No Impact Man

A reason to be optimistic

So the coolest thing in the world is happening to me, this week which is that I get to attend this conference of about 30 international thinkers on the questions of sustainability and consumption and cultural happiness (who let me in?). The title of the conference is "Do good lives have to cost the earth."

In other words, we're talking about whether the level of damage that we do to human health, happiness and security as it depends on our planetary habitat is a necessary evil in creating the good life. Or, is it possible that we can actually use fewer of our planetary resources and improve lives all at the same time?

If you've read this blog for any time at all, you know I believe the later--happier planet, happier people.

But what I wanted to share with you is a slide from a presentation by Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation (a British think tank with the motto "we believe in economics as if people and the planet mattered), who are sponsoring the conference.

Basically, the data in red shows the subjective life satisfaction of individuals at different levels of resource consumption, which is shown in blue. As you can see, people tend to be just as happy whether they have a six or a one planet footprint.

That's great news, because it means, if this data is anything to go by, that we can substantially reduce our resource consumption and damage to our health, happiness and security as it depends on our planetary habitat, but still have a whopping good time (if, by the way, that is what you're having).

All we have to do now is convince the politicians, the corporations, the voters, and the super-elite who pull the strings of the fact.

LV GRN: Making summer vacation choices

In the two summers before the No Impact experiment, we went to France and Italy for three weeks each. We rented cars and had the time of our lives. This year, though the No Impact year is over, we're continuing to make what, for me, is the difficult decision of keeping it closer to home.

Limiting air travel was the hardest choice of the No Impact experiment for me, but probably the most important, at least when it comes to carbon emissions. One round-trip, long-haul flight causes as much contribution to climate change as—get this—an entire year of driving.

Now, I'm not saying I'll never fly again but I am trying to continue to be much more conscious about flying. For our vacation this year, Michelle and I decided that we would rent a summer house for the month of August as an alternative to travel.

In choosing a spot, our qualifications were:

• That we we wouldn't have to fly
• That we would be able to swim
• That we could get to and from the summer house and New York by train
• That we would be within biking distance of groceries, restaurants and swimming to ensure that we wouldn't require a car.

That meant, essentially, we needed a village, on a train line, by some swimable water. Well, the good news is that we found it. A wonderful little house in the seaside town of Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island. It's a two minute bike ride to the beach or the village. And in the village there is a carousel, a movie theater, a farmer's market and restaurants.

In fact, though it has a lot less impact than previous vacations, it really isn't a compromise at all.

Here are some vacation tips you may find helpful:

• Vacation closer to home.
• Take direct flights that don’t zigzag to your destination.
• Combine three weekend trips into one week-long trip to reduce travel and flights
• Take the train or bus instead
• One less round trip means 6000 lbs less greenhouse gas
• If you must fly, buy a carbon offset from Native Energy

Image courtesy of Offbeat Travel.

How to solve climate change and end poverty

When I posted yesterday about my disappointment in the public infighting by the climate change policy wonks I turn to for guidance, Greenpa left behind a comment saying, "What you have here, I think, is THE argument in favor of individual action, instead of 'policy.'"

The problem is, of course, that in 2050 there are going to be 9 billion people on the planet and only 1 billion of us will be in the currently developed economies.

It's not just that we have to find a way to consume less in the developed world. We must also find ways for the developing world to consume more sustainably. And that means developing ren ewable technology and finding ways to transfer that technology to economies that can't afford it.

Further, we have to find ways to make the halting of deforestation economic acceptable to the developing economies, like by forgiving debt so they don't have to cut down trees to service it.

These are goals that can't be accomplished by personal action here in the United States or elsewhere. We need political action to push forward the climate mitigation agenda, too, and even that is the wrong way to put it, because involvement in the democratic process *is* individual action.

But that still leaves open the question of a vision for how global climate change mitigation should be achieved. What policy should we be fighting for?

On the one hand, there is no point limiting climate emissions here in the United States if industry will just move to developing countries--taking their jobs with them--and carry on their emissions happily ever after. On the other hand, China says that it is not fair to cap emissions in developing economies like theirs before their citizens achieve European-style standards of living.

Meanwhile, back here in the good old USA, policy people argue amongst themselves as to whether we have sufficient technology to solve the climate change problems across the globe. Therefore, should we make our first priority regulations limiting emissions or investment in technological development?

A conundrum of impasses.

But according to the Business of Green:

...there are signs that medium-sized polluting nations including Britain and Germany are beginning to favor one possible solution to this impasse that would allow the rich world to cut back on its pollution gently, and allow the developing world to increase polluting until it reaches improved levels of prosperity.

In Britain this idea is known as Contraction & Convergence, so-called because the process would aim to equalize the levels of emissions — measured on a per capita basis — between rich and poor nations.

The website of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has posted a paper on this "Contraction & Convergence" by British economist Sir Nicholas Stern (pictured above) that points to the benefit of both solving the climate crisis and alleviating world poverty (and if that's not an example of happier planet, happier people, I don't know what is!). It also integrates the deployment of current technologies with investment in new technologies.

[Thanks to prompting from Sharon Astyk, let me say that I don't mean to endorse this plan but to bring it up as a discussion piece. What I like about it is that emphasizes both deployment in current technology and investment in new and that it suggests that developed economies shouldn't get a larger share of per capita carbon emissions and that it attempts to send wealth into emerging economies. On the other hand, it's numbers are not aggressive enough since we actually need to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.]

Here is the thesis of the paper, and if you don't read the rest of this admittedly overlong post, read this:

"The priority for poorest countries [meaning their own policy priorities] is to get more access to energy and consequently to emit more carbon, even though, a long term preference for a low carbon economy has to be integrated if only for energy security reasons. Africa will host 1.4 billion people in 2050, most of them living in cities. To overlook such developments can produce unsustainable ways of life conducting to further impoverishment. Developing models of an integrated, climate resilient and low carbon path of development is therefore an urgent task."

I thought summarizing  some of the paper's key points might be useful, both in their own right but also to familiarize readers with some of the key issues that come up in climate policy discussions:

• Global emissions should be halved by 2050 to give us a reasonable chance of averting the most dire of climate change consequences.
  
• Implicit in an equitable arrangement would be the idea that all world citizens are entitled to the same carbon emissions and therefore the allowable per capita emissions should be the same for all countries (an average of about 2 tonnes or 2.2 imperial tons a year).
• This will require 80% reduction by developed Western European economies and significant reductions in emissions trajectories of emerging economies like China but it will give room for developing economies to grow.
• Since developed economies like the US emit much more per capita carbon than this arrangement would allow and developing economies still emit much less, developed countries like the US, in order to achieve their targets, would have to buy emissions rights (carbon credits) from developing economies.
• This would have the effect of helping to alleviate poverty in developing countries and to improve standards of living by funding the acceleration of low carbon growth and purchase of renewable energy technology.
• Emissions targets can be met, in part, by adopting efficiency measures to ensure energy is not wasted with positive economic effects.
• Increases in efficiency are limited, however, "so ultimately the control of energy emissions must come through the decarbonisation of energy sources--moving from unabated fossil fuels to renewables, nuclear and the capture and storage of fossil carbon."
• Within each nation it is likely that carbon pricing--the levying of a charge on industries for carbon emissions--will help spur the shift of carbon abatement, though this is not sufficient.
• Policy guidance in each economic sector will also be required--for buildings in urban areas, for land use planning, for transportation and infrastructure.
• Carbon pricing alone will not make renewable energy solutions cost competitive enough fast enough to avoid the building of, for example, new coal plants in the developing economies. The technologies to bring about the near-complete decarbonisation of our energy supply do not yest exist at commercial scale and cost.
• Public support for huge growth in the research and development of large-scale renewable energy is needed to quickly bring down the price or renewables to make the most economically sustainable choice for growing economies.
• Deforestation contributes 15 to 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. A program to stop up to half the deforestation could be constructed for $10 to 15 billion a year. Sustainable forestry policies are required as well as changes to international financing which requires small economies to harvest their forests to service debt.
• Even if all these measures are taken, adaptation to the effects of the unavoidable planetary temperature rise of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius which will be particularly difficult for the poorest and most vulnerable.
• Developed economies have a moral obligation to help emerging economies in this regard since the existing carbon in the atmosphere was put there by the developed nations. Discretionary funding is unlikely to work and a system of global taxation of should be examined.
  

We can save the world or we can fight

The good news about global warming in the United States, I think, is that the "deniers," as they're called, have now been relegated to the fringe. The candidates from both parties have mitigation strategies (which isn't to say they are equally good--see this chart). The debate about whether or not there is such a thing as anthropogenic (is there a reason why a scientist can't just say man made?) global warming is over.

Now the question is: what do we do?

Now, I have no special expertise in these issues and I don't have the answers, but I will tell you this: when I went tonight to the blogs of the people I like to think might, I got my month's second big disappointment (read about the first here). I discovered that U.S. climate change mitigation policy wonks seem to be wasting their time in ad hominem attacks on each other.

Of course, there are some very legitimate policy questions to be debated. But instead of just debating them, Joe Romm of Climate Progress and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute, all of whom I greatly respect, have, in the last week, fallen into a bout of name calling on their blogs (look especially at the comments in this post).

Some of the top brains in the country are literally burning precious hours arguing about "who started it."

The way I figure it, the executives at Exxon are rubbing their hands together. The more everybody fights about what to do, the more the world's journalists get confused and write about the fights instead of the issues, the longer we take to change, the more gas Exxon gets to sell.

Apparently, the big insult among climate change policy wonks is to be called a "delayer"--meaning to delay doing anything about climate change. Well, while the wonks argue instead of synthesize, in my book, they're all delayers. Where's a Karl Rove type to keep people from airing dirty laundry when you need him?

The pity of it all, from what I can tell, is that the pugilists on  both sides of the fight believe in investment to develop new renewable energy technology, deploying existing renewable technology immediately, and capping allowable carbon emissions to help spur the previous two. It's just one side wants invest, deploy, cap, in that order, and the other wants cap, deploy, invest.

Now, I'm just a schlub and I'm not sure who's right and I sure don't know "who started it." But from where I sit downstream of the conversation, the name calling in public, if the object is to focus political will on doing something about climate change (an object the different camps clearly share), does nothing but damage.

Because in my view, the main challenge, in the United States, is still convincing our fellow citizens that climate change should be one of our top three agenda items. Public bickering by the messengers who should be delivering this message will not attract voters to the cause.

So no more of this in the future, you guys, and get back to your excellent work.

PS Thankfully, they do seem to have hugged it out.

We've changed our lifestyles. What about our politicians?

If you're not from New York, you may think this post doesn't apply to you. But please bear with me. You'll see that it applies to us all.

This week, we in New York City saw the death of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan--which would have reduced gridlock in New York by charging certain drivers to enter the central business district--thanks to the fact the Speaker Sheldon Silver refused to bring a vote on the proposal to the floor of the New York State Assembly.

You follow me, right? It wasn't voted down by the entirety of our state level representatives, the politicians representing the totality of the people of New York. No. The will of the people was not expressed. Instead, an insider group of Democratic Assembly members, forming a de facto committee, insisted that Silver put the kabosh on the  plan by never allowing a vote.

And why? The only possible explanation must be that they were worried that if the will of the people of New York State had been expressed by a vote in the full state assembly, congestion pricing probably would have passed.

After all, the plan had the support of Mayor Bloomberg, the New York City Council, Governor Paterson, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, the 42 Republican members of the State Assembly, a large coalition of environmental and business groups, 67% of of the voters of New York, and a number, as yet unknown, of Democratic State Assembly members.

Meanwhile, the plan would have brought: $354 million in federal funding for improved public transportation as well an annual $500 million raised by the plan; reduced greenhouse gas emissions and more breathable air to a population that suffers record asthma levels and the second worse air quality of any city in the country; an 11% reduction in traffic congestion; 20-40% reduction in time lost in traffic; and a major dent in the loss of business revenue caused by the loss of this time.

So why wouldn't Speaker Silver allow the coalition of Democrats and Republicans who may well have formed a majority in the State Assembly to exercise the will of the people of New York State and vote the congestion plan through? According to the New York Observer, it is because the Assembly Democrats would have fired him.

So the question becomes, why were so many powerful Democrats in the State Assembly so set against congestion pricing when it had popular support and would have done so much good for the citizens of New York City? This is where we turn to how Sheldon Silver's shenanigans are of so much concern to all of us, not just New Yorkers.

Let me take a step back, now, and look at climate change politics on the Federal level. Scientists have been warning policy makers about greenhouse gas accumulation for many years. According to a recent poll, 7 out of ten Americans want the Federal Government to take more action on climate change and half of Americans want much more action. (And at the local level, Speaker Silver please take note, three in four Americans want their own cities or local governments to do something about climate change.)

So what's the hold up? Campaign contributions, I fear. The do-something-about-global-warming dollars just aren't pouring in. On the other hand, big gas and oil contributions are.

According to an MSN Money Central article on campaign finance during the 2006 election cycle, gas and oil made $14 million in contributions, not including money given to "independent" 527 groups. According to the MSN article (and bearing in mind it was written before the 2006 election):

The oil and gas industry also gives heavily to Texas Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; to Sens. James Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana and George Allen of Virginia, all of whom sit on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; to Illinois' Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, who plays a huge role in deciding what legislation moves to the floor for a vote and what doesn't; and to Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum, head of the Senate Republican Conference and announced candidate for Republican whip in 2006 if he wins re-election.

My point? Money, sadly, may do more of the talking than voting, and not just at the Federal level. Which brings me back to New York City and congestion pricing.

It turns out that in the aftermath of 9/11, when New York banned  single-occupancy vehicles from crossing into Manhattan through the tunnels during the morning rush hour, New York City's 2,000 or so parking garages noticed a huge drop off in business. The fewer people driving into Manhattan, the less money they make.

And since the whole point of congestion pricing is to reduce the number of people driving into Manhattan, you can guess where New York's parking lot owners stand. Their solution to the potential dilemma? We're back to the Big Oil scenario. And you can see for yourself by searching the term "parking" in the campaign contribution database of the New York State Board of Elections.

In 2007, the same year that Mayor Bloomberg introduced his congestion pricing proposal, Knickerbocker Parking gave $20,000 to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee and $25,000 to the New York State Democratic Committee.

This is to say nothing of the other $40,000 or so in contributions to individual candidates by other organizations that come up when you search "parking." And it says nothing of the parking-related contributions that this search doesn't bring to the fore (for example, searching for Sheldon Mallah, who is a NYC parking magnate, brings up another $10,000 or so).

And so we're back to the question: why did the powerful Democrats in the State Assembly want so badly for congestion pricing to fail that they couldn't allow a free vote? Did the Democrats destroy congestion pricing for the parking garages' 40 pieces of silver? Or were they representing the wills of their constituents? We can't look at Assembly members' voting records to see, because Sheldon Silver never brought it to a vote. We'll never know. It's all a secret.

Behind closed doors, those sons of guns killed a piece of inspired vision. Congestion pricing may have it's flaws, but it would have made a worthy attempt at addressing a lot of New York City's problems. Silver and his crew owed it to us all to let us know where they stood and to be transparent enough to let us know whether their opinions were formed by their voters or they contributors.

The people of the United State, the people of New York City, the people of New York State and the people of the world all want to do what will help preserve planetary habit we depend on for our happiness, health and well-being. The source of politicians' campaign contributions must not stand in the way of that.

But corporate interests are perverting our democratic process. I'm not an experienced activist and I can't claim I know exactly what to do (though, I know, for example, that 1Sky could sure use our help). But I do see that the time for those of us who care enough to change our lifestyles to work at changing our politicians--or at least changing their minds. The way will become clear.

Individual lifestyle change, using fewer resources is hugely important but we still need more if we want to save the planet. We need political action, too. We have to reengage in our democracy so that no politician would dare to do what Sheldon Silver did in New York State or anywhere else again. So where do we go from here?

Photo courtesy of the New York Times. By the way, that's me, farthest to the left with the sunglasses, and the famous bike genius George Bliss, who designed and built our rickshaws, dead center with the sign that says "Sick of traffic."

LV GRN: 42 ways to not make trash

In the last, for a while, of the LV GRN posts about how to bring No Impact measures to your own life, I've decided to list 42 ways we adopted to avoid making trash. If you've been reading for a while, you'll have seen these before. But I thought the newer readers might like to take a look. The list is in no particular order:

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.

LV GRN: Why recycling is nowhere near enough

People used to to ask me, essentially, why I was making such a big dig about not making trash during the No Impact project. They'd say, "I mean, it's recyclable, right?"

As Annie Leonard says in Story of Stuff, "Recycling reduces the garbage at [the landfill and incinerator] end and it reduces the pressure to mine and harvest new stuff at [the production] end. Yes, yes, yes, we should all recycle. But recycling isn't enough."

Annie goes on to point out that for every garbage can of waste we put on the curb, industry created 70 garbage cans of waste to manufacture it. Even if we recycled every garbage can's worth coming out of our house, it wouldn't make a scratch in the 70 cans created upstream.

Besides, as writer Dan Rademacher points out in his article "Manufacturing a Myth: The Plastic Recycling Ploy," plastic bottles, for example, are not recycled to make more plastic bottles. They are "downcycled" into, say, fleece jackets or a park benches or toothbrush handles, all of which eventually ends up in the trash.

That means that new plastic is required to make every bottle and every bit of plastic used to make that bottle--even if you end up wearing it or brushing your teeth with it for a while--ends up in a landfill or an incinerator. That's not true recycling.

Even the rates of what passes for recycling are often abysmally low. PET water bottles only get recycled at the rate of 14%. The rest ends up in the landfills and incinerators, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

Meanwhile, producers who advertise their products as "recyclable," even if their products do not end up actually getting recycled, may get a boost in demand. The paradox? That this can cause an increase in the use of resources consumers expect recyclability to prevent (and if that's not green-washing, I don't know what is).

In my view, true recycling between producer and consumer occurs, for example, when a glass milk bottle is returned to the dairy, washed and refilled. Even then, using it is not free of environmental impact. There remain the environmental costs and carbon emissions associated with washing it, refilling it, and transporting it.

This is why, during the No Impact project, the object was to produce no trash at all, not even so-called recyclable trash (not newspapers, milk cartons, magazines, junk mail, not packaging of any sort, not really much of anything that would end up getting tossed).

LV GRN Tip #2: As the saying goes, "Reduce, reuse, recycle." Recycling is at the very end of the list. That doesn't mean it isn't worth recycling. It does mean that recycling is not without environmental cost, though it has less cost than just throwing stuff away.

Top of the pyramid is reduce. That means, even in our post-No-Impact life, we still work hard at not consuming what we don't need to. Then comes reuse, which means once we have it, use it as often as you can before we get another. And finally comes recycle, which we've talked about enough.

PS For those of you who don't dig the LV GRN posts, never fear! "Big issue" tomorrow.

LV GRN: Our life in the trash

Trash tends to be a bit of the underdog of environmental concern these days. Perhaps that is because we think of the issues of trash to be limited to water and air quality problems arising from toxins leaking from landfills and dioxins and other poisons pumped into the air by incinerators (both of which are plenty bad enough).

But the trash issue is not just limited to the problem of disposing with our refuse--it is much larger. The fact that we have so much trash--4.5 pounds per person per day--points to the fact of how many resources we waste.

And what concerns me more than the waste of stuff that goes from my apartment to the downstream landfill is the waste of the upstream resources (the energy, the materials, the natural resources, the labor) used or destroyed to produce stuff I was planning to throw away anyway. For example, for every pound of trash I throw away, 70 pounds of materials were trashed during its manufacture.

It is as though the raw materials are dug out of one hole in the ground--a mine or an oil well--only to be transferred to another hole in the ground--a landfill--with a very short stop at my house in between. Indeed, in 2006, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, some 28% of our our municipal waste, by weight, was packaging and containers.

Does that mean 28% of the material, the cost, the labor and greenhouse gases associated with manufacturing can be attributed to packaging and containers we didn't even want, that we throw away the first chance we get? The math, I'm sure, is not that straight forward, but you get my point.

If what we threw away was stuff that we actually had enjoyed and used and cherished, that would be one thing. But actually, much of what I found in my trash, after I saved it for a week and dug through it, was not stuff I cared remotely about.

Not only that, it was stuff I actively didn't want in my or my family's life. My trash, mostly, was the detritus of ordering and eating a lot of take out food. It was sesame noodle and stir-fried spinach covered plastic tubs, unused plastic utensils, paper napkins, plastic bags and--oh yeah--baby diapers.

The diapers we'll talk about another time, but what I discovered in my trash when I saw the mountain of greasy plastic tubs was a life I didn't want, a life in the trash. We didn't want to eat unhealthy take out food every night. It wasn't good for our bodies or our wallets. Nor did we like the rushing lives around which all this take-out trash seemed to revolve.

In other words, the trash in our apartment was the worst kind of waste because it was, really, stuff we didn't want in the first place. And that's where eliminating trash started in the No Impact project. We started by eliminating the activities we didn't even want in our lives that produced waste. We started home cooking fresh food.

In other words, from the very get-go, the No Impact project was about happier planet, happier people. Far from depriving ourselves, reducing waste in our lives would move us closer to rather than farther from the lives we actually wanted.

Personal lifestyle tip #1 in the LV GRN series: If you want an easy and life-enhancing way to reduce the trash you create and the resources you waste, save your trash for a week. Then, go through and see what the biggest amounts of trash are caused by (take out for me). Are there any sources of trash in there that don't even make you happy? Choose one and eliminate it.

Make a comment by clicking below and let me know what you find out.

And just as interestingly, are there areas at the cultural or structural level where we could eliminate materials waste and end up improving the lives of our citizens? Put your thinking cap on. Be specific. Let me know what you find out about that, too.

PS The next few posts in the LV GRN series, when they come, will be about eliminating material waste on both the personal and cultural levels.

LV GRN: What am I?

There are readers who like it when I post about the environmental "big picture," those who like it when I post "individual action tips" and others who like it when I post my "personal experience." I got to thinking that I might write some posts about where those areas all intersect (as Sharon Astyk often comments, there is no distinction between the personal and the political).

For example, during the No Impact project, I found and continue to find some aspects of individual action really difficult. Go to a restaurant and not only can you largely forget about local food (the approach to sustainable eating I chose) but you can also forget about not making trash--you're faced with a current of throwaway paper napkins, plastic cups, glass bottles, paper place mats, etc.

Dedicate yourself to reducing trash in your own life and that's a great step forward (individual action). But use your own experiences to see where reducing trash is difficult--like in restaurants--and you've discovered some great areas to work for system change (collective action). The same applies in the areas of sustainable purchasing, low carbon transportation, etc (it's also important to make sure that concentrating on lifestyle change doesn't blind us to environmentally catastrophic industrial practices).

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts (each distinguished, like this one, by the LV GRN label) discussing my experiences and thoughts with both the individual and big picture issues and how they intersect in the areas that relate to each stage of the No Impact project: not making trash, no carbon transportation, local eating, sustainable consumption, reduced household reliance on fossil fuels and positive impact.

I thought I'd start with trash (and I'm going to come to that soon).

But then I realized that in many ways, the project doesn't start with trash at all. Actually, in a strange way, the project starts with questioning the nature of my existence, of our existence. Because in many ways, the way that I've lived my life has assumed that what I am, that my function, is about getting more and better stuff and life conditions in order that I should be happier.

In a lot of ways, the very structure of our culture, our politics, our government and our economic system assumes that that is the purpose and the meaning of an individual's life and that the purpose of our institutions is to facilitate it. Indeed, getting more and better stuff and life conditions, when it comes to the underprivileged, probably should be the purpose of those institutions.

But what about when it comes to someone like me, a solidly middle-class person who pretty much wants for nothing? Should our culture be trashing the planet to make sure that someone like me gets more and better stuff--which really means a cooler cell phone? Indeed, should getting a cooler cell phone or a bigger house be the purpose of my own life?

These are big questions, the point of which is to ask, if I and people like me are trashing the planet, what are we trashing the planet for? Am I trashing the planet for purposes I don't even really hold dear to my existence (I'm not planning, for example, to have my cell phone put in my coffin)?

For me, to answer these questions, or at least to loosen my grip on the illusory answers to which I've too often clung, it helps me to ask even harder questions. Where was I before my mother and father were born? Where will I be after my grandchildren die? Towards what should I spend this life working?

And in the larger realm, towards what should my culture be working? Because if my life is not about more, should my culture really be about higher GDP? Are there more worthy goals?

The point of asking such questions on a personal level--or I should say one of the points--is not to come up with an answer so much as to shake my confidence in the false answers--like that my life is for getting more. Maybe since, as they say, you can't take it with you, my life is about giving more--which naturally leads to a sustainable lifestyle.

I don't mean to sound pious. Anyone who has to discuss and remind himself of such things as often as I do clearly has no place being pious. Nor do I mean to go all esoteric.

But such thoughts and questions are what nagged me into wanting to lead a more sustainable life. They are the root of my launching myself into the No Impact project. They've won a place in this series of LV GRN posts that will, next, move on to a discussion about trash.

But for now, I'll leave you with an ancient poem that I've posted before and which says much more concisely what I've attempted to say here. It's called "The Human Route":

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed -- that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

The importance of authenticity in green marketing

I'm taking a little breather today, but will be back Monday. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave the designers and business people in the crowd with a little confirmation about what I've been saying regarding transparency and authenticity when it comes to going green. This from the wonderful blog La Marguerite (which quotes an article worth reading in Ad Age):

According to Jessica Hogue, research director at Nielsen Online, and author of [a new] report, “Corporations can’t do everything in one feel swoop, but need to be authentic and transparent about the steps they are taking.” She also suggests brands, study Footprint Chronicles, Patagonia’s recent interactive online campaign, that discloses the company’s both environmental good works and sins.

PS For those of you calling for personal tips, watch next week.