MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

When the No Impact Man blog launched a few years back, it was a bit of a revelation. With a backdrop of 1000's of eco-friendly lifestyle websites and articles about "going green" here was someone actually taking on the daunting task of eliminating his environmental impact all together (or at least attempting to get as close as possible).

 

And it would have been one thing if the guy lived alone in a shack in Vermont. But no... he had a family and lived in New York City. 

 

So the experiment, which launched in the middle of a heat wave in August 2006, involved a tally of all of the family's impact reductions. Every attempt was made to eliminate the use of energy, water, and waste. The small amount of resources the family did use was offset through other net-positive impacts with the goal of getting to net-zero impact.

 

The year-long experiment was chronicled in blogs and was documented on film, which is now being released as a feature documentary. So far it has received accolades, and appears to be the first actually entertaining "green" documentary in recent memory (in history)?

 

Being a numbers guy, I long for some math to back up all of the Beavan Family's hard work and would like to know exactly how their environmental impact stacks up to the WWF's target of 2.2 hectares per person of embodied energy & resources.

 

Check out my article on Defining your total environmental impact.