Colin Beavan

The author of Fingerprints describes his one-year experiment with minimizing his impact on the earth, an effort for which he eschewed technology, processed foods, and other negative-impact products while evaluating the plausibility and actual value of sustainable living. 75,000 first printing.

The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

No Impact Man

I.m. ruzz

What could you want in a book about the way we live our lives and impact the planet?

1. honest
2. not preaching
3. not wild eyed optimism
4. makes you think
5. doesn't shut you down before you get going

Colin Beavan tackled this very sensitive subject, of how our modern lives are killing the planet and taking those same lives with it, in the only way i could tolerate reading about. He changed (tried) his life. he experimented with new ways of living and reported back his results. 

in a sense, the fundamental purpose of friends is to expose you to new ways of living, new ways of thinking, and to open you up in a safe way to new ideas (and maybe pick you up when you're really really wasted and puked on a pretty girls deck). and in that sense, colin's been a true friend. 

we're all very sensitive about being judged, or corrected, or having our lives condemned and i think this is where a lot of these sorts of books go off the rails. They turn you off by putting you on trial. life is hard enough without being accused of things by an inanimate object you're presumably spending some of your all-too-short free time with. No Impact Man deftly avoids pointing a finger back at the reader. 

moreover, his honesty about his own failings. his own anxieties and his fears made me feel he's just as flawed as i am, but willing to admit his flaws and work on them. The net effect of this honesty is that you feel safer asking questions of yourself, and safer looking for small changes that can help. 

about mid way into the book, it became clear to me I wanted to try to cut down my plastic waste. I went, as normal, to my local grocery store and became pretty dismayed to find nearly everything comes in some immediately disposable form of plastic. plastic is everywhere. literally, everywhere. 

I managed only a small gain of my canvas bags for carrying, and not putting fresh fruits in a bag (why bag a handful of bananas?) and made a couple purchase choices based on which used less plastic. I can't say the result was noticeable. maybe i cut out 5% of my plastics? 

but, the old argument of minor change in numbers equals major change is still the most viable option in our modern world. if everyone saved 5%, thats 5% across the board. that matters. 

game theory suggests small advantages can shift the balance quickly. if everyone i knew and everyone they knew started purchasing items with less plastic those greedy capitalists would catch on quick and start focusing brands on that. boom. system improved. no one suffers. no one loses money. the question of how to get something as unsexy as plastic consumption into the minds of people is a rather harder problem to solve.

now, it might look like i've veered off the topic of what the book is like but in fact I've just explained it as well as I can. 

the book makes you think about ways to improve. small ways. big ways. any ways and it carried over from reading to trying for me. 

I came away curious about how to improve the way i live and the impact my life make. I don't feel guilty, or shamed, for living like i do, I'd just like to try to make gains where those gains make sense. or where it's something i care about (like say not having the entire ocean be a swirling mass of plastic). 

charged with his example and a willingness to question, change, and act isn't it just, maybe, possible we could improve things?

Caitlin Berger

The most important part of this review: READ THIS BOOK.

Recently, I became a vegetarian, and so I've also been looking for other ways to be environmentally friendly. I've always been a "tree hugger", as my family puts it, so this book was definitely for me. What I loved more than anything was the philosophical way Colin Beavan wrote about his experiences. He didn't just shove tons of statistics in our face, tell us how he made no impact for a year, and say goodbye. He reflected so much on what it means to be environmentally friendly, what it means to be a human in this world of over consumption, and how we can change our ways and make our lives better. He made me think so much, made me question our society and our way of living, and I just love that.

He also put lots of humour into his writing, which helps when talking about how we're all basically doomed if we don't change our ways in the next few decades. I think this book is so important because it doesn't just talk about how the author and his family lived without toilet paper for a year; it goes much deeper than that. He gets to the root of what constitutes happiness and health, and you realize that the answer does not include iPods, computers and processed food. He proved that reducing, reusing and recycling are the way to go, on a much larger scale than just paper and plastic. 

We need to question our lifestyle, question our values and question what we want from life and from our Earth. This is a MUST MUST MUST READ.

No Impact Man The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

Reviews