And Now, the Impact of No Impact

By Penelope Green

Published: August 19, 2009
The New York Times

In November of 2006, Colin Beavan, a writer of historical nonfiction, embarked on a yearlong “lifestyle experiment” in which he vowed to reduce his planetary impact by producing (nearly) no trash, using (hardly) any carbon fuel and buying almost nothing new except food, and only that grown within a 250-mile radius of his home in New York City (which he said is the farthest distance farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket travel to sell their produce). Mr. Beavan’s wife, Michelle Conlin, a reporter at Business Week, and their daughter, Isabella, who was then 2, were by necessity embroiled in this stunt, which was further complicated by their address, an apartment on the ninth floor of a prewar coop on Lower Fifth Avenue...read full story.