Thursday, January 03, 2008

Introducing No Trash Guy

NPR ran a piece on yesterday’s Day to Day about one Dave Chameides, who resolves to throw nothing away for a year and, of course, blog the experience. It has the ring of being the No Impact Man of 2008 (tho NIM’s experiment is still in progress.)

While it’s easy to be cynical about the green bandwagon, this one isn’t rubbing me wrong. For one thing, it’s a good way of demonstrating the practical effects of living in our current consumer culture. At the end of it all, Dave will tote up everything reused, recycled and composted, plus the stuff “in the basement.”

It also seems somehow more plausible than NiM. By that I may mean simply that it’s less guilt-inducing than NiM, I haven’t decided. No Impact Man set such an impossibly high bar my defenses fly up every time I try to read it. Thus far 365 Trash seems more like set of practical steps everyone could take, though maybe not to Dave’s extreme.

2 comments:

Dave said...

Pho,
Thanks so much for the kind words and nice write-up. Please stay tuned and stay involved. NIM has done a great service in educating folks about their part in this whole mess and I'm hoping to help bring more into the fold.

Best

Dave

Village Green said...

No Impact Man's year is up, but he is still blogging and sorting through which changes remain permanent and which are to be reconsidered. Power is back on in his apartment now. I don't think I could follow his extreme ways, but I certainly did find inspiration in his attempts over the last year.

Looking forward to following the adventures of No Trash Guy. Thanks for the tip.