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It's a bird ... It's a plane ... It's No Impact Man!

By Kari Milchman

There’s a new hero in town and he goes by the name, No Impact Man. You may have read about his impressive deeds in The New York Times or caught a glimpse of him on “The Colbert Report.” We don’t know much, but we do know the source of NIM’s powers: For the next year, he and his family will attempt to eat only food organically grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan, to refrain from shopping, from using carbon-fueled transportation, from producing trash and, hence, from using paper—even the toilet variety. NIM is also trying to reduce his electric bill by getting rid of his 46-inch, flat-screen TV, using fluorescent light bulbs and turning the dishwasher and other kitchen appliances off. Luckily, NIM and his family do accept presents (Apartment 9F somewhere in a pre-war building on Fifth Avenue with a doorman and a marble-floored lobby, if you’re feeling generous).

To learn all of NIM’s secrets, you’ll have to wait for his book or the documentary, both of which will be out in 2009. Until then, this self-proclaimed guilty liberal is getting more hype than he can handle; indeed, he’s not your average green guy. So perhaps in an attempt to downplay his rising celebrity status, NIM has opted to take “a breather from publicity” and, thus, refused our attempts at an interview. Instead, we sought out a garden-variety environmentalist with his feet firmly planted on the ground to question about NIM’s lifestyle experiment. Williamsburg resident Ben Jervey, 27, is an environmental writer and author of The Big Green Apple: Your Guide To Eco-Friendly Living In New York City, which offers simple ways to maintain a lower-impact life without compromising comfort (certainly, you can keep your TP).

NYPress: Do you think there’s a conflict between changing one’s lifestyle for environmental purposes and exploiting those changes for the purpose of a book deal?
Ben Jervey: No, spreading the word by writing this book about the whole process will show a lot of people that it’s not terrible or impossible to live a lower-impact or even no-impact existence.

Is it more effective to write a book as a “call to arms,” pointing out the flaws in our profit system that demand we have a hugely negative impact on the environment or a memoir like NIM’s?
I think that there have been plenty of instances of more “call to arms” books, and, unfortunately, in this media environment, something like that isn’t going to get as much distribution or as good publicity as a memoir would. So the personal account format, just from a media standpoint, is one that is much better equipped in the present day to spread the message more widely.

By his own admission, NIM will start using things like public transportation once the one-year experiment is over. What kind of message is sent by the fact that many of his lifestyle changes are temporary?
I don’t think his project is entirely realistic to continue for the long term while trying to maintain some semblance of a typical NYC life. I personally think what’s going to be most effective and most lasting are the individual components. It’s really tough and probably exhausting and sometimes expensive to live a completely no-impact life, but showing what is possible will help open a lot of eyes.

NIM and his family appear to be relatively well off, do you think only the upper class will identify with his methods?
I think there are many examples around the city of people living very little to no impact lives and not having much money at all—certainly the freegans come to mind. There are a lot of people who are not only eating food produced within 250 miles, but eating food that would become landfill waste, a lot of people who are living in unheated spaces that don’t really use much, if any, oil or who are building their own transportation from salvaged bike parts. It’s a very different type of process and one that is probably a lot less attractive to a wider audience.

Do you think making oneself a martyr for the cause creates the impression that individual self-deprivation can have a major effect, ultimately absolving government and/or corporate institutions of their responsibility in reducing impact? And does it deceive people into thinking that they are more powerful than they are so that they don’t agitate for political action the way they might otherwise?
I think that a lot of the natural living, holistic, organic lifestyle industry tries to get people to think of their personal actions as the biggest factor, whereas I tend to think it’s more the first line of defense. I hope that he [NIM] is actively engaging the corporate world and the government because I think that should certainly be part of the no-impact process.

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