When I first read the headline “The Year Without Toilet Paper” in today’s New York Times, I thought to myself “Um, that’s not a big deal.” Most people in many parts of the world don’t use toilet paper (read: most Africans as well as people in the Middle East and many other places, I’m sure). While that may sound repulsive to many Americans, it’s really not as hard as one, typical American consumer might think.
Sliding down past the headline, I come across the story of a 40-ish Manhattan couple who are aiming to create what the Times called: “Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style.”
Isabella’s [their two year-old daughter] parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.
Go a little further and you’ll come across this line:
Also, he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell.
So essentially, this is a ploy. My guess is that the vast majority of true environmentalists don’t have the luxury of a book deal. And yes, I realize that most book authors don’t make much money — but with a deal from FSG, a 5th Ave. apartment, my guess is that these two are doing pretty well.
Even the Times calls it out:
“Living abstemiously on Lower Fifth Avenue, in what used to be Edith Wharton country, with early-21st-century accouterments like creamy, calf-high Chloe boots, may seem at best like a scene from an old-fashioned situation comedy and, at worst, an ethically murky exercise in self-promotion.
“What’s with the public display of nonimpactness,” a reader named Bruce wrote on March 7. “Getting people to read a blog on their 50-watt L.C.D. monitors and buy a bound volume of postconsumer paper and show the filmed doc in a heated/air-conditioned movie theater, etc., sounds like nonimpact man is leading to a lot of impact. And how are you going to measure your nonimpact, except in rather self-centered ways like weight loss and better sex? (Wait, maybe I should stop there.)”
One commenter had the same point:
I would love to see you guys sell your 5th Avenue apartment, move to the South Bronx, and use the massive real estate profits to effect real environmental change. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be seeing you guys on 161st Street and the Grand Concourse, riding a scooter. What a farce. It’s like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch. How do you even look at yourselves in the mirror without laughing?
Ok you environmentalists, what do you make of this project? I’d bet $5 that as soon as the year is up, you won’t find this couple moving off of 5th Ave. Sure, maybe they’ll keep some aspects of their new lifestyle (I approve of the move to an old-fashioned razor), but in the end, he’ll do a book tour and they’ll bring their life back into the 21st century. What about all the carbon that will be pumped into the atmosphere via the production and distribution of the book? If he really wanted to be environmental, wouldn’t he just sell it only electronically?
Like most liberals, I like the idea of saving the planet, one recycling bin at a time, but here’s my problem with this. It’s a noble effort, but the fact of the matter is that in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not going to matter that much. This couple can afford to do this kind of thing precisely because they are an upper-middle class family living on 5th Ave. As the above commenter points out, if they lived in the South Bronx, do you think they’d be able to do this? Probably not.
Ok, so here’s what I want to know:
Short of turning my Oakland home into a 21st Century Walden Pond, what are some concrete things that I can do to reduce my impact? I cook at home a lot, and get nearly all of my produce from Berkeley Bowl and my local farmer’s market. I don’t have a television and I work at home. Is it simply a matter of buying recycled toilet paper, using CF bulbs (something I’ve been meaning to do), and spending my leftover income (there isn’t much) to buy carbon offsets?
Mr. Impact Man, acknowledging that most people aren’t going to go to the extremes that you and your family are, besides general tips I’ve heard before (consume less, recycle/reuse more rhetoric), what can regular people living in urban environments from the South Bronx to Southern California do to reduce their impact on the environment?
Update (October 2007): I replaced all the light bulbs in our house with CF bulbs. So there. 
