No Impact Man: A year unplugged

Sometime around the end of 2006, Colin Beavan heard that the polar bears in Antarctica were starting to eat each other.

Maybe that was the tipping point, the final bit of disconcerting environmental news that transformed him. Like the Incredible Hulk, he got mad and turned green.

Or maybe he just saw his new idea as having great book potential. He would unplug himself from the electric grid, stop buying anything but locally grown food, and generally retreat into the 1800s. Then, he would write about it (presumably, by candlelight).

Somehow, he managed to talk his wife, Michelle Conlin, into joining him on this quest. Their 2-year-old daughter and dog didn’t have a vote. And so, No Impact Man was born.

That was two years ago, and Beavan will be talking about his experience at Randolph College on Friday night (7:30 p.m., Smith Hall, free to the public).

The plan was for the family to leave no footprint on the earth, carbon or otherwise, for a year.

It wasn’t easy. For one thing, they lived not on some bucolic farm, but the ninth floor of a New York City apartment building. With a doorman.

The elevator was electric, so the family started using the stairs. A lot. Colin and Michelle started riding bicycles to work, although Michelle did successfully argue for an elevator exemption at her job — her office at Business Week was on the 43rd floor.

“The hardest thing for me,” Beavan said in a recent telephone conversation, “was not using the laundry machines. We had to start doing it by hand.”

Food scraps were composted by earthworms. Bread was baked in-house.

“I didn’t want to be wagging my finger at people,” Beavan said. “Instead of ‘This is what you should be doing,’ I wanted to say, ‘This is what I’m doing.’”

Think about when there’s a power outage. For most of us, it’s simply an inconcenience — yet the media (bless our hearts) always makes it into a tragedy of epic proportions.

Beavan obviously doesn’t see it that way.

“I’ve heard people who were in a blackout for a week say it was really a positive experience, because it forced them to slow down,” Beavan said. “I know it was like that for us during that year.”

He and his wife have turned their lights back on, but they still get around on bicycles. They also got rid of their air conditioners.

“We saved $1,200 in electricity that way,” Beavan said. “Now, on a hot night, we’ll go down to the park and Isabella (his daughter) can play in the fountain.”

Beavan maintains a blog about his experience, which has taken on a life of its own. A “No Impact Man” movie was released this year.

“You don’t have to be as extreme as we were,” Beavan said. “Just look at your own lifestyle, and think about how you can change it.

“The ironic thing is, so many of us are moving so fast and are so stressed out. So we’re ruining the planet, and we’re not even having any fun doing it.”