Here to Create

Last week I wrote about the No Impact Man blog, Colin Beavan’s effort to minimize his environmental impact. This week, to continue my preparation for Blog Action Day, I’m posting a list of my favorite environmental blogs and websites.

Green as a Thistle
This light-hearted blog chronicles Vanessa’s effort at going green by changing one habit every day for a year. Some of her changes have been small, some large, but the greater point is that incremental change makes a difference and is easy to do if it is approached one step at a time. Not as extreme as No Impact Man, Green as a Thistle is geared toward the average person who wants to do something to help the environment but doesn’t know where to start.

Treehugger
If you’re interested in the ways technology and design can lighten the load humans place on the earth, you’ll love Treehugger’s many posts on green architecture and building, water, power, and fuel-saving gadgets, and recycling-focused design. Treehugger also reports relevant political and cultural news and has active commenters.

Walkable Communities, Inc.
An important part of reducing environmental impact is by walking and biking more and driving less. Walkable Communities offers resources for those interested in getting involved in their towns and neighborhoods to make the experience more pedestrian-friendly.

National Geographic
The magazine offers a category covering environmental topics from acid rain to wind power. An entire section is devoted to Going Green for the consumer, schools, and communities. National Geographic also offers an RSS feed for environmental news.

Finally, a list of quick resources to get you started:

• Ecological Footprint Quiz helps you identify areas to cut back to be more environmentally friendly
• The Recycling Center – find a recycling center or pickup service near you (U.S.). See Recycle Now for the U.K.
• Native Forest Network’s Guide to Stopping Junkmail – the steps to take to reduce your paper waste
• Tox Town, a resource of the National Library of Medicine, gives information on the health risks of a contaminated environment

If you have a blog and are interested in the environment, I encourage you to check out the Blog Action Day website and sign up.

In the next few weeks leading up to Blog Action Day on October 15, I’m taking the opportunity to discuss creative ways to be environmentally friendly. This week, I want to review the No Impact Man blog, one of the most creative ways to help the environment I’ve seen.

No Impact Man is one of my favorite blogs to read. It’s the story of a New York man, his wife, and young daughter who decide to reduce their consumption and increase their good deeds to result in a net zero impact on the environment. He acknowledges that this is more of a philosophical goal than a strict scientific one. That attitude of compromise is one of the things I love about this project. Although many of their actions seem far-fetched and unrealistic in this modern world, Colin and his family know when to make allowances (coffee) and how to be realistic (the program is a year-long trial, after which they will decide which elements of the No Impact experiment to keep and which to discard).

Such radical-seeming ideas as going without electricity other than what they can generate from a single solar panel, biking everywhere rather than using public transportation, and reducing their water consumption by stretching the time between showers and laundry, have earned Colin plenty of criticism in the comments to his blog. He emphasizes repeatedly that he’s not trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives; he’s just sharing what he and his family are doing and offering suggestions to those who want them. Many other commenters have been helpful, offering advice when Colin asks how to accomplish a certain goal, like going without toilet paper.

Not long after I found the No Impact Man blog, I read through all the archives, because this story fascinates me. Some favorite posts include:

• The Year-Long Plan, describing some of the reasons and methods they began with;
• Entertaining Isabella without TV, Colin’s post on playing with his daughter;
• How we avoid making trash, describing their methods and the benefits they’ve found, other than the obvious impact of no trash for the landfill;
• Slimy pets to eat your garbage and entertain your kids, sharing details of their vermiculture solution to organic garbage;
• The No Impact sustainable eating plan, describing the benefits and methods of eating locally; and
• My favorite post, A day in our life, which details how the No Impact Family lives day-to-day.

Today’s post, Sometimes it’s hard, describes Colin’s feelings about having to make an exception to their rules when they had run out of food for the day. He acknowledges,

“I’m sure it has to do with my own addiction to perfection, but I felt like a loser and a hypocrite. It’s silly, because I don’t think it serves anyone to think that I breeze through this project, like I can follow all the rules without a problem. Painting a picture of total ease sets other people up to feel like failures if they find their own versions of environmental living difficult.”

Reflections like these make No Impact Man an engaging, thought-provoking read.

No Impact Man is also the title of the book Colin Beavan is writing about his and his family’s experiences. Like Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project , Colin is using his blog as part of the writing process for his book. I’ve seen many authors promoting published books by using blogs, but only No Impact Man and The Happiness Project seem to be blogging as part of the writing of the book. I’d love to hear of any other authors doing this in the comments.