Zero impact living

Zero Impact Living is a lifestyle which leaves no carbon footprint and minimizes environmental impact in general. Zero Impact living can also be referred to as extreme environmentalism or clean, green living. The movement has been referred to as counterculture. The lifestyle requires changes to both individual and societal activities.
Past & Current Experiments
New York City author Colin Beavan recorded his experiments in Zero Impact living in his blog, leading to the creation of a documentary called No Impact Man. The resulting No Impact Project is a non profit initiative that began in the spring of 2009 to encourage the adoption of a zero impact lifestyle among the general population. The site provides a guide for a preliminary no-impact week trial in the form of a guided daily assessment in different sectors of an individual’s lifestyle that helps them evaluate and redesign the way they choose to live.
Colin Beavan has been criticized for some of the seemingly pointless, contradictory habits he took up in order to reduce his impact. For example, he avoided elevators and instead chose to climb tiring flights of stairs, yet used a laptop powered by electricity to write his blog each week
One related effort is documented in a blog called The Compact, and involves a group in San Francisco who vowed not to purchase any new materials for a year. Their aim was to "go beyond recycling" by minimizing consumption and simplify their lives.
Personal Applications
Individual actions account for about a quarter of North American carbon emissions. Our ordinary habits draw on a massive amount of fossil fuels and other natural resources. By adjusting our personal lifestyle to align with the zero impact philosophy, humans can drastically cut our overall carbon footprint and reduce our negative effect on the environment.
Food Consumption
Food production and transport contributes significant detrimental impact upon our natural systems. Food refrigeration and preparation in the kitchen is even more energy-intensive that the food's initial production. Fortunately, there are alternative options for obtaining no-impact sustenance: home gardens, raw and seasonal foods, composting, minimal use of kitchen appliances, and eating low on the food chain are all constructive ways to cut impact.
The crucial component of zero-impact eating is consuming “local, seasonal, unpackaged food”. A personal garden can be tailored to a suitable size based on available space, family tastes, and general needs of the household. To maximize useful space, gardens can be designed for vertical growing along walls
Eating raw foods eliminates the unnecessary heat and energy drain from cooking with appliances. The raw foods movement emphasizes the natural form of the food source and its unspoiled nutrients. Better yet, this form of food requires little to no refrigeration depending on how fast it is used. Recipes often include a sparse amount of natural ingredients, are not preparation intensive, and maintain high nutrient values. Raw foods completely eliminate the use of home appliances, which is essential to Zero Impact Living.
In tandem with raw foods, eating in-season produce is critical when seeking a no-impact lifestyle. Seasonal foods do not require energy intensive preservation and storage processes, tend to be local, and consequently need little transportation if any and consumes more than one-third of the US fossil fuel budget. Harvesting systems can serve two main functions. One is to simply create a surrounding landscape that readily absorbs rain water before it runs off, collecting pollutants on its way to the sewer system. This helps restore nearby aquifers and minimizes the amount of water in the sewage system that requires water treatment. The second is to harvest rain water from roofs and gutters for storage and use within the home. 1000 square feet of roof space can collect 600 gallons after only one inch of rain. Dry toilets convert human fecal matter into a "soil-like hummus", with less than 10% of the original volume of waste from flush toilets. This style of landscaping further eliminates the water resources necessary to support surrounding foliage. Establishing a landscape of plants natural to the area can negate the need for pesticide and fertilizer use when planted in compost rich soil.
Smaller steps toward Zero Impact energy use involve cutting back the use of household appliances and air conditioning systems. Unplugging appliances while they are not in use reduces vampire power. Fans can be used to circular air as opposed to cooling systems, which require much more energy. Purchasing compact-fluorescent light bulbs as opposed to incandescent bulbs can reduce electricity use by three-fourths. Within the life time of one CFL bulb, electricity bills will be reduced by roughly $30.
Constantly running, refrigeration is a significant portion of household energy consumption.
Household Waste
While minimizing consumption is key to reducing environmental impact, consumption is often unavoidable, and consumption produces waste. As discussed above, organic wastes can be composted and returned to the natural landscape. However, solid, inorganic wastes present a problem as landfills overflow up worldwide. Household recycling of paper, cardboard, aluminum, and plastic have a beneficial environmental impact. This practice both reduces landfill waste and lowers carbon emissions, as recycling products uses only a fraction of the energy required to produce a new product. Soap pods can be used in place of laundry detergent in normal loads for up to 25 washes and composted at the end of their useful life. Traces of pharmaceuticals in drinking water pose a public health risk.
Consider natural alternatives to ease pain and sickness symptoms: Echinacea for prevention, garlic as an immune booster, aloe for burns, and herbal infusions or teas made from chamomile and lavender for mitigating unease. It was determined that simpler backpacks (less buckles and zippers) made from lighter fabrics, lowered manufacturing emissions and create less waste at the end of the product's life cycle. The study following the challenge concluded that if every backpack in the Unite States was made from recycled material, a carbon reduction of 20-30,000 tons would result - the equivalent of 10,000 round trip airplane flights from Boston to Seattle, and the amount of carbon that 500 trees can sequester in one year. As in Zero-Impact Living, people who follow this lifestyle will alter their methods of transportation, sources and use of energy, and their diets to reduce the pollution, carbon dioxide, and waste that they produce. This may include recycling, choosing energy efficient products, and reducing the purchase of new products. However, those who live sustainably may not share the drastic goal of minimizing all impacts.
Carbon Neutrality
Carbon neutrality, or having a net zero carbon footprint, describes a movement that involves achieving no carbon footprint by creating less carbon emissions. This shares a similar goal with Zero-Impact Living, yet is less strict in its demands: it allows for offsetting unavoidable carbon releases with initiatives to store carbon (e.g. planting trees, green roofs). It also does not call for complete avoidance of environment-impacting activities. The carbon neutral concept can be extended to other greenhouse gases as well measured in terms of their carbon dioxide equivalence. Controversially, the carbon neutral movement also encompasses carbon trading, in which organizations or corporations paying others to use less carbon or sequester their carbon emissions, so that they can continue with their carbon-emitting behaviors..
Localvores
The local food movement (also regional food or food patriotism) is considered to be part of the broader sustainability movement. Local food systems are an alternative to the global corporate models where producers and consumers are separated through a chain of processors/manufacturers, shippers and retailers. As the food industry grows, the 'middle man' is increasingly able to control the quality of food, including the quality of the product as well as the method of production. Conversely, the local food system redevelops these relationships and encourages a return of quality control to the consumer and the producer. The movement is epitomized by the slogan “think globally, buy locally” and many who follow the movement call themselves localvores.
Eco-Communalism
Eco-communalism a philosophy and way of life based on simple living, where non-material things are value over material things, and a more locally based lifestyle is championed. Followers of the movement hope to replace capitalism with a global web of economically interdependent and interconnect small, local communities. Decentralized government, a focus on agriculture, and green economics are all tenets of eco-communalism. The movement not only includes changes that reflect the tenants of sustainability, as in Zero-Impact Living, but also presents the idea of a broader social revolution in conjunction with such changes.

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