No Impact Man

Entertaining Isabella—Update

Since we have no mains electricity as part of the No Impact experiment, we also have no TV. Last week, someone asked me how we entertain Isabella without one. In the comments to that post, someone said that they like to take their kids hunting for fireflies.

Coincidentally, that day, my friend Mayer, whose community garden plot I help with, called to say that fireflies were in season at the garden and that I should take Isabella there at dusk. So we went.

At first there was a lot sitting around and waiting. Then, the two-year-old Isabella shouted, “I see one!” Sure enough, she did. Before long, there were four or five fireflies blinking their lights at any one moment. One crawled on Isabella’s hands and Isabella said, excitedly, “I want to eat it!” I gave her a few springs of the  purslane that grows in the garden instead.

We sat around a while longer, and when about six fireflies circled around us, Isabella suddenly looked at me and said, “I’m so happy, Daddy.”

She never said that while we were watching television.

This was a joy we found because having no electricity (and therefore no TV) forces us to actively do things instead of just passively watching things.

Image courtesy of Ebertfest.com.

How we avoid making trash

In case you’re new to the No Impact Man project, you should know that we’ve broken down our lives into six areas and tried to figure out how to live with as low an impact as possible in each area. The six areas are: trash (as in we try to make none), carbon-producing transportation (as in we don’t use it), inconspicuous consumption (as in we buy nothing new), sustainable eating (as in our food all comes from within 250 miles or less), reduced power use (as in we use almost none), and environmentally-friendly water use (as in we’re still figuring that bit out).

That may all sound extreme—and it is—but the fact is that we’ve found that it is tenable and possible and doesn’t make us feel deprived, which is one way of saying there is hope for the possibility of living on the planet without destroying it. But that’s not the topic of this post. This post, a list in no particular order, is about how we avoiding making trash:

1. No soda in cans (which means we’re probably less likely to get cancer from aspartame).
2. No water in plastic bottles (which means we get to keep our endocrines undisrupted).
3. No coffee in disposable cups (which means we don’t suffer from the morning sluggishness that comes from overnight caffeine withdrawal).
4. No throwaway plastic razors and blade cartridges (I’m staging the straightedge razor comeback).
5. Using non-disposable feminine-hygiene products that aren’t bad for women and are good for the planet.
6. No Indian food in throwaway takeout tubs.
7. No Italian food in plastic throwaway tubs.
8. No Chinese food in plastic throwaway tubs.
9. Taking our own reusable containers to takeout joints (except that now we’re eating local so this tip is out for us).
10. Admitting that we sometimes miss Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
11. Hopping on the scale and celebrating the loss of my 20-pound spare tire since I stopped eating bucketsful of Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
12. Buying milk in returnable, reusable glass bottles.
13. Shopping for honey and pickled veggies and other goods in jars only from merchants who will take back the jars and reuse them.
14. Returning egg and berry cartons to the vendors at the farmers’ market for reuse.
15. Using neither paper nor plastic bags and bringing our own reusable bags when grocery shopping.
16. Canceling our magazine and newspaper subscriptions and reading online.
17. Putting an end to the junk mail tree killing.
18. Carrying my ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle (which is a glass jar I diverted from the landfill and got for free).
19. Carrying reusable cloths for everything from blowing my nose to drying my hands to wrapping up a purchased bagel.
20. Wiping my hands on my pants instead of using a paper towel when I forget my cloth.
21. Politely asking restaurant servers to take away paper and plastic napkins, placemats, straws, cups and single-serving containers.
22. Explaining to servers with a big smile that I am on a make-no-garbage kick.
23. Leaving servers a big tip for dealing with my obsessive-compulsive, make-no-garbage nonsense, since they can’t take the big smile to the bank.
24. Pretending McDonalds and Burger King and all their paper and plastic wrappers just don’t exist.
25. Buying no candy bars, gum, lollypops or ice cream (not even Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup) that is individually packaged.
26. Making my own household cleaners to avoid all the throwaway plastic bottles.
27. Using baking soda from a recyclable container to brush my teeth.
28. Using baking soda for a deodorant to avoid the plastic containers that deodorant typically comes in (cheap and works well).
29. Using baking soda for shampoo to avoid plastic shampoo bottles.
30. Using the plastic bags that other people’s newspapers are delivered in to pick up Frankie the dog’s poop.
31. Keeping a worm bin to compost our food scraps into nourishment that can be returned to the earth instead of toxins that seep from the landfills.
32. Switching to real—meaning cloth—diapers which Isabella, before she was potty-trained, liked much better.
33. Not buying anything disposable.
34. Not buying anything in packaging (and count the money we save because that means pretty much buy nothing unless it’s second hand).
35. Shopping for food only from the bulk bins and from the local farmer’s market where food is unpackaged and fresh.
36. Forgetting about prepackaged, processed food of any description.
37. Being happy that the result is that we get to eat food instead of chemicals.
38. Giving our second-hand clothes away to Housing Works or other charities.
39. Offering products we no longer need on Freecycle instead of throwing them away.
40. Collecting used paper from other people's trash and using the other side.
41. Using old clothes for rags around the apartment instead of paper towels.
42. Talking with humor about what we’re doing because making a little less trash is a concrete first step everyone can take that leads to more and more environmental consciousness.

Do carbon emissions make countries happy?

Never in my life, when I’ve heard politicians say things like “we have to make sacrifices for the economy,” could I understand what they were talking about. As far as I can tell, the economy is here to serve the people. More specifically, the economy is supposed to support the well-being and happiness of the people. So I’ve just plain never understood the idea of sacrificing the happiness of the people to support the economy.

I mean, I understand the reasoning. The idea is that a robust gross domestic product (GDP) means a lot of money flowing into a nation’s economy and that should mean a lot of cash going into its people’s pockets which, in turn, should mean more happiness in people’s hearts.

But questioning the presumptive link between GDP and happiness is really important, because growth in GDP generally requires growth in use of the planet’s dwindling resources and in pumping its overburdened atmosphere full of greenhouse gas. As a result, some opponents to cuts in carbon emissions claim such cuts would mean cuts in GDP and therefore happiness. In other words, as their argument goes, the happiness of the people is pitted against the happiness of the planet.

Except that more and more, GDP is proving to be a very poor predictor of people’s happiness, suggesting that cutting carbon emissions may not hurt a country’s happiness at all. Indeed, the truth may be that it is not the environment that is pitted against people’s happiness, but an overarching policy emphasis on growth in GDP instead of on happiness itself.

This, anyway, is one of the conclusions of a recent report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) on its Happy Planet Index (the HPI). The NEF argues “that governments have been concentrating on the wrong indicators for too long. If you have the wrong map, you are unlikely to reach your destination.”

The HPI gives countries points for the life satisfaction and life expectancy of its citizens and takes them away for the size of citizens’ average ecological footprint. In other words, the HPI measures the efficiency, essentially, of a country’s economy in terms of the health and happiness per ton of greenhouse gas emitted (see the map above for a graphic representation of worldwide results).

Out of the 233 countries ranked by HPI, guess where the United States falls? 150^th.

This means, according the to the New Economics Foundation webpage, “it is possible to live long, happy lives with a much smaller environmental impact: For example, in the United States and Germany people’s sense of life satisfaction is almost identical and life expectancy is broadly similar. Yet Germany’s Ecological footprint is only about half that of the USA. This means that Germany
is around twice as efficient as the USA at generating happy long lives based on the resources that they consume.”

Andrew Simms, the NEF’s policy director, told the BBC, “These findings question what the economy is there for. What is the point if we burn vast quantities of fossil fuels to make, buy and consume ever more stuff without noticeably benefiting our wellbeing?”

According to the Beeb, NEF's prescription for happy countries with low per-capita carbon footprints includes measures such as:

• mandatory short-term targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
• reducing inequalities in income, education, health and social opportunity
• using the emerging science of well being as a driver of policy

PS You can measure your personal HPI here.

PPS If you're digging this blog, please let more readers know about it by using the links below to email it around, favorite it on Technorati, Dig it, list it on del.icio.us or Stumble it. Thanks!

No Impact update

In answer to some questions from No Impact Man reader Phil Brady:

How are the earthworm castings faring, and to what uses are they being put?

For those of you who don’t know, I prevent my food scraps from ending up in the landfill by composting them. But because I live in an apartment, I use a technique that accelerates the process and prevents odors, called vermicomposting, which means keeping red-wiggler worms in a bin and letting them eat the scraps.

Red wigglers are worms that live in the leafy part of the forest floor. They have a nice leaf-like home in my worm bin made from other people’s torn up newspapers (for the purposes of the project, we buy no newspapers so as not to make trash). The food scraps go in, and about three months later, a rich, loamy compost (literally worm manure or “castings”) comes out.

I have harvested from the worm bin twice now. Both times I used the compost to top feed whichever plants looked like they needed the most help at the Laguardia Community Gardens, where I help a man named Mayer Vishner with his vegetable plot.

Should the tomato plants not be bearing by now?

Alas, the window I had the tomato plants in got full sun all spring, but when the earth tilted for summer, the tomatoes ended up in the shade. They got really tall and lanky. Finally, I faced up to the fact that they would bear no fruit and gave them to a friend to plant in her garden (Mayer’s plot was already full). They are much happier now, I’m told, have flowered and will soon make tomatoes.

How was the matter of cooling/refrigerating/pot-in-pot ever settled?

The last thing we tried was a cooler with reusable freezer packs from a neighbor’s fridge. But the neighbor is taken to all-night parties, we could never get the freezer packs when we needed them, and the solution was inelegant anyway. Now, we just live without a fridge. We simply shop for only two days at a time, and it’s all working out.

What does the daily diet consist of and how does one avoid deadly monotony in it?

Monotony? When at last the farmers’ market is teaming with every vegetable you can imagine, you ask me about monotony? What you mean is excitement, no? After all, local eating meant we virtually survived on cabbage, apples and eggs all winter. In the heat, we’ve been eating a lot of salads with all sorts of yummy veggies and berries tossed in. Our diet is the healthiest it’s ever been. You can see it in the whites of our eyes.

How is everyone getting along in the hot summer of New York?

Because we have no mains electricity, we have no air conditioning or fans. We’re lucky in that we get good cross-ventilation. We close the windows and shades in the morning to keep out sun and hot air. We open them at night to let in cool air. So far, not so bad, actually.  I  mean, we sweat, and we try to stay out of long sleeves and pants. It feels kind of natural.

There has to be an exchange: NoImpactMan has no impact on the environment, but that does not mean that the environment will have no impact on NoImpactMan. What impacts is the environment having on him?

Little things. Who knew that the sun shone full in the living room in the spring but not in the summer until I tried to grow tomatoes? Or who knew that without air conditioning the way to stay cool is just to spend more time outside on the stoops and in the parks? Who knew how glorious it is when the summer arrives and all the wonderful vegetables or fruits start to be in season? A gift of this project is that even though we live in the City, we have found ourselves reconnected with some of nature’s rhythms. And that, I think, is a good thing.

Friday is movie day

Thought you might enjoy this clip from Manufactured Landscapes:

How do we protect the planet?

From Peter Barnes' Capitalism 3.0:

“…history has convinced me that representative government can’t adequately protect the interests of ordinary citizens. Even less can it protect the interests of future generations, ecosystems, and nonhuman species. The reason is that most—though not all—of the time, government puts the interests of private corporations first. This is a systemic problem of a capitalist democracy, not just a matter of electing new leaders.

“If you identify with the preceding sentiments, then you might be confused and demoralized, as I have been lately. If capitalism as we know it is deeply flawed, and government is no savior, where lies hope?

“This strikes me as one of the great dilemmas of our time. For years the Right has been saying—nay, shouting—that government is flawed and that only privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts can save us. For just as long, the Left has been insisting that markets are flawed and that only government can save us. The trouble is that both sides are half-right and half-wrong. They’re both right that markets and state are flawed, and both wrong that salvation lies in either sphere. But if that’s the case, what are we to do?”   

 

I wish we had cows in New York

I am a vegetarian, and honestly, the reason is because I like cows. For all the overgrazing of land and methane cows fart and burp into the atmosphere, the real reason I don’t support the beef industry is that I think cows are just too damn cool to eat. I know that people argue that having sharp teeth proves we are evolutionarily intended to eat flesh. I don’t care. I like cows.

I know, too, that there is an argument for veganism—no eggs or cheese or animal products of any kind—as an environmental choice. And I respect it. But I like too much the idea of having a symbiotic relationship with animals. Even just having Frankie the little dog helps connect me and my family to the planet. I’ve perceived a similar but much stronger connection at small farms that keep animals and treat them with kindness and respect.

When I was at Hawthorne Valley Farm, I got up at 4:00 in the morning and helped bring the herd in for milking. The sky was still the color of blackberries and, coincidentally, milk. The cows stood on hill in black silhouette. Henry, the bull, shook his head and rang his bell.

The seventy-strong herd slowly sauntered over to the gate and followed us back to the cow shed. Centuries of breeding meant that, with their udders swelled with so much more milk than their calves could drink, they looked forward to milking. They depend on their being milked as much as we do.

So we get them back and milk them and feed them and eventually they are all lying down in their stalls, regurgitating their cud and chewing it. One of the farm hands I’m talking to is sitting on one of the cows, who doesn’t seem to mind at all. My feet are tired so I decide to do the same.

Before you know it, I’m lying on my tummy along the full length of a cow’s back, casually scratching her between her ears, and I can tell she likes it (mostly because a farm hand tells me so). I like it too. I really like it. She is warm and alive. And so calm, so incredibly calm.

A few weeks earlier, I had been talking to Ronny, who owns Ronnybrook Farm. He was telling me about the financial difficulties that come with dairy farming. I asked him why he sticks with it. He said, “Because I love the cows.”

Now, I’m lying on the back of this one cow, and you know what I realize? I love cows, too. And you know what I think? I think that the relationship that the farmers at Hawthorne Valley and at Ronnybrook have with their cows is kind of wonderful. It connects us to the planet.

Don’t get me wrong. I intensely dislike the factory farming of animals, and I believe that as a culture, we farm way more cows than the planet can support. But on small farms, where people and animals are working together in kind and respectful relationship, like at Hawthorne Valley and Ronnybrook, I think there is something special going on.

PS If I've got you all excited about cows, read about their emotional lives here.

PPS The picture above comes courtesy of Compassion in World Farming, whose vision "is a world where farm animals are treated with compassion and respect and where cruel factory farming practices end."

Entertaining Isabella without TV

A reader named Chrissy wrote to me and asked how we entertain Isabella without TV or video games:

We build towers from a set of wooden blocks and laugh our heads off when the towers fall down.

Towards bedtime, we sit on the couch and listen to classical music on the crank-up radio and try to hum along. Isabella sucks her left thumb, and if she is feeling generous, she holds up her right thumb for me or Michelle to suck.

We sit on the steps to the neighboring building and talk to people walking by. Isabella chooses the particular step and says, “Sit here, Daddie.”

We walk around, going nowhere in particular, and Isabella shows me how she can run, moving a lot, in her toddler body, like the tin man before Dorothy gave him oil.

We dance and we dance and we dance.

We take turns giving Mommy kiss attacks.

I stick my finger under Isabella’s arm and leave it there till she says “wiggle it.” I do and we squeal with laughter.

We talk about all the things we can see and say hi to them all: “Hi cars, hi buildings, hi sky, hi trees, hi dog, hi lady…”

We ride over to the Hudson River Park where Isabella always walks to the rails and says, “Hello river, how are you?”

We play in the fountain in Washington Square Park, where Michelle worries that the water is too dirty but can’t help cracking up at Isabella’s joy.

We go to the new swimming pool for kids and their parents on Thompson Street in SoHo, where an 11-year-old boy keeps trying to get Isabella to give him a high-five but she just smiles because she is too shy.

We eat lots of grilled cheese sandwiches cut in long strips and I fruitlessly attempt to get Isabella not just to bite off the cheese and give the bread to Frankie the dog.

We make bread together, which means I make the bread, and Isabella stands on a chair and takes everything out of the kitchen drawers and drops it on the floor.

We cook together, which means I cook, and Isabella stands on a chair and takes everything out of the kitchen drawers and drops it on the floor.

We stomp the laundry in the bathtub together. “I’m splashing with my feet,” Isabella says.

We wash the dishes together. “You need my help, Daddy?”

We roughhouse on the bed together.

We ride aimlessly around on the No Impact Mobile (our tricycle with a back seat for Isabella), seeing what we can see and singing This Old Man if it’s sunny and The Old Man is Snoring if it’s raining.

We bang things really loud.

If Michelle isn’t there, we tell her things all the same and wonder if she can hear us in her mind.

We practice seeing who can scream the loudest.

We play hide and seek

We examine Isabella’s body for booboos and kiss them all.

We practice jumping really, really high.

“We go weee, weee, weee,” which is Isabella’s way of saying we go to the swings.

We go for a bike ride over the Brooklyn Bridge, and stop in the middle to look at the other bridges, which Isabella adores.

We go somewhere with Isabella’s best friend Hannah. When they greet each other, they hug each other really hard, lose their balance, fall over, and start crying. We then cheer them up by putting them side by side on the No Impact Mobile and ringing the bell a lot.

We put Isabella’s hair in pony tails and then she goes and shows them to “my sister Frankie”—the dog.

We play fetch with Frankie and Isabella laughs her head off.

We read books.

We call the grandparents—Nanna or Grannie or Poppie or Jojo or Poppa—on the phone and Isabella gets so excited that she talks too fast to get the words out.

And at bedtime, we sing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and a James Taylor song that starts “Well the sun is surely sinking down…”

Gadgets and my slice of the pie

The planet has limited resources. A lot of people need and want those resources. So, what’s my fair share? How big a slice of the pie can I take without it meaning that someone else has to suffer? I want happiness for myself and my family, but the big question underlying the No Impact Man project is whether you can achieve that without causing too much suffering for others.

My last post was about the millions of still-working cell phones that will poison the planet as people toss them in landfills and incinerators in favor of their new iPhones (you can also read a long article about e-waste here). Don’t get me wrong. I want an iPhone (and I could get one, according to No Impact rules, if I could find one second hand). But the question, when buying iPhones or anything else, is how do my actions as a consumer affect the rest of the world? When am I taking more than my fair share? When am I causing suffering? In other words, just because I want to get an iPhone, should I?

For me, during the No Impact project, with its various rules, there is no real conundrum. I just do as the rules tell me. I probably couldn’t get a used iPhone anyway, and I can’t buy new. Later, though, when the project is over, I’ll be back to the war between my desires and my conscience. That’s why I’m thinking so much about the iPhone—because I both want one and feel I shouldn’t get one.

Buying gadgets—iPhones, TVs, computers—has a huge impact on the planet and on other people. To wit—and let me warn you that this is the part in the horror movie where you need to close your eyes—four million people have died in a war that is, at least in part, a struggle to control the world’s supplies of an essential ingredient in most of our electronics, a metal called coltan, 80 percent of which lie beneath the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In his article entitled “A journey into the most savage war in the world,” published in the Independent on June 5, 2006, Johann Hari wrote that the war in the Congo is:

“…the story of a trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace…

“This war has been waved aside as an internal African implosion. In reality it is a battle for coltan and diamonds and cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London and New York and Paris. It is a battle for the metals that make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling, and it has already claimed four million lives in five years and broken a population the size of Britain’s. No, this is not only a story about them. This – the tale of a short journey into the long Congolese war we in the West have fostered, fuelled and funded – is a story about you.”

Am I saying I will never buy another electronic device? No. But I am saying I want to be conscience of the effects of my consumption, and that it should probably not be particularly conspicuous. Given that the planet does have limited resources and my use of them does have the potential to contribute to unhappiness, I’m back where I started: what is my fair share?

Too bad our planet isn't disposable

Back in the 1920s, a group of executives migrated to General Motors from Dupont, the chemical and dye-making giant. At Dupont, they had learned from their customers in fashion and textiles—America’s  third largest and fastest growing industry—the strategy of making customers want this year’s products by making last year’s products look outdated, even though they were still perfectly good.

The newly-arrived executives at GM turned to sleek styling to make their new models of cars more desirable. Henry Ford had built his Model T market on product reliability, but the ability to last was now out. The ability of a product to make its owners look fashionable was in. GM finally beat Ford out of its market dominance.

Fashion obsolescence, the technique of getting consumers to purchase the same product over and over because of stylistic changes, soon spread from the automobile industry to everything from refrigerators to watches. It is now largely the basis of the American marketplace.

The picture above shows a line of people I saw last Friday waiting to buy Apple’s new iPhone. The phones went on sale in the ATT store these people stood outside at 6PM. The kids I talked to at the front of the line had been there since 6AM. Most of the people in the line already had cell phones, but they wanted to have the new it phone. Full disclosure: recovering gadget addict that I am, I might have been in the line myself a few months ago.

Some say that e-waste is becoming one of the biggest toxicity problems facing our culture. In the US, municipal incineration of e-waste is the largest source of cancer-producing dioxin and among the largest point source of heavy metal contaminations in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, by 2002, over 130 million still-working cell phones had been retired. Thanks to the fashion obsolescence marketing strategy pioneered back in the 1920s at GM, the cell phone now has the shortest life cycle of any electronic device.

The question is: how can the environment sustain a society where even a $500 gadget has become a disposable object? Is there a sustainable way to satisfy the gadget addictions of people like the former me, or will we have to go cold turkey? Can we change our buying habits? Can we get the producers to change? Do we need a whole new basis for our economy?