Have you heard of the No Impact Experiment?

“The No Impact Project was conceived by Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, following the success of his blog, book, and film, which chronicle his family’s year-long experiment living a zero-waste lifestyle in New York City. Central to his thesis is the notion that deep-seated individual behavior change leads to both cultural change and political engagement. Living low-impact provides a clear entry point into the environmental movement. This thesis is the bedrock of the No Impact Project.” Their goals are to ”promote behavioral change, enable the public to experience their own No Impact Experiment, and engage people who are not already tree-hugging, bicycle-riding, canvas-bag-toting, eco-warriors.”

Stemming from this project is a way for everyone to participate for a week and test out living with less: the No Impact Experiment. Doing more, buying less, consuming less, living off of less. Not depriving yourself of your comforts but testing out the waters of a different way of living. They call it a one week carbon cleanse. The web site provides a lot of information, videos, and allows you to sign up to do this with others. Deadline was January 10th but I’m sure there will be another one if you want to go that route. The 17 page how to guide covers consumption, trash, transportation, taking action, food, energy, water, and giving back and provides tips as well as what to do each day of the week 

For example, on Sunday (the first day) you’re supposed to collect your trash for the entire day, recyclable or not, and not let anyone else’s trash mingle in. It’s supposed to give you an idea of how much stuff we all use every single day — their measure shows you what you used for less than ten minutes versus what you used for more than ten minutes. Pretty eye opening. Later you compare the trash you used during the week versus that one day. 

From Monday through Saturday you tackle the other areas mentioned above and learn other ways to live with less, buying locally, and giving back to your community and for good causes.  On that last Sunday you take a break from everything, including using your appliances. Although that last day is pretty extreme, this experiment is an all around a good exercise to do whether you formally participate in the experiment and group discussions online or not. Let me know how it goes! 

N.Parkington