“No Impact Man” Review

Editor’s note: The following is a review from a Critical Writing and Reviewing student at the University of Missouri.

We all know from the campy kids’ shows of our youth that responsibility isn’t always the easiest choice, in fact, it’s often times the most difficult option.  The film No Impact Man aims to teach us that although challenging, choosing the ecologically responsible course of action is worth the effort.  Indeed, after a year of living without the amenities of a disposable lifestyle, the No Impact family is closer, healthier and happier than before.

The premise is simple. For his next book, Historical non-fiction writer Colin Beavan decides to become the No Impact Man by picking up his carbon foot and stepping as lightly as possible. To do this he spends a year progressively eliminating his contributions to humanity’s desecration of the planet, by cutting down on the trash he produces and the carbon emissions he funds. His list of no-this and no-thats is long, illustrating just how much of our culture is detrimental to the environment. Among other taboos were no coffee, no take out, no elevators, no superfluous shopping, no carbon-emitting transportation, no electric, and—yes of course—no toilet paper as well.

It gets interesting when he drags his consumerist wife Michelle Conlin, a writer for Business Week, and their two-year-old daughter Isabella into the picture.  Oh yes, and they are also going to keep living in their ninth floor, Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City for their year with a minute environmental impact.   Here the film begins to follow two parallel stories: one of sustainability and one about family.

Conlin is not the kind of person you’d expect to go along with such a harsh change in life style.  She describes herself as the perfect example of the consumer. Conlin fears she’ll lose her job without coffee, is addicted to reality TV, doesn’t know how to cook because she always eats out and loves shopping so much that she spent 947 dollars on cloths prior to her one year fast.  Considering all of this, it’s no wonder that Conlin becomes the audience’s representative. She agrees to go along with her husband’s experiment for her child and for her health: after getting blood work done, Conlin had found that her take-out diet has left her disposed towards diabetes.

Seeing the quality of Conlin and Beavan’s relationship strengthen through the strain of his experiment makes watching the film worthwhile in the first place.  Some families would be torn apart by the such a drastic change in lifestyle, but if anything the trio is made stronger.  After all, the lack of TV and without the million distractions of a consumerist life, all the three have left is one another.

Besides the fact that the No Impact family feels good about living so sustainably, they learn a lot of ways to be more eco friendly in a practical way and by extension, so do the audience.  In this manner, No Impact Man is a sort of environmental how-to-guide for sustainability.  Beavan recognizes the fact that most of America wont go as far as he, and worries about the over all practicality of his experiment. But, with his wife’s help he realizes that it’s more about teaching us that much of our eco harmful habits are just that, habits.  Being responsible is just a matter of getting out of our bad habits and adopting practices that are not only good for the environment but also good for ourselves.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of the movie is not the extremes that the No Impact family goes to for sustainability, but the reaction of the public to their experiment.  Besides questioning Beavan’s experiment as a form of self-promotion, many of the comments he receives are quite hateful, leaving the couple to question why their lifestyle would anger so many people.  Perhaps the nature of this reaction is expressed best in Beavan’s musings on the title of the New York Times article about his family. Why, he questions, was the article’s title “A Year without Toilet Paper” instead of  “A Year Without the Food that Would Give my Wife Diabeties” or “A Year without the TV that Kept my Family from Being Together?”

By James Saracini