Tag Archives: green

No Impact Man

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/

Colin Beavan (a.k.a No Impact Man) dedicated a year of his life to trying to reduce his environmental impact to zero. He stopped taking taxis, trains and elevators, only ate food grown within 250 miles of his home, left the power grid, stopped buying anything new and stopped making trash.

His inspiring book and blog follow his adventures, and attempt to distill from them a way for humanity to move forward without destroying the environment. No Impact Man’s approach is interesting as it focuses both inward and outward, calling into question the materialistic, wasteful and inefficient way we live our lives. He questions why we work so hard to buy things, when surely spending time with out friends and family will in fact bring us more happiness. This book is crammed full of interesting and surprising facts and figures, but is approachable enough to make a introduction to serious environmental issues.

Puma’s New Super-Green Shoebox

http://www.fastcompany.com/1614807/puma-and-yves…

Puma’s “Clever Little Bag” is an interesting approach to the issue of packaging and waste. Rather than having a complete box, which consumers will put into a (usually disposable) bag to carry home, the design combines a cardboard skeleton in a reusable bag made of recycled material. There is no plastic liner, nor is there any lamination on the card. The whole idea is to reduce environmental costs at each stage of the package’s life: raw materials, production, shipping and disposal. The concept is particularly interesting because it takes something that is very standardised, and seemingly minimal, and finds a new, and seemingly better, way to do things.