| How low can you go? (At this point, Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove starts playing in my head, but maybe I'm just odd?) That's what Colin Beavan and his family (wife Michelle, and their absolutely adorable then-2-year old daughter Isabella) sought to discover via the No Impact Man project, which currently consists of a blog, a book and a documentary screening around the country right now.
Eager Beavan and reluctant Michelle take to the task in stages (with Isabella joyfully ogling worms in the composting bin and washing clothes in the bathtub via foot stomping), from eliminating television, cosmetics and cleaning chemicals, to forswearing forms of transit other than foot, bike or scooter and shopping farmers' markets and bulk food bins, eventually moving all the way up to turning off the electricity in their apartment.
Review below the fold... |
| I received a screener copy of the dvd (newly-required FTC disclosure accomplished), and although I had originally planned on putting off watching for a little while... well, with the holiday consumer-orgy 'season' now reekingly permeating every nook and cranny of American public life, I decided that now is probably the best time to watch and comment on this film. This disgusting annual ritual reached its deadly nadir just over one year ago, when 34-year old Queens resident Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by frenzied "value shoppers" (whose values obviously didn't include human life) at the suburban Long Island Wal-Mart where he was employed as a temporary seasonal worker.
The real change America needs is not a cosmetic tweak here and there, but rather a drastic reevaluation of the very way we live. In how we eat, in how we get around, in how we pass time, in how we treat the planet. In how we view and respect our neighbors and others with whom we interact.
Colin Beavan must have felt the same way, so he set out to see (and document) how exactly we can go about making those changes. What works, what won't? What can we all try to do within reason to make our world a better place? The experiment did go to extremes, by design, and Beavan and his family had many advantages that roughly 95% of Americans don't, which include favorable jobs (Beavan is a writer; his wife is a journalist for BusinessWeek, which brings up a whole other aspect altogether, as was touched upon in the film - is not the current exploitative system of American business and "consumerism" such publications push and promote one of the major obstacles to a sustainable future in the first place?) and an already pretty comfortable existence in Manhattan, one of America's very few walkable places.
If Michelle worked at a warehouse in The Bronx, she wouldn't be riding a scooter there. If Colin worked a production line in Long Island City, he'd be hard-pressed to pass up a subway ride home after a 10-hour shift on the floor. Mass transit is not our enemy.
Nevertheless, the "impact" this project has already had (attention from Good Morning, America and numerous other radio / tv / e-media outlets and print publications) has been, I'd say, a positive one, as it helps raise and adds to the discussion already out there on many issues which need to be addressed.
We need to cut down on our insane amounts of waste. We need to reevaluate our food system. We need to think about many of our lifestyle choices beyond the context of just "me". The film was easy to get into and follow along, and the low-tech approach added more to the message, I believe. You're not going to find fancy graphics and catchy statistics or production techniques here. What you're going to do, is follow around a small family as they try to reduce their footprint on the planet. This film is a "what-if", not a "how-to". Let's hope the discussion raised by projects like this does have an impact on the way we live. |
