No Impact: Days 3 and 4

So, the focus of Day 3 of No Impact is on changing your food choices. Y'all know that I'm (mostly) vegan, and you know I'm making an effort to learn to cook. We eat a lot of whole foods at our house and not much processed stuff (except for E. I'm outing him as being processed-food-reliant). But really, we all do it a bit. I like these little nut bars for snacks; the girls like string cheese and yogurt sticks. And the convenience of those things is pretty nice. But, again, small steps will help us to reduce our interest in and reliance on these. I just know that, for us, those steps take time to implement and stick to. Else we'll bag.

For example, I'm thinking of learning to make yogurt. What do you think? The girls consume an astonishing amount of yogurt. Will it take forever to make? Will they eat it if tastes too chunky or different from what they're used to? Will it reduce the amount of trash we produce? All things to think about.

Anyway, that's little stuff. Switching away from a huge reliance on red meat in our house? That was bigger stuff.

Day 4 is about energy usage. This is going to be a very tough one. It's a cold time of year, and I like to do things that require energy, like watch t.v. while I knit, or use my sewing machine while listening to This American Life. Those things make my life better. But something I have been thinking about changing is trying to turn off all those "vampire" appliances that suck energy while you're not using them, you know? I'll talk to E about this. He usually has good solutions.

So, far the No Impact project as been not so exciting for me. The low-hanging fruit has already been plucked, while the huge energy users in our life (like driving) are sort of non-negotiable at the moment. Hmmm.

Haven't even begun to think about political action, tho that's in the plan. More on that soon.

NIM: The Trash List

Okay, so here's the list of trash collected from yesterday. Things went well until the end of the day, when two huge boxes of Christmas presents arrived from Southern California (they had to be shipped because all the stuff couldn't fit in our suitcases!). Anyway, that was a lot of packaging. Bummer.

The List

q-tip (you already knew about that one. And yes, it was for my ears)
tea bag and wrapper
tissue (this is a weird one, because I usually use hankies. Hmmm).
2 Lindt chocolate wrappers (yum!)
gum wrapper and gum
cough drop wrapper
yogurt stick wrapper
string cheese wrapper
chicken nuggets bag rip-top
ore-ida fries package
a shit-ton of Christmas packaging

So, a couple of things: this really isn't that much (other than the anomalous xmas stuff). But if I was going to make some long-term changes, it would probably be along the lines of...

MAKING MORE FOOD FROM SCRATCH!

Which is something I've been thinking about anyway. Here are the two current obstacles:

1. I'm not a good cook. I'm trying, and there are a few things I make well, but I'm not good. I botch things regularly (and, to be honest, I don't like handling raw meat. So we might have the wean the girls from nugs). I've ordered a few (vegan) cookbooks and will keep practicing. I would say about 30% of our dinners come from packages (like the fries and nuggets); if I could cut that down, that would be great for our budget, our health, and the amount of trash in the can.

2. Convenience rocks. Yesterday, I got both girls home and, while the fries and nugs cooked in the oven, we had a dance party. On nights when I make a more time-intensive meal, there is no time for a dancy party before dinner. Especially on stressful work-days, the convenience meals are handy.

Summary: Find some easy recipes that can be made quickly from scratch, and begin to think about buying some stuff in bulk, with less (or no) packaging.

Coming Up: No Impact Man Project

If you've read this blog for a while, you probably know that I'm keenly interested in the alternative hedonism approach to environmental behavior change promoted by Colin Beavan, who calls himself No Impact Man. You might also know that Beavan has launched the No Impact Project, a social experiment of sorts that is an effort to scale up his experiment to others and perhaps, in the process, spread positive social change. And I'm presenting a few papers on NIM at the Western States Communication Association conference in Anchorage in March (and yes, I realize that flying to Alaska to present papers is not a positive ecological behavior. I'm working on it).

In any case, in preparation for finalizing those papers and thinking more about the NIM franchise, I'm going to be participating in the No Impact Man Project next week, and I'll be blogging about it a bit here. I'll be collecting my trash today in preparation for the experiment. Collected so far: a q-tip.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does your husband know you're about to do this?
No.

How will he react?
With eye-rolling.

How will you teach your children about what you're doing?
Self-righteous lecturing.

Is it a good idea to try to do this during the first week of classes?
No. But I'm doing it anyway.


Keep an eye out for those posts, folks, or--better yet--join me and we can commiserate!