No Impact Man

Today I’m letting other people do the work

It’s 8:00 PM on Thursday night. The high point of my day was dancing with Isabella to a 70s group called Brewer and Shipley, my favorite when I was eight.

Isabella and I love to dance together. I dread when we can’t use the stereo when we finally turn the electricity off in a couple of months. I’m looking for a good second hand guitar to learn to play to keep the dancing going.

The good news is that we will be the makers of entertainment instead of the consumers of it. It’s been like that a lot, what with no TV. We’re finding there is something special about not letting entertainment wash over you while you passively watch or listen. We feel better making our own fun. We worry less about not having a creative output.

But I’m tired, so I won’t say more. Instead, a couple of stories from the papers that are worth reading and thinking about.

The first, in Wednesday’s New York Times, by David Leonhardt, points to what he thinks is the best way forward on climate change. It has to do with carbon tax and trading carbon credits on an industrial level. It’s interesting to me that little of the dialog discusses change in individual behavior. Is the action of individuals really so irrelevant? Not to me.

The second is from Tuesday’s Guardian (where the photo comes from). It discusses Whole Foods and whether it has “betrayed its organic ideals.” In trying to make ecological food choices, part of the issue is transparency, right? Well, I’ve come to love the transparency of going to my local farmers’ market and just looking the farmer in the eye and saying do you use pesticides and herbicides and how do you treat your animals? That way, I don’t have to know the first thing about Whole Foods’ supply chain.

Anyway, as Isabella would say, ni ni.

 

 

Just a couple of snippets

[Sorry, but I forgot to mention when I first put this post up that I will be on PRI's Fair Game tonight (March 29). You can listen here at 8:00 PM EST if you're interested. You can find the archived show if you missed it.]

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You know how I’ve written that plastic bags are the devil, in part because of all the animals they end up killing? Well, it turns out that out in San Francisco it is the plastic bags that are finally getting killed. Yippee! From the Independent:

San Francisco has become the first American city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets and chemists' shops - attracting the applause of environmentalists but also scepticism from business owners and many heartland Americans who feel that the quintessential "Left Coast" city has once again dived off the deep end (read more).

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I’ve been asked for the second time this week by a journalist what I think of the recent controversy surrounding Al Gore. You know, the journalists have said, people say Gore is fast and loose with the facts. People say he flies everywhere in airplanes and has two huge houses, one of them empty. He is a one person greenhouse gas manufacturer.

And? I say.

And what’s your take, the journalists say?

My take is that what I’m trying to do this year is to very imperfectly take responsibility for how I treat the world. It’s really hard and I make lots of mistakes and I have selfish motives as well as altruistic ones and I’m human. And I guess that probably goes for just about everyone.

So God bless Al Gore and anyone else who is stumbling along trying to do their best. I’ve spent enough of my life pointing out the specks in my neighbors’ eyes. The No Impact experiment is about rooting out the plank in my own.

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Frankie, our dog, pictured here, has released the following statement:

"It has come to my attention that Colin has recieved a number of emails that say things like, 'You have a dog but you call yourself No Impact. Ha!'

"Ha? I just want to say that I only eat food made from the scraps of meat that no people would eat, and not only do I not flush when I pee, but I don't flush when I poo either.

"Besides that, I am the nature representative on the project, and it's my job to remind Colin, Michelle, Isabella and others that animals are people too. Also, when Isabella spills milk and crumbs on the floor, I make sure they don't go to waste.

"Once, when Isabella saw sea lions, she shouted "Frankie!" She automatically loved them because she loves me (even though I killed her stuffed monkey). Isabella will probably always think twice before doing things that hurt animals. I take credit for that. Pets like me do the job of helping to connect people, especially city slickers, to animals and nature and the planet that supports them.

"You probably think that sounds all new age and kumbaya, but what do I care what you think? I'm just a dog."

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A vote of confidence from marketing guru Seth Godin:

Ever since he was written up in the Times last week, No Impact Man has been causing shockwaves. Here's a guy who, with his family, is going without... reducing his intake to local foods and his output to a tiny fraction of the typical American's...

...I think this story has legs and is going to be around for a long time. Zero is the new black.

Read more here.

Wake up and smell the compost (joking)

I’m going to talk about the why, where, and how of the box of decomposing food scraps in my kitchen. But first off, Time Out New York Kids, the local parenting magazine, will be running my Wednesday posts on their site as a way to apprise parents of green issues. Welcome, new readers! No Impact Man, if you’re just joining us, is my experiment in trying to adopt as low an environmental impact as possible for my family while living in New York City (read more about the basics here).

As for the issues to do with composting, there’s a lot of talk about products being better if they are biodegradable. You know, like disposable cups made out of corn starch so that when you throw them in the garden they return to the earth in a couple of months and nourish it. And, I’m guessing—and I emphasize guessing (experts please weigh in because I’m still researching all this)—that corn starch disposable cups are environmentally better for a bunch of reasons, including lesser use of petroleum (though I still prefer reusable cups to recyclable).

But unless you have a back yard, say, and that’s where you dispose of your biodegradable waste, it isn’t going to biodegrade. The problem is the design of the modern landfill (which you can read about in Elizabeth Royte’s fascinating Garbage Land). The landfill is not designed to help things to biodegrade, which requires contact with air and water. Instead, landfills hermetically seal their contents away from the environment to protect it from the toxic things in the landfill that aren’t biodegradable (of course, the seal breaks down in 70 years and leaves a toxic mess for our grandchildren to deal with, but that’s another story).

What this means, is that organic things like apple cores and yesterdays newspapers and cornstarch cups, when dumped in the landfill, either don’t break down at all—and certainly don’t end up returning nutrients to the earth—or they break down anaerobically, which means they produce methane, a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

So…what I’m trying to get to is that the whole point of biodegradable products is moot if they end up in the landfill. For the same reasons, sending kitchen scraps to the landfill is not so good either. This is all a long-winded way of saying why I compost.

Now to the how of my composting, a process one doesn’t usually associate with living in a 750 square foot apartment in the middle of New York City. I do two things. I dump the greatest share of my food scraps in a wooden bin I made where lot of red wriggler worms live in shredded newspaper bedding. They eat it up the veggies, and turn them into worm castings (compost), and the whole process is much faster and less smelly than in a compost pile. Plus, it’s a great science experiment for my two-year-old Isabella.

The other thing I do is I drop off my excess food scraps (a worm can only eat so much, you know) at compost pick up points provided by the Lower East Side Ecology Center. LESEC is also where I got my worms. They provide instructions on “vermiculture” here and say where their drop off points are here. There are a lot of composting resources for New Yorkers here. If you don’t live in New York, you can get worms by mail here.

Of course, if you have a yard, you can start a conventional compost and you can find instructions here. But then you wouldn’t have your kids jumping up and down begging to see “da worms.”

This post also appears in my Green Parenting column for Time Out New York Kids, appearing every Wednesday. For resources on eco-friendly stores and restaurants, or simply to plan a weekend outing, visit them at tonykids.com.

This story ends badly

Back in August, 2006, we had a mini No Impact experiment for a week to help us decided if we could do it for a year. I pulled out my bike—the one I use now to get around—and dusted it off. This is my journal entry about my first real ride (the picture, by the way, comes from Transportation Alternatives, NYC's bike advocacy group):

Everything I’ve read says that bicycles move faster in New York than cars. I’m wondering, though, how the speed of my bike compares to the subway, which doesn’t suffer from traffic.

As it happens, my best friend Tanner is visiting our apartment so he can play with Isabella, but the plan is to eventually meet our friend Bill uptown. We’re going to have a race. He’s going to walk to the subway and take the train. I’m going to ride my bike. We’ll see which is faster.

So I zig my way over to Third Avenue and ride casually uptown. I’m meeting Tanner at 88^th Street and I’m anxious not to try to go artificially fast. I want to get a realistic idea of what is quicker. So far, I find the bike ride more comfortable than the subway. It’s not hard on the legs and makes for a cool breeze.

Around 50^th Street I veer out of the nearside lane to move around a parked car. As I pull back in I hear a loud screech from behind me, then I have the surreal sensation of speeding up, then I’m flying through the air and…whack!

I’m on the asphalt and the first thing I’m thinking is Michelle is going to kill me for hurting myself again—I broke my ankle earlier in the year—and this hugely tall man gets out of the maroon BMW that just hit me and I am on my feet shouting my head off. It’s pure vitriol coming out of my mouth and I have no control over it. What kind of an idiot are you? What the hell is so important that it’s worth risking my life for?

Now, he is shouting that it is me who is the jerk and then a lady on a bike with a basket with plastic flowers rides up and starts shouting at the driver for shouting at me. “Can’t you see he’s bleeding,” she says. I haven’t noticed. The guy pulls out his cell phone to dial 911 and I start shouting “you were talking on your freaking cell phone when you hit me” and I’m just beside myself with nuttiness. The blood drips from my right knee and the palm of my right hand, which looks like hamburger. It hurts when I bend my left thumb.

BMW man is calling an ambulance and I’m thinking I don’t need an ambulance and suddenly I’m so very lonely. The ambulance siren screams from about four blocks away and I can see the lights flashing above the cars and there is something beautiful about that. I think: imagine if there were no cars then how would we all get to the hospital and surely Michelle will never let me ride my bike again so how will we do this no impact experiment?

I’m in the back of the ambulance and the paramedic is wrapping gauze around my hand and the police officer is explaining that I could get arrested for riding my bike without carrying ID and I’m just eying the cell phones hanging from everyone’s belts. I didn’t bring mine. I need to call Michelle.

Anyway, I’m thinking how do I first get to borrow a phone and second get out of earshot to begin a conversation that I know is going to begin with me saying, “Honey, please don’t be mad at me but…” Who wants to say such a girly-man thing in front a cop with a shaved head and an ambulance man wearing those fingerless black leather gloves and a backwards baseball cap?

I go up to the guy who hit me and reassure him that I am not going to sue him. Later, I realize that it is because I needed to connect with someone, because I didn’t want to think that the experience of nearly getting killed was one I had entirely alone. I wanted to pretend he was in it with me.

He doesn’t offer me and my broken bike a ride home. He wasn’t in it with me at all. Then, I’m sitting for a moment on the back of the ambulance, and my heart breaks for the world. I understand how we all want to protect ourselves by being inside these big, tank-like SUVs.

Then I wish I had an SUV and that I had run this guy over instead of the other way around. Then I chastise myself for having such a thought. Then I realize how trying to protect ourselves with the SUVs is the whole problem. That’s how we pump out the poison.

And nothing can really protect you, after all. Sitting on the bumper on the back of the ambulance, bleeding, I feel the insecurity of life with all my being. There is no escaping it. You never know when you’re going to be hit. So I’m thinking there is no pointing wrecking the world trying to protect myself with an SUV. It can’t be done.
 

Today is answer the critics day

Now then, I've had an incredible amount of support for the project from all over the world the last few days, and I've had rather a large amount of, well, hate mail. Someone wants to spray Michelle and I with an Uzi and get Isabella adopted by Angelina Jolie, for example.

On the other hand, there have been a number of helpful criticisms and questions. I'll get to them as time goes on. One I want to answer--again--is about the fact that I write books and am making a film. I've pulled a comment and my response from an earlier post for that purpose.

Before we get to that, though, I just want to say this--again. No Impact Man is a year-long experiment to do with me and my family trying to see what will happen if we really put our money where our mouths are and try to live in a radical way according to our values. It is not an attempt to convince anyone else to live according to our values (unless of course they want to). In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that I do hope that our project might inspire other people to live more closely to their own values (which is one reason for the book but more on that below).

At the end of the year, we will assess and see what changes we're willing to keep and discard those we decide are trivial. But how can we know what is trivial and what is worthwhile if we don't try the whole range? We are dismantling a lot of the life we inherited from the culture and then putting it back together in a more deliberate way. A lifestyle redesign.

Also, people say "this proves environmentalists are nuts." I am not and have never been an environmentalist. I did once give money to Greenpeace. What I am is a schlub who got tired of despising himself for doing things that didn't jibe with his political and philosophical beliefs.

Not all the changes we're making are in place, which is why, as some commenters complain, we don't use TP but still use a laundry machine. If you want to understand how we're progressively working things into and out of our life, read the posts on the left under "What it's all about."

But enough. The critics aren't going to set the agenda on this blog. This is one of what will be an occasional concession to the naysayers.

What I really want us to discuss are the solutions to the inherent problems of trying to green our lives. If you really believe reduced consumption would cause the economy to collapse and ultimately hurt the poor, for example, instead of just calling me an idiot, how about suggesting other alternatives that would both ensure the well-being of the planet and its people?

Anyway, onto the comments to do with my book and movie, and after this, we'll be moving on:

I love that you guys are doing this, but why not get the word out through word of mouth? Wouldnt that be more non-impact? What's with the public display of non-impactness? Getting people to read a blog on their 50-watt LCD monitors and buy a bound volume of post-consumer paper and show the filmed doc in a heated/air-conditioned movie theater, etc. sounds like non-impact man is leading to a lot of impact. And how are you going to measure your non-impact, except in rather self-centered ways like weight loss and better sex? (wait, maybe I should stop there.)

 

Posted by: bruce | March 07, 2007 at 01:09 PM

Bruce--
Thanks so much for your comment. I hope you will come back often and keep me on my toes!

As for how we will measure our impact, there is a rather trivial way to measure it at http://myfootprint.org and a much more detailed way that can be downloaded at http://redefiningprogress.org/programs/sustainabilityindicators/ef/ef_household_0203.xls. I'm sure there are other ways too but I'm not there yet in my research.

At the moment, apparently, if everybody lived the way we live, one and a half planets would be required to support the population. We have a way to go! On the other hand, there are things we are responsible for that we can't change, like the environmental cost of NYC's infrastructure. I think we're doing pretty well though. The average American lives, I think, a seven planet lifestyle.

As for the your reference to "self-centered" ways of measuring our non-impact, part of the experiment is to ask whether people in general might be able to live in a less impactful way and what benefits there are to it. So, if I find and can pursuade other people that saving the planet has its personal benefits, wouldn't you applaud me for appealing to self-interest in a positive way?

As for the book and the film and their impact. I know. I know. I wrestled with this. But each of us has what they are willing to give up for the environment and what they are not. I am not yet willing to give up being a writer. But I am using my position in media to try to change it some little bit. FSG will publish the book in Tyvek, same as Cradle to Cradle, which is a reusable material [actually it's not Tyvek but another completely reusable material, I've since been told], unless we find something better. If you believe things change incrementally, that's a little something, no?

As for the film, I originally told the film-makers who approached me no. I was very worried about the issues you raised. But then I told them that if they were willing to try to change their lives and the way they make movies to be less impactful, I would consider it. And they agreed.

It's a question of whether you change things from the inside or the outside. I believe in both. It takes all types. Are you one, Bruce, who changes things from the outside? If so, I applaud you and support you. Maybe I will one day too.

Could I ask you one little friendly question? You wondered why I was encouraging people to spend energy looking at the blog on their "50W monitors." My question for you is, if you believe your own logic, what were *you* doing spending energy looking at the blog? ;)

All the best and please comment away a lot more,
Colin

Posted by: Colin Beavan | March 07, 2007 at 04:08 PM

 

A million questions—just a few answers

So many people emailed me yesterday, thanks! I’m answering your questions here instead of by email so everyone can see. I’ll answer more in subsequent posts. Also, thanks to everyone for all the comments on the posts. I have to read through them still, but I’ll try to answer questions there soon, too.

Can you buy educational games or toys for your daughter?

Isabella got a lovely, second hand rocking horse from the Housing Works thrift store the other day. Of course, when we got it home we realized it had the name “Miles” etched on its neck but we decided that that was the name not of the owner but of the “worsey,” as Isabella calls it. The rule is that we can buy second hand stuff only (with the exception of socks and underwear). But honestly, Isabella would rather bang together pots and pans and walk down the street with her hands in her pockets than play with toys.

Are you allowed to use over-the-counter drugs if you get sick?

Yup.

Have you considered the climate/waste/energy input associated with eating dairy?

Please don’t try to make us give up our milk and cheese and homemade yogurt. I’m begging you. Since we’re eating only unpackaged local and seasonal food, that would pretty much leave us with nothing but apples a la cabbage and cabbage a la apples. Besides, we buy our milk from the local Ronnybrook Farms, where the cows are fed grass and homegrown corn.

How do you make fruit scrap vinegar?

Great book: Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. Get your scraps of fruit—apple cores, dregs of berries (though no berries for us cause they’re not in season), whatever—and chop up coarsely. Dissolve a quarter cup of honey (recipe calls for sugar but I can’t get it locally) in one quart water. Throw the scraps in and cover with a cloth. Let ferment for two or three weeks, stirring occasionally. Adds great flavor to—you guessed it—cabbage.

What about books (I couldn’t live without them)?

No purchase of anything new except socks and underwear and a couple of other personal items is the rule. As for books, we use the library and we can buy a second hand book from the Strand, around the corner, if we sell a book (no accumulation of resources).

Would you mind telling me the address of the Yahoo group mentioned during your appearance on the Brian Lehrer show?

That was the Compact. The big overall group is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact/ . The New York Compact is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompactnyc.

Please could you post pictures of you and your family?

I thought you’d never ask. See above.

Could you write a bit on why you decided to pursue a career outside of academic science? And how, if at all, your doctorate training in physics has affected your subsequent career. Was making the choice to leave academia easy or difficult?

What a random and fun question. Do I detect a PhD student who wants to quit? My doctoral studies—in electronic engineering actually—were in a galaxy far away and long ago. Liverpool University. Mid-eighties. I hated working in a lab. If I had had any courage at all, I would have quit way before I finished my doctorate, but I was young and scared of making those kind of decisions. It was a very hard choice but the only one possible if I wanted to stay happy. All the same, the training—essentially in how to teach yourself things—has been invaluable in my life. You didn’t ask, but after that I went into public relations for not-for-profits, also in Liverpool, then moved back to the States, drove taxis in Martha’s Vineyard (eek, don’t tell the people who read my blog that I drove!), and then decided to move to New York, twelve years ago, to try my hand as a writer, which is what I wanted to do since about age six.

Cure the planet's fever

I expect a lot of new visitors here today, so I’m going to devote this post to a quick survey of consumer-related activities that contribute most to the planet’s pressing environmental problems and some measures each of us can take in our own lives to improve things. But before we get to that, let me tell you why I’m expecting all the new visitors.

First, I’m going to be on WYNC’s The Brian Lehrer Show live at 10:06 AM EST today, March 21, 2007 (you can also listen to the recorded show if you missed it live). We’ll be taking calls (212-433-9692), so please phone in! I will not be nervous…I will not be nervous…Well, that’s not working.

Second, there’s a New York Times story about the No Impact project on the front page of today's House and Home Section. It’s the result of reporter Penelope Green following us around for a few days asking all manner of personal questions about our No Impact lifestyle. 

(One thing I wish I could change in the story is this idea that we are doing this project  because it "was the only one of four [book ideas] his agent thought would sell." If I could change that bit, it would read, "Mr. Beavan had decided that with so many urgent problems in the world, writing more history books felt irrelevant. He decided to change the course of his career. When he presented ten ideas about the environment to his agent, Beavan was surprised that his agent most liked Beavan's personal favorite--the No Impact Man idea.")

But the point of today’s post is to point you towards things we can do to cure what Al Gore yesterday called the planet’s fever. When it comes to helping the planet, I’m just a schlub trying to figure it all out myself, so I hope you won’t mind that I’ve borrowed from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (you can read the first chapter online).

I’m going to mention, first, the consumer-related activities--which your purchase and activity choices can affect--that most harm the environment. According to the Guide, they are (in order of importance):

1. Driving (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
2. Production of meat and poultry (because of land use that destroys natural habitats, use of water, water pollution, and production of methane, a greenhouse gas)
3. Cultivation of fruits, vegetables and grains (because of water use, soil erosion, and water pollution through pesticide and fertilizer use)
4. Home heating, hot water and air conditioning (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
5. Household appliances and lighting (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
6. Home construction (because of land use that destroys natural habitats, timber harvesting, and water pollution due to materials production)
7. Household water, sewage and solid waste disposal (because of water pollution and air pollution from incinerators)

So what can you do? Well, for one thing, now that you have a really brief understanding of the problems, you can come back here to No Impact Man to see what me and other folks or up to. But for today, I’m going to send you on your merry way to the following places for actions each of us can take to make our own lives, if not No Impact, then at least Lower Impact:

• Ten personal solutions from the Union of Concerned Scientists
• Ten things to do from Climate Crisis
• Ten things you can do to help from the Sierra Club
• Take Action! from Stop Global Warming

Also, please don’t forget that April 14 is the National Day of Climate Action, when tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country to call for action on climate change. To find out what is happening in New York City, go here. For elsewhere in the country, go here.

Giving and impact

Today's post is by Professor Arthur Brooks (pictured here), director of the non-profit studies program at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Arthur has been a fervent supporter of the No Impact experiment and a great personal morale booster since No Impact started. His ideas on the unnecessary cleft between individual and collective action have helped form the underlying philosophy of the No Impact experiment (see my New York Times OpEd). His thoughts on charitable giving have led to my tithing ten percent of my gross income, both to environmental and non-environmental charities, as an element of the No Impact experiment--part of the positive impact that will counteract what negative impact I can't eradicate.

Recently, Colin and I have had a series of great conversations about how the ideas of "no impact" tie collective action to personal responsibility.

I think that one fair way to describe the main worldview difference between conservatives and liberal is the “unit of analysis” at which action is necessary to make progress in society. Generalizing greatly (and with appropriate apologies for doing so), conservatives often view society as a big bunch of individuals, and thus individual action as the right focus for our attention. In contrast, liberals are much more focused on the collective, often expressed through the actions of the state. For many on the left, implicitly if not explicitly, individual action is a futile focus for real social change.

I wrote a book last year called Who Really Cares, where I argued  that conservatives tend to give more of their money to charity than liberals do. One major reason for this, I showed, was differing views on the role of the individual versus the collective: People who support government solutions to social problems tend to donate substantially less to charity than those who do not support government efforts. (For example, in 1996, people who believed the government should not take greater measures than at present to reduce income inequality gave, on average, about four times as much money to charity each year as those who believed the government should equalize incomes more.)

On the political right, my book has frequently been taken as evidence that conservatives, giving privately of their own resources, are more virtuous than liberals. On the left, I have heard over and over again that, despite my findings, liberals are actually far more caring because they are not content to assuage their own sense of duty with a private charity band-aid, but rather are looking for systemic solutions through laws, policies, and even by holding jobs that (they argue) are more socially-valuable than those usually held by conservatives. (Personally, I reject the claim that bankers are less socially valuable than teachers, but that's another matter.) Of course, these claims—right or wrong—reinforced the very patterns I had exposed in the book.

What does all this have to do with No Impact Man? At its root, the No Impact experiment examines how people with high collective ideals for the environment can bring their personal actions into harmony with those ideals. Giving to charity can do exactly the same thing. A belief in collective action (e.g. goverment income redistribution) doesn't have to displace private giving. On the contrary, private giving can make the private behavior of people committed to collective action -- even government action -- congruent with their political beliefs.

I hereby sacrifice my teeth to the environment (kind of)

A newspaper reporter asked me today by email to confirm that, among other measures, we stopped using toothpaste and started using baking soda to brush our teeth. She also asked why. Here is what I said (in slightly improved words):

We're taking actions now that I'm pretty sure are sound but for which I don't yet have the science. Things are moving too fast to research everything as it happens, though of course I will fill in the blanks later. We’re making a virtual lifetime of changes in only one year.

But, yes, as of yesterday, baking soda entered the picture to brush teeth and use as deodorant and also as a major ingredient for a lot of our coming homemade cleaning products. No plastic and zinc tubes. No carcinogens (which there are in toothpaste). No petroleum products. No label saying "do not swallow and if you do call the national poisons hotline." No worrying about Isabella getting into it. And no being subject to a lot of marketing and advertising.

At this point, some changes we make are more philosophical than scientific. Remember, we're taking our lives apart to put back together again. It’s not that we’re necessarily doing this forever. No Impact Man is an experiment. All the same, toothpaste comes in a box and a tube and baking soda is just in a box, and it will last way longer than any toothpaste tube. Plus, the box is recyclable and the tube is not.

We're moving and changing so fast that I may be making mistakes that we'll have to correct later when some expert who knows a lot more than me tells me I'm an idiot, which of course I am because I'm just a schlub, like everyone else, trying to negotiate through spin and counter-spin to do the right thing.

One really important point I want to make is that the science is confusing about a lot of this stuff. There are studies and counter studies. It's easier just to consume less product than to try to figure out what is okay and what is not.

It is also sometimes easier to go by the gut instead of the head. Though the studies (paid for by Proctor and Gamble, I’m told) say that disposable diapers are no worse for the environment than cloth diapers, doesn't your gut tell you that millions and millions of plastic diapers in the landfill and produced from petroleum can't be right? Also, the study did not account for the fact that cloth diapers can be used for more than one child or that some people wash them and let them hang dry etc. So how do you negotiate when everybody is so enamored of science that is manipulated?

That is why I trust my gut in these things. That is why baking soda is the new toothpaste! And yes, I've hereby turned into a freaking nut!

Anybody out there want to contradict the bit about me being a nut by affirming the baking soda decision and saying why it’s the right move?

Bits and pieces

Today is a day for some practical living details on our No Impact lifestyle, answering questions that have come in comments and private emails, and mentioning a couple of news stories that are kind of alarming.

Too hot for comfort—The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on Friday that the 2006/2007 winter has been the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880. As a result, the world’s biological clock is out of kilter. Winter wheat came a month early in the Netherland and experts worry there may be a greater than usual risk of grain diseases. In Italy, green beans, artichokes, peas and asparagus are already so plentiful that merchants can’t sell them. The list of weirdness goes on. Meanwhile, ten of the last eleven years have been the hottest on record. But according to Reuters, Jay Lawrimore of NOAA said of our virtually missing winter, “We don’t say this winter is evidence of the influence of greenhouse gasses.” Well, maybe you don’t say it, Jay…

Bush: Just say no…to global warming initiatives—According to the BBC, the United States, in a meeting of ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialized nations, put the kibosh on multinational initiatives to curb global warming by paying developing nations to preserve their rainforests and to extend to them the global system of carbon trading. Could it be that the oil companies and other big business, who give heavily to both our political parties, might be influencing U.S. policy in places that are out of view of American voters?

Hoisted by my own petard—Because of the No Impact injunction against buying tree-consuming newspapers and magazines, I couldn’t buy a copy of the New York Times yesterday (Sunday), even though it contained an OpEd on the No Impact project by yours truly. So, Michelle and I went through our building’s recycling pile and finally found a couple of copies. If you don’t feel like crawling through the trash, content yourself with reading it on the web.

The knife at my throat—According to Grist, 2 billion disposable razors end up in U.S. dumps every year. Furthermore, the disposable razor blade, invented by King Camp Gillette, helped usher in our disposable culture back in the early 1900s. That’s why I’ve been using a straightedge razor since Christmas. I use hand soap to make a lather—no disposable shaving foam cans—and use my hands to apply it since most shaving brushes are made from beaver fur. If you want to know how to shave with the long blade, go here. It took a while, but the emergency room nurses no longer know me on a first name basis and I get as close a shave as I used to.

What do you use to clean up when your dog does her business (question by email from Helen Coxe)?—I go to the trash can on the corner and take something out that is already destined for the dump. I try not to use pages from one of our few remaining magazines, because they would normally be going to the recycling bin, which they can’t once Frankie has had her way with them.

Did you consider switching to a veggie diet to reduce your impact (question by email from Jodie)?—I was already veggie, Jodie. Michelle has joined me. Nothing that wiggles or has a face. That's a No Impact rule. To quote you: “There are many reasons why a vegetarian diet has a smaller environmental impact than a diet that includes meat. For example, for every ten calories of grain that is fed to an animal, one calorie of meat is produced. It makes more sense to just eat the grains directly. Massive amounts of water and land are used to grow that grain and to support the animals. If people just ate the grains instead, less land and less water would be used in the long run. Not to mention the farmed animals produce waste and excrement that end up polluting water and topsoil.” And also, if you remember the recent scare, it pollutes our spinach too.