What’s Your Impact?
By Shawn Dell Joyce
If you are making a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2010 that include things like losing weight, being healthier, spending more time with family, and reconnecting with friends, how about looking at it another way. Ask yourself instead, “What impact am I making on my family and community?”
No Impact Man asked himself this question and found himself on a year-long challenge of living lightly in New York City with his small family and leaving little or no environmental impact. His family’s experience has recently been turned into a documentary, a book, and an online challenge at www.noimpactproject.org.
Could you avoid buying anything new (besides local produce) for one week? The No Impact Challenge asks you to start by stopping shopping for new things. Instead, repair broken things, make something yourself, or find used items at garage sales, Freecycle.com or Craig’s List. With the time you save by not shopping, host a clothing swap party, or play date with your family.
When Beavan began his experiment he stockpiled his family’s trash for a week to figure out what disposable items they could stop consuming and throwing away without sacrificing their happiness or comfort. He sorted the garbage into categories; disposables used less than ten minutes, and more than ten minutes, and things that they could live without. He equipped each family member with their own reusable drinking cup, containers, utensils, cloth napkins, and reusable bags. After giving up all disposable products, their level of happiness and satisfaction actually increased.
Beavan and his family invested in a rickshaw as their main transportation in NYC. We live in a commuting suburb and most of us spend an average of 1,000 hours annually behind the wheel. What would you do with all that extra time if you found other transportation? Half the trips we take in cars are less than 2 miles away and could be done on bicycle, roller skates, or foot with the side effect of improving our health and reducing our waistlines. Many of our local villages like Montgomery have recently improved sidewalks, and taken steps to encourage walking and bicycling.
Beavan’s family went without electricity for their no impact challenge. While that is extreme for us, most of our children watch more than four hours of t.v. every day. What if we all turned the darn things off and went for a walk in one of the lovely open spaces like Walden’s new rail trail, or Montgomery’s Benedict Park? Our children would feel more connected to the land and the seasons, and suffer less advertising.
Ironically, most of the food that the Beavan family consumed was probably grown in our area and sold at the farmer’s markets in NYC. Eating local in the winter requires more thought and planning than buying prepackaged foods in the supermarket. Several local farms are open year round in our area like Blooming Hill Farm and Soon’s Orchards. If you eat lunch outside of the house, make it yourself in a reusable container. If you substitute things grown locally for imports on your shopping list, like apples for bananas, you keep money flowing in our local economy.
The final part of No Impact Man’s Challenge involves volunteering for local nonprofits. “The final stage was to me the most important,” blogs Beavan.”The final stage was not about conservation. It was about innovation. And it was in this stage that I met new people and made the most friends. It was here that the people were most excited. It was not about doing less harm. It was about doing more good. It was less about limits and more about possibility.”
Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, N.Y. shawn@zestoforange.com
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