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options”:

• 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock (more than from transportation).
• 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon was cleared to pasture cattle.
• Two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems, come from cattle.
• The livestock sector accounts for over 8 percent of global human water use, while 64 percent of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025.
• The world’s largest source of water pollution is believed to be the livestock sector.
• In the United States, livestock are responsible for a third of the loads of nitrogen and phosphorus into freshwater resources.
• Livestock account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth’s land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife, in an era of unprecedented threats to biodiversity.
• These problems will only get worse as meat production is expected to double by 2050.

The No Impact sustainable eating plan

There’s been a bit of press backlash against eating locally lately (see here and here). It’s too bad because such spin and counterspin has the effect of everybody being confused about what to do and therefore doing nothing. Michelle, my wife, calls it "stasis through obfuscation." Others refer to it as FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), a marketing method that weakens a competitor’s position simply by appealing to fear in the consumer.

The FUD technique has the effect of maintaining the status quo and is generally perpetrated by whomever currently dominates the market. A phone call from a front organization for Acme Giant Food Corporation to a friendly journalist may, for example, go like this: “Hey, you know all the hype around local food? Well, here’s a lead on a great contrary story. Did you know that if the local food is produced in an oil-heated greenhouse…” Next thing you know, there’s a story in the paper about how local isn’t always more environmental. Everybody is confused, their attempts to change grind to a halt, and the Acme Giant Food Corporation wins. Stasis through obfuscation.

But that’s not the real point of this post. The real point is to discuss the nuances that I use to modify my “local food only” regime in order to make it low impact. Some studies show that up to a quarter of an individual’s environmental impact comes from his or her food consumption. Food’s footprint comes from its production, its processing, its packaging, and its distribution (I’m writing off the top of my head here, so feel free to weigh in).

I’m going to look at each, but first, in case you need to get to work, here is the summary of food rules that, as far as I can tell, is the most environmental: A diet that is local, unfrozen and unprocessed, seasonal, organic or near-organic, has no packaging and is based on mostly grain and vegetables, including little or no beef or dairy (full disclosure: we’re not entirely off the dairy).

Surprise, surprise! Eating a diet that is healthy for the planet also turns out to be pretty much what nutritionists have wanted us to eat all along.

Now, here’s a little more detail:

Production has its impact by water use, land use, energy use, and herbicide and pesticide use:

• Eat organic or close to it—to cut down on the chemicals. When buying in the supermarket, the organic certification is most important. When buying directly from small farmers (who may not have the time, money or inclination to go through the certification process), a discussion with the farmers about their methods and the knowledge that their neighbors are      watching them satisfies me.
• Reduce beef consumption—which has a high impact because of land use, water use and, well, stomach gas (cow burps are made of methane). If you’re a beef eater, you may want to switch to chicken, lamb and pork which have lower impact. Far away lentils are probably better for the environment than local beef. PS My family doesn’t eat meat or fish at all.
• Eating seasonally—avoids carbon emissions produced by oil-guzzling boilers used to heat greenhouses and by power plants used to keep things frozen. Beware! This means a lot of root veggies in winter.

Processing includes cooking or rendering or freezing or any other form of preparation that takes energy:

• If  you’re veggie, eat more eggs than cheese—one pound of cheese takes ten pounds of milk to make. It has about the same impact as a pound of beef.  I’ve read that far-away beans as a protein source may be better than local cheese.
• Eat fresh and seasonal—freezing and keeping food frozen is not so low impact.
• Can you believe that means ice cream is out?
• Can you believe so is beer and wine and soda too?

Packaging means plastic and cardboard and boxes and bags that all get thrown away. We don’t buy any food that has it.

• Take egg and berry cartons back to the farmer for reuse.
• Bring your own cloth shopping bags and buy loose produce.

Distribution means transportation and the average piece of American food has traveled 1500 Miles to get to your plate. I emphasize local because:

• A regional and local food system would release five to seventeen times less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than our current national and international model (according to this Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture study).
• Direct relationship with the market farmers builds community.
• Locally grown produce doesn’t have to be picked weeks before eating so it is fresher and riper.
• Buying local help keep the greenbelt around the city undeveloped.
• Local farmers support biodiversity since they are not restricted to crop varieties that travel well and package easily.

Image of Union Square Farmers’ Market courtesy of Urban75.Org.