I have been a follower of the No Impact Man blog almost since Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) began his experiment in living without having any negative impact on the environment–all while raising a toddler in New York City. Beavan and his family took drastic measures like forswearing the elevator (they live on the 9th floor of an apartment building), washing their clothes in their bath tub, switching off their electricity and giving up toilet paper.
Beavan’s extreme green lifestyle experiment, which had already gotten a lot of press, in large part because of his extremely intelligent and compelling blog, has been getting even more now that The No Impact Man book has come out.
At least some of this press has been negative. In her New Yorker article on the book, Elizabeth Kolbert labeled Beavin’s experiment a “stunt” and, as such, dismissed its value:
What makes Beavan’s experiment noteworthy is that it is … a voluntary exercise conducted for a limited time only by a middle-class family. Beavan justifies writing about it on the ground that it will inspire others to examine their wasteful ways… But sadly … the real work of “saving the world” goes way beyond the sorts of actions that “No Impact Man” is all about.
What’s required is perhaps a sequel. In one chapter, Beavan could take the elevator to visit other families in his apartment building. He would talk to them about how they all need to work together to install a more efficient heating system. In another, he could ride the subway to Penn Statin and then get on a train to Albany. Once there, he could lobby state lawmakers for better mass transit… Here’s a possible title for the book: “Impact Man.”
Kolbert’s assessment misrepresents Beavan’s experiment, which included a lot of advocacy, and which has been reincarnated as the non-profit organization No Impact Project whose mission is to “To empower citizens to make choices that better their lives and lower their environmental impact through lifestyle change, community action, and participation in environmental politics.”
Moreover, Kolbert’s critique shortchanges the power of individual lifestyle choices–even “stunts” like No Impact Man–to affect change. She is absolutely correct to prioritize collective action and public policy (of course giving up toilet paper won’t save the world!). At the same time, she seems to overlook the synergistic relationship between individual and collective action, between personal choices and public policy that Beavan’s experiment exemplifies.
Individual actions and personal choices do have the power to inspire others to not only change themselves but also to effect broader social change, especially when they are incorporated into a thoughtful, sincere, and instructive storyline like No Impact Man. All the more so when this storyline includes compelling vignettes on political advocacy, as the No Impact Man blog does.
Moreover, individual actions and choices have value in and of themselves. One of the most moving lines I read in the No Impact Man blog is this: “If I’ve forgotten my jar and the only coffee available is in a throwaway cup, I forgo the coffee. Does that save the planet? Probably not, but on some level, it may save me.” There is a great deal to be said for living according to one’s principles–sure, we’re all hypocrites–but trying to be less of one is nonetheless a worthwhile endeavor.
Finally, there is a value to Beavan’s experiment precisely because it is extreme. By living beyond the limits of what is possible for most people, Beavan revealed that more is possible than we, or at least I, previously thought. My family hasn’t foresworn toilet paper, but we have stopped buying paper towels and paper napkins. While we haven’t stopped driving we have started walking and biking a lot more. Not to mention that I refuse to buy bottled water, to the point that I will let my kids go thirsty.
Beavan’s experiment in extreme green living helped show me that these actions were possible. His experiment has also informed my venture as a green home and green lifestyle consultant, insofar as it provides a model for using my personal struggles and choices to help others. As my business is still very new, I can’t predict what kind of impact it will have on my community (of Newton, a suburb of Boston). But the data has already come in about Beavan’s experiment and it runs counter to Kolbert’s assessment: No Impact Man has already had a large impact. I only hope that in its reincarnation as the No Impact Project this impact will continue to grow.
(If you’d like to follow this story further you can read Beavan’s response to Kolbert here, a defense of Beavan’s experiment on Treehugger, and a defense of Kolbert’s critique on Grist. Interesting stuff.)
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You’ve transitioned to BPA-free baby bottles and water bottles. But did you know that canned food liners also contain BPA? Last year, Globe and Mail tests of canned food revealed disconcerting results: BPA concentrations in tomato sauce were 18.2 parts per billion, 6.2 ppb in kid’s ravoli, and 14.1 ppb in tomato juice. These numbers may not seem high, but scientists are concerned that concentrations of even 1/2 part per trillion may be enough for this estrogen-like chemical to disrupt our endocrine system–the effects of which are not pretty. BPA exposure has been linked to many different diseases including breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (to name just a few). And scientists continue to discover more health impacts all the time .
What is a consumer to do? As a green lifestyle consultant my advice (and my own practice) is to choose fresh, dried, and frozen food over canned food (for example, I soak my own beans whenever I can). When I do need to buy preserved food, I either choose canned food from Eden Foods and Trader Joes, which use BPA-free can liners or I choose food preserved in glass jars (although food preserved in glass jars may also be tainted with BPA that has migrated from their metal lids, albeit at much lower levels).
Clearly we consumers will not be able to solve this problem by simply “voting with our pocketbooks”–although this is certainly an important and powerful tool. We need our government to at the very least regulate BPA, and ideally ban it (which Japan has done) rather than continue to regurgitate industry greenwashing (click here to read the FDA’s position on BPA).
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Last spring when I first started reading about the health hazards associated with bisphenol-A (you can read an excellent detailed summary here), a compound present in polycarbonate water bottles and baby bottles as well as the linings of canned food, I was–I’m sorry to say–hardly surprised. Bisphenol-A (BPA) wasn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last chemical to be found guilty of harm after initially being presumed innocent. The fact is that until our laws and regulations require health and safety testing of chemicals before they enter the marketplace, we will continue to learn of unsafe exposures only after the fact. (I touched on this issue in an earlier post. You can also read more about what is currently happening at the federal level here: industry is actually supporting new legislative efforts, which I’m not sure is good or bad).
But when it comes to our health, who can wait for laws and regulations? So after learning of the potential health impacts of BPA–as a parent I was especially concerned about the impact of childhood exposure–I did my homework to find safe and healthy alternatives. Although it was too late for me to switch to BPA-free baby bottles, I replaced all of my family’s polycarbonate water bottles with aluminum Sigg and stainless steel Kleen Kanteen, and I drastically reduced our consumption of canned food. I knew, of course, that I couldn’t completely eliminate our exposure to BPA, especially through canned food (can liners area major source of exposure to BPA; read more here), but I felt confident that I had taken all the steps I could.
So I was dismayed to learn two weeks ago that Sigg’s BPA-free water bottles weren’t so BPA-free after all. In a letter dated August 2009, Steve Wasik, Sigg’s CEO, admits that prior to August 2008, the Sigg liner was not BPA-free. When the BPA story first broke in the spring of 08, Sigg had defended its liner with testing that showed no detectable leaching (measured in parts per billion). However, they refused to either confirm or deny the presence of BPA claiming that the liner was propriety. Now that Sigg has rolled out its new BPA-free liners they admit the presence of BPA and have set up an exchange program for consumers who wish to replace their pre-August 08 bottles with new ones.
What is dismaying about this is that it reveals the pervasive obfuscation–and, yes, greenwashing– consumers are up against. If we can’t trust the word of a company like Sigg when it references “proprietary ingredients” who can we trust? As Lloyd Alter wrote in his Treehugger post, “whenever I hear the word “proprietary” again I am going to run in the opposite direction. People are entitled to know what is in their stuff, what they are putting in their mouths. That is the new bottom line.”
I, too, am going to run in the other direction when I hear words like “proprietary”, “confidential”, and “trade secrets.” And I agree wholeheartedly that people are entitled to know what is in their stuff. Unfortunately, I do not hold out much hope that companies that still hide behind such claims will soon become converts to transparency. Which is one of the reasons why I decided to start Greener Every Day, a Boston based green lifestyle and green home consulting practice. People are most definitely entitled to know what’s in their stuff but, in this case, entitlement is not exactly in alignment with reality. The sad truth is that information about our consumer goods is often so well hidden that people can’t be well-informed without spending hours of their time on research. Someday, perhaps if and when our government comes up with better ways to protect consumers, my consulting services won’t be needed. That would be a good outcome but it’s not one I expect will happen soon.
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