No Impact

This weekend Ben and I went to see a documentary called No Impact Man. The film follows a man and his family in Manhattan as they live a year trying to minimize their environmental impact. This included things like trading public transportation for a bike, plastic diapers for cloth and take out food for seasonal/locally grown food.

Over all I enjoyed the documentary, but the film was not without faults. In an almost realty show way, the documentary focused on the tensions between the husband who fully embraces their project and the wife who yearns for caffeine, TV and hair dye.

It was the electricity bit that I felt was too extreme. They did their project in waves, one of the final stages being shutting down their electricity. We should all try to lead lives that are more environmentally conscious, but it is totally unrealistic to think that people can go without any electricity! It was even unrealistic for the husband who was blogging about their year. To blog one must have some source of electricity to power his computer! (eventually one solar panel was installed, just enough to juice up his computer.)

I found their visit to a diary farm interesting. The farm was not certified organic even though it was run organically. The farmer discussed his love and relationship with his cows, and to receive an organic license you cannot treat sick cows. He said he wouldn't just let a cow get sick and watch it die when he could provide it medicine, therefore he couldn't be certified organic.

My favorite part of the evening was walking out of the theater. I turned to Ben and asked if he liked it. As we walked towards his car he said, "Yea I did. (pause) We should have walked here."