Review: No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

You’ve probably heard of No Impact Man before – he’s the guy who spent a year trying to get his environmental footprint down to zero, and blogged about it. Some people reckon it’s all just a cheap stunt, others think it’s the way of the future. Now you can read his book (or see the documentary about him) and see if you think he’s on the right track or not, because in it he explains exactly what he was thinking of by cutting off his electricity and traveling by rickshaw.

Beavan used to be the type of person who worried very much about the environment, and politics, and the effect the rat-race has on us all. But he wasn’t doing much about it. The No Impact year was his attempt to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk: he wanted to actually demonstrate his idea of the right way to live if we want the planet to survive.

What makes No Impact Man a different read from the usual stories about eco-friendly people taking on a challenge for a year or so? It’s that before starting his project, he’d made no green changes in his life at all; he was starting from scratch. He and his wife drank takeout coffee, ate takeaway food, took taxis and planes everywhere and generally were living in the exact way that TV advertisements recommend. It really was an eye-opening experience for him, which is where a lot of the humour in the book comes from.

The other major difference is that Beavan lives in New York city, and has no intention of becoming a hermit in the woods for the sake of eco-purity. He believes, as do I, that cities can be a really efficient and low-impact place to live, as long as we rethink the assumptions we’ve made about the availability of cheap oil and electricity and convenience products.

Is there any point to individual action? What are the possibilities and benefits of radically changing your lifestyle? Beavan’s project gave him the opportunity to find out. It seems like it was a real roller-coaster ride of emotions and thoughts. He had to confront his own hypocrisy and moral certainties. But he also spent so much more time with his wife and daughter, he got fit, and he met a bunch of really lovely people.

One of the topics that really interested me was about a standard of living that might be a restriction on us but would be a huge improvement for people in Third World countries. Beavan found out just how much of our consumer-driven lifestyle can be given up before your daily tasks become a burden. Hint: he won’t be going without a washing machine again!

I’ve been reading the No Impact Man blog for ages now, so I thought I knew more or less what to expect when I read the book. But the thoughtfulness of Beavan’s writing really puts his decisions in context in a way that little blog posts can’t.

And what I learned from the book was this: it doesn’t matter if you don’t have all the answers. You should just dive in, make the changes in your life that you think are right, and let things develop from there. If you wait until you understand sustainable living completely, you’ll never begin at all.

Recommended?
This isn’t a book with a lot of detail on environmental science. It’s not a how-to book on sustainable living either – you can get better information on that just about anywhere on the internet. But it’s a great read for those of us still trying to put our ethical beliefs into practice without opting out of modern life altogether.

If you’re wondering what the point is of making eco-friendly changes in your home when 80% of Australia’s electricity comes from coal, No Impact Man has a pretty good answer. And if you’re wanting some inspiration to start a crazy eco-project, this is absolutely the book for you!