The idea isn’t shiny new, but the insights are important enough to share. The author of the Frog Design Blog has devised a plan to try to go a couple weeks hyper-aware of her ecological footprint, measured in the form of accumulated trash. Beginning May 13, Ashley Menger will carry around all of the non-recyclable or compost-able garbage she personally generates. At the end of the two weeks, someone else will take on the challenge, presumably blogging any insights as garbage piles up.
The rules include the removal of all garbage cans from personal spaces at work and home and a ban on use of all public trash bins. It is OK to recycle and compost, although it is practically a science to understand whether it is even possible to return to the system some things we attempt to return. Unless the business composts, you must eat all the food on your plate in a restaurant or arrange to compost it yourself. According to Ashley, toilet flushing, incineration and donation are fine. You can’t give your trash to others, though, as we’re already very good at doing that. The real kicker—the part that will make you and others aware of your footprint—is the rule that you must carry around any generated garbage, and it must be within five feet of you at all times.
Ashley must have taken the weekend off from blogging, but her first five days are chronicled online. A recurring theme in the early going is that it is easy to forget to communicate about your ecological needs. A chunk of the trash she has accumulated seems to be from placing herself in a situation where others automatically give her non-recylable items (like straws) before Ashley becomes aware enough to ask them not to do so. There are also many products that seem eco-friendly but aren’t completely, such as paper sauce dishes on ceramic plates when dining out, or the little plastic film that protects food in a recyclable bottle before it can make it to your fridge.
Ashley also gives a nod to No Impact Man, who self-applies the description of “a guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride.” Colin Beavan (and family) will be the subject of a 2009 book and documentary movie. While experiments like this certainly have their critics, primarily those who keep pointing out that there is no such thing as “no impact,” the motivating philosophy behind this lifestyle choice is apt: “We will, like the Menominee, figure out what our world can productively offer us rather than considering only what we want.”
I look around our own room, at our own lives. I don’t want to part with Tivo or DVD players, computers or convenient travel. I see lots of plastic adn things I’m sure are made with chemicals. Perhaps, even with two boys who eat packaged cheese sticks and crave Bioncles, we could make it through two weeks of living with our garbage. (Heck, if we forget a couple Tuesday evenings, we have to do that anyway.) Perhaps no impact is not the ideal. Rather, intentional and positive impact—on communal and corporate policies, on consumer demand, on social conversation—is what these activities are ultimately about.
