NO IMPACT MAN
What happens when you decide to try and actually live up to the principles you claim to be espousing as as an environmentalist in the land of over consumption also known as the United States? Furthermore how do you do it when you live in a 5th Avenue brownstone and your wife is addicted to shopping, cable TV and Starbucks?
Colin Beavan, a PhD electrical engineer, author of two popular history books, and general overacheiver decided to put his money where his mouth was, so to speak, by trying to live in a more environmentally conscious way. He, his wife Michelle Conlin a writer for BusinessWeek magazine, their two-year old daughter and their dog thus embarked on a year long experiment in low/no impact living. This involved more than simply separating paper from plastic and taking public transportation. Beavan actually gave up all carbon producing transportation, choosing instead to walk and bicycle through the streets of Manhattan. He and his family refrained from using the elevator to get to their apartment (more than 5 floors up). They stopped using plastic bags, plastic containers and plastic diapers. They set up an in-home compost bin, one unfortunate side effect being flies. They bought only locally grown food and stopped eating meat. They gave away their television. Then, six months into the “experiment” they shut off the electricity in the apartment, getting by on daylight and candles.
It’s an amazing thing to witness, and we are right in the middle of it since the whole film was shot, handheld, with one camera, natural light, and no sound man. The result is less a diatribe than an opportunity for viewers to imagine themselves in the same circumstances. I, myself, have been slowly trying to trim down my impact, not so easy in Los Angeles, but perhaps needed more here than almost anywhere else in the U.S. I have also lived in Manhattan so I could see giving up the public transportation, the meat and even the Starbucks. But walking up 5 or 6 flights of stairs -- the last time I did that I was 25 and living in Paris -- I wasn’t shopping for my whole family. And the electricity, I don’t know how I’d ever get that past my husband who works at home, on a computer.
Colin Beavan is already an environmental spokesman thanks to his No Impact Blog. He’s been all over news, talks shows, consults with alternative food and transportation organizations, and even businesses on the intersection of sustainability and quality of life. So even though he and his reduced impact have been around for awhile, I had only a very sketchy and idea of what he had actually done. The film is then an eye-opener even if you think you know who he is and without being overly serious or tediously educational, it challenges us be conscious of how we destroy our environment each and every day.
So what did I do? Well I started really making myself walk more and take the bus. I had fallen off of the farmer’s market wagon and climbed right back on since there are at least 4 very close by. I’m still working on the trash and plastic as that’s something I’ve got to get the whole family involved in and will require education and real discipline. It helps a lot that I live in a walkable neighborhood, that my daughter’s school is walking distance, as are my office, my bank, the library and even my yoga studio.
At the end of the year Beavan and his family turned the juice back on in their apartment and looked at what parts of the lifestyle they could stick with. As far as transformation’s Michelle’s was most significant and perhaps therefore most hopeful. If the latte swilling, shopaholic still wants to keep on biking there is indeed a glimmer of hope. Now if we can just get the gas guzzler addicts and plastic bottle holics.
No Impact Man opens September 11, 2009
Directed by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein; produced by Laura Gabbert and Eden Wurmfeld; Director of Photography, Justin Schein; edited by William Haugse and Matthew Martin; music by Bobby Johnston.
With: Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin.
