Colin Beavan - No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

Is it really possible to live eco-effectively?

With No Impact Man, Colin Beavan tries to find out. He swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, and generally tries to save the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his young daughter and his Prada-wearing wife along for the ride. He is No Impact Man, and this is his adventure: the surprising, delightful, deeply affecting story of one mans decision to put his money where his mouth is and make zero net impact on the environment while trying to live an everyday lifein New York City, no less. That means no trash, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subways, no products in packaging, no air-conditioning, no television, no toilet paper...

What is it like to live a no-impact lifestyle? Can it catch on? Is it satisfying, or exasperating, to live this way? Are we all doomed to be conspicuous consumers, or can our society reduce the barriers to sustainable living so it becomes as easy as unscrewing a lightbulb? These are the questions at the heart of this whole mad endeavor, and Colin Beavan hopes to show the rest of us that no-impact living is worthwhileand richer, fuller, and more satisfying in the bargain.

Colin Beavan posts regularly at www.noimpactman.com. He lives in a ninth-floor apartment in New York City.

Praise for NO IMPACT MAN

No Impact Man is a deeply honest and riveting account of the year in which Colin Beavan and his family attempted to do what most of us would consider impossible. What might seem inconvenient to the point of absurdity instead teaches lessons that all of us need to learn. We as individuals can take action to address important social problems. One person can make a difference.

Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat

Colin Beavan has the disarming and uniquely remedial ability to make you laugh while making you feel like a swine, and whats more, to make you not only want to, but to actually do something, about it.

Norah Vincent, author of Voluntary Madness

Theres something of Thoreau in Colin Beavans great projectbut a fully engaged, connected, and right-this-minute helpful version. Were at a moment when we need to have as little impact in our own lives as possibleand as much impact in our political lives as we can possibly muster. Beavan shows how!

Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

No Impact Man is a subversive booknot because it preaches a radical environmental agenda but because it gives the secret to personal rebellion against the bitterness of a mans own compromises.

Arthur C. Brooks, author of Gross National Happiness

Millions of Americans are now asking how their lifestyles are affecting the planet. If youre one of them, Colin and Michelles remarkable odyssey through a year of shrinking their ecological footprint is an engrossing must-read. Youll discover how what you eat, switch on, and throw out matters, but more important, how they found a much richer and happier life. Hop into the rickshaw for a hilarious, smartly informative, and deeply moving ride.

Juliet B. Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College, and author
of the forthcoming Plenitude: Economics for an Age of Ecological Decline

No Impact Man is an erudite, funny, and self-conscious Walden for our urban and postmodern age. Few of us will choose to replicate the experiment Colin Beavan took his family on, but we should be grateful to him for revealing the limits and possibilities for achieving happiness in an age of material excess.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break
Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

ALSO BY COLIN BEAVAN

Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and Americas First Shadow War

Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and
the Murder Case That Launched Forensic Science

NO IMPACT MAN

COLIN BEAVAN

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright 2009 by Colin Beavan

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2009

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Annie Leonard
for permission to reprint material from the Story of Stuff project.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beavan, Colin.

No impact man : the adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet, and the discoveries he makes about himself and our way of life in the process / Colin Beavan.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-374-22288-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-374-22288-6 (hardccover : alk. paper)

1. Environmental protectionCitizen participation. 2. Sustainable living. 3. Beavan, ColinHomes and haunts. I. Title.

TD171.7.B43 2009

333.72dc22

[B]

2009010188

Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

www.fsgbooks.com

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To you, Michelle, with my deepest love
and the hope that you will always write on walls

Our sages taught:

A man should not move stones from his ground to public ground.

A certain man was moving stones from his ground onto public ground when a pious man found him doing so and said to him,

Fool, why do you move stones from ground which is not yours to ground which is yours?

The man laughed at him.

Some days later, the man had to sell his field, and when he was walking on that public ground he stumbled over those stones.

He then said, How well did that pious man say to me, Why do you move stones from ground which is not yours to ground which is yours?

Talmud Bavli, Masekhet Bava Kama 50b

NO IMPACT MAN

For one year, my wife, baby daughter, and I, while residing in the middle of New York City, attempted to live without making any net impact on the environment. Ultimately, this meant we did our best to create no trash (so no take-out food), cause no carbon dioxide emissions (so no driving or flying), pour no toxins in the water (so no laundry detergent), buy no produce from distant lands (so no New Zealand fruit). Not to mention: no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no buying anything new...

But before we get into all that, I should explain what drove me to become No Impact Man. To start, Im going to tell a story that is more a confession, a pre-changing-of-my-ways stocktaking, a prodigal-son, mea-culpa sort of thing.

The story starts with a deal I made with my wife, Michelle.

By way of background: Michelle grew up all Daddys gold Amex and taxi company charge account and huge boats and three country clubs and pledge allegiance to the flag. I, on the other hand, grew up all long hair to my shoulders, designer labels are silly, wish I was old enough to be a draft dodger and take LSD, alternative schooling, short on cash, save the whales, and we dont want to be rich anyway because we hate materialism.