Been thinking some more about No Impact Man (NIM). Almost as hard as actually changing your habits is going to be measuring the impact. How can you be zero net impact if you don’t track both the “impact” and the cost of all the aspects of your life? It’s a daunting task they’ve undertaken, and I would like some more details. With the breaker in the apartment thrown, what is the temperature inside the apartment, graphed against the temperature outside the apartment? How does this vary with the seasons?
A good study — what additional burden, if any, does their lack of heating and cooling give to the neighbors in their apartment building? How would the average temperature inside the apartment be affected if all the residents in their building followed the same policy of no power?
There’s plenty of room for liberalism in the world, but I wish they’d be a little more rigorous, or, dare I say it, scientific, in explaining and accounting for their choices. It’s interesting and perhaps even inspiring to read about worms in their apartment, but if they don’t cite references for their claims and provide a basis for comparison for their statistics, their stories are merely narrative. For example,
We produce less than half a small bag of trash in a week.
That’s much less trash than my family produces, but how much did you produce before you began all these measures? Which ones were the most effective in terms of effort versus results? How do you handle diapers for your toddler, and how did you handle them before?
This is interesting stuff, but I want more details!
I looked into starting a worm compost, but I have a hard enough time getting someone to look after our cats while we’re gone. I can’t imagine asking someone to feed our worms while we’re on vacation!