‘No Impact Man’ sets example for students to change lifestyle, improve environmental sustainability
This year, the university selected “No Impact Man” for the entire incoming freshman class to read before the annual First-Year Reading Experience. Because I’m a resident mentor at West (Green) Quad, I also read this book over the summer. I was pleased to see that a book was finally chosen that would be more relevant than previous years’ selections. While I appreciated that I could read all of “Persepolis” the day before I moved in my freshman year, I don’t remember much about that graphic novel other than that it was 90 percent pictures.
For the upperclassmen who haven’t read the book, “No Impact Man” describes how the author, Colin Beavan, lives in New York City and attempts to leave no environmental impact for an entire year. Beavan embarks on the journey dragging his wife and young daughter into the mix. Beavan starts small by trying to buy groceries without using plastic bags. He brings his own containers to a local store that sells items without packaging. This small step is one that everyone can easily take in order to reduce the amount of trash in the world.
According to the Earth Resource Foundation, the average person uses 130 plastic bags per year. I’ve worked for a grocery store since high school during summers and on school breaks, and this statistic does not surprise me a bit. People constantly insist on bagging containers that already have handles like gallons of milk or bags of potatoes. I’ve never understood this because plastic bags aren’t durable.They also aren’t capable of holding the same amount of groceries reusable ones can. If a plastic bag rips and causes that gallon of milk to spill everywhere, then it defeated the purpose of being convenient.
However, in order to prove I am human and am not perfect at being green, I hypocritically have a bag full of plastic bags hanging on my closet doorknob. I have gone shopping before and forgotten to take my reusable ones, and in order to compensate for this, I use the plastic bags as trash bags and recycle them.
Beavan begins by taking small initiatives, but by the end of the novel, he has taken extreme steps in order to eliminate his environmental impact. He does things I could never do in my selfish college student lifestyle. For example, he always takes the stairs in order to eliminate the use of electricity by elevators, and he gives up coffee because he lives in New York and it isn’t locally grown there. Anyone at USC who has trekked the Humanities Building stairs knows that elevators can sometimes be a gift from God, and anyone who has worked with me past midnight at The Daily Gamecock knows coffee can make me much more bearable. Beavan sets an example and shows that it is possible to put forth effort to change your lifestyle as moderately or drastically as you want. He makes it clear that people must change in order for the planet to continue to sustain our lifestyles.
From living in and working for Green Quad, sustainability has become more important to me, and it’s also becoming more important to my generation and university. By choosing “No Impact Man” as the novel for freshmen to read for the First-Year Reading Experience, the university has challenged all of the first-year students to make a difference. Hopefully this year’s selection has set the precedent for years to come and succeeding novels will be equally interesting and impactful.
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