It started as an experiment. I wanted to try to live with as little environmental impact as possible, in Sydney, for one month, in March-April 2011.
They phased it in, focusing on a different aspect of their lives each month - waste, transport, food, consumerism, electricity - and ended the year happier and healthier than when they started.
When I later read Colin’s book No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process I was inspired anew - by how much fun they had, and how much they connected with each other, as a family, with their wider community, and with the world around us all, through simple but powerful acts such as giving away their television and buying their food at the local farmers’ market.
My curiosity pricked up its ears. What would it be like to go "no impact", and write about the process, as Colin had, but in my hometown, Sydney, and for just a month. That's do-able, right? I was yearning to live more simply and closer to the Earth. But Colin had the advantage of a wife earning a good income to support the family. I still needed to earn a living, so I needed to start small.
The first lesson learned: we all have to start where we are. For me, it was here: I already composted food scraps and had a worm farm, grew a few veggies, recycled like an environmentally friendly demon, rode my bike more than I drove (though I did have a car, to get to the beach to surf), hardly ever shopped, used the “good” light bulbs, didn't eat meat, bought recycled (or wheat pulp) office paper, didn't commute (I worked from home). AND I knew I could do more.
The first hurdle: I'm a travel writer. Black mark number one. I offset all my flights, international and domestic, but offsetting doesn’t stop the pollution going into the atmosphere in the first place and too many offset schemes are seriously flawed.
And while I'd always try to minimise my impact when I travel – by, for instance, writing about nature-based, low-impact, regenerative and conservation experiences - I was never at home long enough to do anything meaningful in my community. So I pressed “pause” on the travel and stayed home for a whole month (that's a lot when your livelihood depends on you not being at home!) to dedicate myself to learning about how to reduce my eco-footprint.
The project spawned a blog
To track and share my progress during the month-long No Impact experiment, I decided to start a blog. (Here's my very first post: Week one, day one.) As someone who writes for a living, I'd never been interested in writing a blog - it was hard enough finding time to write all my paid articles - but once I started No Impact Girl, I loved the freedom of it. I loved having an idea and just writing. I could write what I liked. I could add my own photos. I didn't have to wait for an editor to reply to my story pitch. There was no sub-editor to change my words!
The first lesson learned: we all have to start where we are. For me, it was here: I already composted food scraps and had a worm farm, grew a few veggies, recycled like an environmentally friendly demon, rode my bike more than I drove (though I did have a car, to get to the beach to surf), hardly ever shopped, used the “good” light bulbs, didn't eat meat, bought recycled (or wheat pulp) office paper, didn't commute (I worked from home). AND I knew I could do more.
The first hurdle: I'm a travel writer. Black mark number one. I offset all my flights, international and domestic, but offsetting doesn’t stop the pollution going into the atmosphere in the first place and too many offset schemes are seriously flawed.
And while I'd always try to minimise my impact when I travel – by, for instance, writing about nature-based, low-impact, regenerative and conservation experiences - I was never at home long enough to do anything meaningful in my community. So I pressed “pause” on the travel and stayed home for a whole month (that's a lot when your livelihood depends on you not being at home!) to dedicate myself to learning about how to reduce my eco-footprint.
The project spawned a blog
To track and share my progress during the month-long No Impact experiment, I decided to start a blog. (Here's my very first post: Week one, day one.) As someone who writes for a living, I'd never been interested in writing a blog - it was hard enough finding time to write all my paid articles - but once I started No Impact Girl, I loved the freedom of it. I loved having an idea and just writing. I could write what I liked. I could add my own photos. I didn't have to wait for an editor to reply to my story pitch. There was no sub-editor to change my words!
The No Impact project was incredibly eye-opening and interesting. At the end of the month, I felt better informed, happier and healthier. Here are the top 10 things I learned by doing the No Impact project. And the No Impact Girl story I subsequently wrote for WellBeing magazine.
And the blog just kept on going. It's broadly about all things sustainable: green travel, nature-based travel experiences, people living simply in various ways. I deliberately kept it ad-free, to keep things simple (and pop-ups and ads in the middle of stories really annoy me!). And I'm not posting as often as I used to, but it's still my only website and the place anyone can come to find out more about my work.
Thanks for being part of the ongoing human experiment that is No Impact Girl :-)
And the blog just kept on going. It's broadly about all things sustainable: green travel, nature-based travel experiences, people living simply in various ways. I deliberately kept it ad-free, to keep things simple (and pop-ups and ads in the middle of stories really annoy me!). And I'm not posting as often as I used to, but it's still my only website and the place anyone can come to find out more about my work.
Thanks for being part of the ongoing human experiment that is No Impact Girl :-)
