No Impact Man

A grape stomper’s laundry day

A week or so ago, I reminded everyone that we’d be snapping off the main circuit breaker in the apartment and plunging ourselves into nighttime darkness. I asked for people to send in hints about how they handled chores with no electricity. A woman named Allie emailed me about how she did her laundry while working at a boarding school in South Africa. She wrote:

“My laundry routine took awhile to perfect, but eventually I came upon a system that worked well. I would put everything in the tub and soak the clothes with a little bit of detergent (soaking *really* helps get things clean) and then I'd put on shorts and step into the tub and stomp through the clothes (grape-crushing style) until I thought everything had been agitated enough to be clean.”

People sent me about a dozen other methods including using a plunger to stir up the clothes in the bath, but you know the logic about why you shouldn’t let a dog lick your face because you don’t know where it’s tongue has been? That’s the way I feel about using a plunger to clean my clothes. Besides, Allie’s method seemed like a lot more fun.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Isabella was first to join (she’s begun earning her rent at last!). Then she starting shouting “Come on, Mommy, we a doing a laundry.” Before long Michelle was in on the act and I got to go back to reading my book while I left them to it. Just joking! We all jumped up and down on the clothes and had a riot (sorry that the picture isn’t better).

For the Virgos among you who want to know the technical details—and Virgos are the best people on the planet, by the way—I threw a quarter cup of castile soap and a half a cup of borax in the wash to clean the clothes. PS The electricity doesn't go off until a week from Saturday. We were just testing the system.

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By the way, maybe because we tossed out the TV, I had no idea that the “free hug” thing that I mentioned in Friday’s post had become a virtual world movement. My friend Gary sent me this video. In its own way, it’s individual action activism just like No Impact Man. I dig it. Watch it. If it doesn't make you feel like humanity is worth saving, I don't know what would.

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Lastly, the Ottawa Citizen carried a piece about the No Impact experiment on Sunday. You can read it here.

Deeper sickness, better cure

“Environmentalists see the asphalting of the country as a sin against the world of nature, but we should also see in it a kind of damage that has been done to humans, for what precedes environmental degradation is the debasement of the human world. I would go so far as to say that there is no solution for environmental destruction that isn’t first a healing of the damage that has been done to the human community.”

So begins the second part of a two-part essay by Illinois State University Professor Curtis White (pictured here) in the current edition of Orion Magazine.

White became a hero of mine when I read the first part of his essay in Orion’s last issue. I have thought for a long time that the planet’s environmental problems are a symptom of a sickness in the way we live, and White articulates this with the force of great eloquence. Where once, Having was something that complimented our Being, over the past hundred years, we’ve come to act as though our Being is entirely for the purpose of Having. Since the pleasure of Having is so short lived, we must Have more and more in our attempts to be happy. That means consuming more and more of the planet’s resources and pumping more and more toxins into its water, earth and air.

I’ve said over and over to radio hosts and journalists and pretty much anyone who will listen that among the roots of the planetary eco-crisis is the breakdown of community. Not only do we live in isolated little houses or apartments, unknown to our neighbors, but families go to their own rooms to watch their own TV shows or play their own computer games. True relationship with one another and our wider society has been replaced by Nintendo and Tivo. Because we lack community, we lack the feeling of accountability to anything larger than ourselves.

As the resulting logic goes, why should I change my life for the sake of a world to which I feel only the slightest connection? Wouldn’t I get more improvement in my life if I instead exerted my efforts towards the purchase of an HD TV?

People sometimes think that the No Impact experiment is about deprivation, but I would argue that we are already hugely deprived. There is a man who shows up in New York’s Union Square offering “free hugs” and he gets many takers. Why? Why can we not find enough affection within our own lives? We are deprived of relationship. Paradoxically, No Impact’s letting go of the idea that we should spend our lives working for and accumulating more “stuff” allows space for the things that end our deprivation—like friendship and community and the time to enjoy them.

A psychiatrist friend, Stephan Quentzel, went so far as to suggest in conversation that environmentalism could be like a new religion that binds us together with a sense of common purpose and greater meaning. My friend Rabbi Steve Greenberg said to me that the rules of living environmentally—an extreme example of which are the rules my little family follows in the No Impact experiment—could be a sort of new eco-kashrut, social rules of behavior that make life eco-kosher and which we would follow in order to be part of a larger tradition and community and to serve a common good.

Professor White writes in his Orion essay:

“Responding to environmental destruction requires not only the overcoming of corporate evildoers but “self-overcoming,” a transformation in the way we live. A more adequate response to our true problems requires that we cease to be a society that believes that wealth is the accumulation of money (no matter how much of it we’re planning on “giving back” to nature), and begin to be a society that understands that “there is no wealth but life,” as John Ruskin put it…”

Which leads to my wondering, why is much of the current environmental thinking so conventional? Why is it so inside the box? Why are we talking about eco-economies and “externalities” and trying to fit all the problems and solutions within economic theory? To my way of thinking, the system that we live in is a hodgepodge. It was never designed to accommodate six billion people. In fact, it was never designed at all. Why do we have to protect it and the status quo? Why not be willing to change it? Why not work towards a better system?

“As a matter of conscience,” White writes, “we should be willing to say that the so-called greening of corporate America is not as much about the desire to protect nature as it is about the desire to protect capitalism itself.”

But what goes in place of the values that are central to capitalism (and before I get 67,000 emails about the failure of the Soviet experiment, I'm not arguing for communism)? What can we find to supplant worshiping at the altars of supply and demand, want and satiation. The whole system is designed not to find a way out of the cycle of desire—which the world’s great religions exhort us to do—but only to give us temporary relief by more and more Having.

Why do we bury the big questions that confront us all? What is the meaning of my existence? What is my relationship to your existence? How should I live my life? If I accept that I will die one day, is there any meaning to my life that will endure? Because if we embrace these questions—or I should say when I do—Having just seems so much more trivial.

Which brings me back to why Professor White is another hero of mine:

“I would also suggest,” he writes, “that what has the best chance of defeating the “beast” is spirit. In accepting science as our primary weapon against environmental destruction, we have also had to accept science’s contempt for religion and the spiritual…Environmentalism should stop depending solely on its alliance with science for its sense of itself. It should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and a commitment to the astonishing fact of Being) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in his famous essay “My Religion,” faith is not about obedience to church dogma, and it is not about “submission to established authority.” A people’s religion is “the principle by which they live.””

Professor White’s most recent book, if you’d like to take a look, is The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work.

My food mentor’s book is out!

You know I won’t be buying it—no purchases of anything new allowed for the No Impact family—but that doesn’t mean you can’t. As for me, I can borrow it from the library. Or persuade my friends who still buy things to get it. Or go to the book store with Michelle and hang out in the food section and talk loudly about how we just looooooove this book called Plenty by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon.

Ok, I admit it’s an ethical dilemma for me who buys nothing new this year, but can you begrudge my wanting people who helped me in my No Impact struggles to have a whopping great best-seller success?!

Here’s the background. As you know, No Impact Man works in stages: no trash, no carbon-powered transportation, locally-grown seasonal food, sustainable consumption, etc. Well, back in the middle of winter, no less, when we entered the local food stage (an environmentally sound practice for a whole bunch of reasons), we were faced with a lot of cabbage and apples. I mean a lot.

So many in fact that I met with the famous food writer Marion Nestle and asked her if our nutrition was okay. Would I die of toomanyappleitus or something? People have been eating locally and seasonally for thousands of years, Marion told me. I’d probably survive, she said. I didn't look undernourished. Plus she gave me a hug, which made me like her even more.

Worried I had no idea what I was doing (because I had no idea what I was doing), I also Googled “local food” and found Alisa and James and their year on the 100-mile-diet before their book was even a smudge on their publisher’s printing press. Please help! I wrote to Alisa. A couple of emails and a couple of phone calls later and Alisa became my official local food mentor—at least as official as it could possibly be considering I never told her she had filled the position.

One time, a couple of months ago, Michelle, Isabella and I got stuck in the freezing cold a long way from our house and we had to get warm so we went into a vegetarian café (we do have our standards, even when we cheat). Plus it was Isabella’s birthday and Michelle wanted to celebrate and I didn’t want to argue. And well—mea culpa—we cocked a snoot, for one meal, at eating local.

In my shame, I rushed home and emailed Alisa, now my confessor as well as my mentor. (By the way, it’s funny how people do that. I went to someone’s house today and she was drinking a Diet Coke in a disposable can and she felt compelled to explain it was an infrequent treat.) Anyway, Alisa emailed me straight back:

“Oh, the perils of a warm cafe on a cold day...Having so many elements [in the No Impact project], I imagine what you're doing is insanely difficult, so if I detected guilt in your message, just move on. I admire what you're doing.”

So understanding. Even now, I still feel like calling her mom. But Alisa also wrote to me: “Only through strictness do you have a conversion.” Mom…I mean Alisa…gave me absolution but she also warned me not to cheat too often. Michelle and I have taken this to heart. If you cheat every time the going gets tough then how can you really experience the experiment? I tell myself that every time the elevator tempts me as I trudge up the stairs with Isabella on my shoulders and a heavy bag of groceries on each arm.

To the point: Alisa and her partner James are the gurus on local eating and their commitment to their 100-mile-diet has inspired many local eaters. Their book Plenty—you can’t stop a gift from coming your way, even when you are No Impact Man—is terrific. You can read about them at their website, read an excerpt , look at a Q&A with them on Grist, or even read a series of articles they wrote on their experience. But most importantly, don’t forget to, um, “pick up” the book (I never outright said buy, did I?).

PS You can also read more about local eating in a recent New York Times article.

A product even No Impact Man would love to buy

If you’re a recent transplant to Manhattan, or if you’ve never been here at all, you may not realize that on the top of nearly every building stands what looks like a huge wooden rocket. On top of buildings of steel and glass, these wooden monoliths seem like gigantic anachronisms. It’s hard to believe that in 2007, these mega-kegs hold our City’s water.

And they’re everywhere. After you notice one of the first time, you see them every time you look over your shoulder.

Well it turns out that a board or two in these sentries of the skyline go bad about once every twenty years. When one board springs a leak, the entire structure has to be deconstructed and replaced. Meanwhile, even the perfectly good wood that didn’t rot goes to the landfill.

Enter David Gibbs, a student of furniture design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill who emailed me and invited me to visit his studio. David struck a deal with a firm of water tower builders to take the surplus wood off their hands in exchange for their not having to cart it to the landfill. What David gets is beautiful, weathered planks of cedar and other valuable hardwoods.

David then upcycles the planks into beautiful, stylish but heavy furniture—the kind of thing you just wouldn’t want to throw away, the same way David didn’t want to throw away a cedar chest his grandmother once owned. What I love is that not only does David avoid using virgin wood cut from trees and divert potentially tons of material from the landfill, but he hopes to remind us of the old-fashioned stewardship of objects that has been so completely repudiated by our throwaway culture.

Water tower images courtesy of David Gibbs.

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

How much planetary damage would you allow?

Sara Gottlieb, who blogs at Visualize Whirled Peas, raised the perennial eco-question in a recent post: what is the balance to be maintained between preserving our “way of life” and our efforts to keep the planet healthy? How healthy do we want the planet to be and what are we willing to sacrifice for it?

This question is larger than just carbon impact. It encompasses land use, common air pollution, water pollution, population growth and all the other eco-issues. Here’s part of what Sara wrote:

“The major debates that I see surrounding sustainability arise from those who think technology will provide the solution and those who think that going back to a simpler way of living is the One True Way.

Both of these viewpoints still avoid the question: What are we sustaining? My background is in the natural sciences. I have spent a large portion of my life working with biologists who monitor the status of extremely rare species in fragile environments. While the loss of species and marginal habitats is only a small piece of the environmental puzzle, I always viewed it as the “canary in the coalmine” warning us of the potential for our own demise. Short of causing our own extinction, how much biodiversity loss are we willing to allow and still consider it sustainable?

…I think we can all agree that sea level rise of several feet is an unacceptable outcome. We certainly don’t want a garbage dump in our neighborhoods. But beyond that, what do we consider a sustainable situation on this planet? How much are we willing to give up to achieve sustainability? Whose definition of sustainability will we subscribe to? And what if we don’t really subscribe to any?”

In some ways, these questions are irrelevant to the No Impact experiment since we are trying to reduce our environmental impact to its lowest extreme. But not everyone has the luxury of doing what we're doing for this year.

I was wondering, what is the line in the sand you all would want to draw? What definition of sustainability, as Sara puts it, do you subscribe to? What are the goals you would like our eco-efforts to aim towards, and as Sara asks, what are you willing to give up for them? Or do you think that the techies will save us and we won’t have to give up anything? PS Don't forget to drop by at Sara's blog.

 

Bike ride!

When we first started the No Impact experiment, Michelle made it clear that, if I thought she would ride a bike in Manhattan—or even worse—let Isabella ride on the back of one, I was cracked. Then we went by train to my hometown in Massachusetts for Christmas—a concession we made to plans arranged long before the project began—rented bikes so we didn’t have to get around by car, and Michelle and Isabella loved it.

In the mornings, during that week, Isabella would wake up and walk around my mother’s house holding her arms up in the air and shouting “bike riiiiiidddde.” If her demand wasn’t met—like the day it was pouring rain outside—she bawled her eyes out. We came back to New York and lived in fear every time someone rode past on their bike that Isabella would become hysterical that she couldn’t join in. Michelle’s resistance to the bikes began to erode (with a caveat that I promised we’d never ride on the busier streets).

Well, a couple of weeks ago, with spring coming, we were jaunting around the Sunday flea markets (because of the don’t-buy-anything-new rule) and we found a 5-speed, circa ‘76, screaming red Schwinn that Michelle adored. Sold. Then, on Craig’s list, I found a great second-hand kid’s bike seat, and Sunday morning I rode my bike over to Roosevelt Island and picked it up. Isabella is excited beyond belief: “Bella ride in dat!”

We’re hereby a family of second-hand bicyclists. Not only am I kind of proud that we managed to sort ourselves out without buying anything new, but the prospect of our No Impact summer without travel no longer seems so bad. We’ll be able to get to the beach after all. Bike ride!

 

On not getting too down about the world

Someone emailed me the other day and asked me something along the lines of, “how do you keep going forward without getting too depressed about the world and everything that is going on in it?”

First let me say, I don’t think that my “going forward” is so particularly commendable. There are lots of people who have been trying not to harm the planet a lot longer than me. These quiet heroes, some of whom write to me with very helpful advice, do what they do just because the believe it’s right. When I meet and talk to these people, I quite frankly feel ashamed that I didn’t begin looking more closely at my impact on the planet before the age of 43.

But about the despondency over the planet: in my youth, I used to reason that there could be no God because if there was, how could there be so much suffering? Some years ago, I realized that if there is a God—or Hope or Truth or Oneness or Mystery or Goodness or whatever—then maybe the God resided in the feelings of compassion and grief over the suffering. In other words, if there was something Essential within us, maybe it was that Essence that lamented and asked, “how could there be so much suffering?”

Now, I’m not saying anyone should or shouldn’t believe in God or anything along those lines at all. I’m just talking about noticing that as well as suffering the human psyche contains a lot of concern about suffering. I’ve said before and I believe that compassion can be as powerful a force in human nature as greed when we choose to let it.

What buoys me is the fact that so many altruistic people are choosing to let it. Of course, I could do more, and maybe we all could. But I have hope. And when you embark on a project like No Impact Man and meet so many wonderful people who work and have always worked to help the world, you only get more hope. And more inspiration.

Some say it’s too late. Who knows? But I love that there are so many who help because it is the right thing to do, even if it is not the most efficient or even the most productive. They don’t care whether it is too late or not. They try. That’s what keeps me going forward.

When the lights go out…Gulp!

As you probably know by now, the No Impact experiment works by our making our life changes in stages. So far we’ve worked through the self-propelled transportation, no trash, local and seasonal food, and sustainable purchasing stages. I’m hoping to begin the no electricity phase in about three weeks (sustainable water use comes after that).

The bad news is, well, it’s scary! The good news is that I’ve looked everywhere and, as far as I can tell, Michelle isn’t stashing any divorce papers.

By way of a little more to keep our spirits up, apparently people without electricity often experience a phenomenon known as “second sleep.” They go to sleep when it goes dark, wake up halfway through the night, light a candle, get up for an hour, and then go back to bed. They even end up more rested than people who go to bed later and sleep through the night. From an Op Ed in the New York Times by A. Roger Ekirch:

“Until the modern age…people would retire between 9 and 10 o'clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor...Others remained in bed to pray or make love…

“Often, people might simply have lain in bed ruminating on the meaning of a fresh dream, thereby permitting the conscious mind a window onto the human psyche that remains shuttered for those in the modern day too quick to awake and arise.

“The principal explanation for this enigmatic pattern of slumber probably lies in the nocturnal darkness that enveloped pre-industrial households — in short, the absence of artificial lighting.”

Cool!

Most of my years I’ve just lived my little old life the way the people around me wrote it, but now I’m definitely turning a lot of it upside down. You know what? It’s kind of a blast.

But what I really wanted to do with this post is to share a technology that we’ll be using to non-electrically keep our food fresh—an alternative to the refrigerator called the “pot in the pot.” I also wanted to list a bunch of things I haven’t yet figured out how to do without mains electricity in the middle of Manhattan in the hopes that you folks may have ideas or experience.

I learned about the pot in a pot from Worldchanging (thanks to them for the photo). Pot in a pot was developed by Mohammed Bah Abba for use in sub-Saharan Nigeria, where food can quickly spoil in the heat without electric refrigeration. It is constructed by placing one earthenware pot inside a second, slightly larger pot, with a layer of wet sand in between:

“The device owes its cooling powers to a simple law of thermodynamics. When moisture comes into contact with dry air, it evaporates, causing an immediate drop in temperature. When the water in the sand between the two pots evaporates, the inner pot is kept cool, preserving the goods inside…

“…Abba's project has brought about major changes for many Nigerians: eggplants can last for 27 days rather than three, African spinach can be kept for 12 days instead of spoiling after one day, while tomatoes and peppers stay fresh for three weeks. Food hygiene standards and overall health are improving.”

So, back in the heat of New York City summer, I’m glad to say our food won’t spoil. But I still have a lot to figure out. Here are the major items on the list:

• Having at least a certain amount of artificial light when the sun goes down
• Keeping cool when the 100-degree days start
• Running some kind of laptop so I can still write the blog and research on the internet
• Doing the laundry without a washing machine

I’m hoping some of you out there have some really nifty ideas (which I’d love to hear in detail, as in, with instructions). Bear in mind that, while I do have access to the roof of the building, I doubt I can put a permanent solar panel up there. I do, on the other hand, have a window that gets full sun for the first half of the day. What do you reckon? Comment away!

 

 

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.

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.

 

How to negotiate a marital eco-fight

Back when we were in the trash phase of the project, Michelle and I went to the farmers’ market at Union Square and walked up to the booth of the Lower East Side Ecology Center.

I said, “Let’s look at the worms.”

“Worms,” Michelle said. “What worms?”

“They sell worms which you keep in a bin and they make the food scraps turn into compost faster.”

“Wait a minute. I didn’t agree to having any worms in the apartment.”

The documentary makers who follow us around caught that particular scene on film. Tonight, I gave a talk at Solar One, down by the East River, and I showed the rough cut of the film-maker’s new, 12-minute fundraising trailer that included the scene. Everybody laughed when Michelle rebelled at the worm idea.

But of course, as you know if you’ve been following my blog, we do actually have some worms in the apartment eating our food scraps. I won that one.

On the other hand, there is another scene in the trailer where Michelle is saying that she is on deadline at work and that withdrawal from caffeine—because of the local eating stage of the project—is just more than she can take at the moment. I try to talk her into persevering. The trailer then cuts to Michelle sitting in a Starbucks drinking coffee out of her reusable cup. Victory, this time, to Michelle.

Anyway, during tonight’s talk at Solar One, after the trailer was done and the lights came up, one of the questions people wanted to ask about was negotiating eco-actions within a marriage. One woman said that her husband believed that the system is so screwed up that recycling doesn’t make a difference so she couldn’t get him to do it. Another guy copped to being a Prada lover—like Michelle—while his wife sitting next to him was a back-to-the-earth queen.

How, people at Solar One wanted to know, do you work these things out? I’ve had emails too, asking the same thing.

Now then, it’s one thing to come to me to ask me about non-toxic household cleaners. It’s entirely another thing to ask me for marital advice, but here goes.

When the No Impact project started, I was incredibly rigid about the rules. I hovered over my poor wife. “That roll you’re eating, did it come in packaging?” Michelle must have felt like telling me to shove the roll, well, you can guess where. And she did once or twice. I deserved it.

Maybe you guessed: I’m a Virgo. I wanted to be sure that no rule was ever broken. I made myself into the No Impact police. It caused problems and arguments. It made for less fun.

Only after a couple of months—yeah, I’m slow—did I finally realize that being kind to the world meant nothing if I wasn’t even able to be kind to my own wife. I kept saying, “Each of us can only do what we can do,” but I wasn’t applying that to Michelle. Meanwhile, my Virgoing everything had the effect of making her want to do less, not more, within the experiment. We were doing to each other what the whole project was about not doing: pointing fingers at each other.

It took three months before we finally adopted the No Impact Man philosophy of keeping your own side of the street clean within our marriage. Michelle came up with the idea that she should be the arbiter of her own adherence to the rules of the No Impact experiment and I would be the arbiter of mine. In the end, both of us are on board with the rules of the No Impact experiment, but both of us are free to interpret them our own way. And guess what? There is a lot more peace and fun between us.