What Impact Are You Having On The Environment?

I have recently stumbled across this blog, No Impact Man. It is pretty cool. It is about a man his wife and daughter trying to live a no impact life in NYC for one year. At the end of that year when they aren’t living to the extreme anymore, he feels they will be equipped to make very smart decisions for themselves and our planet. I try my hardest to live a low impact life but I don’t know about a no impact. He has a post about creativity and how it is directly attached to consumption. It is actually a question he is throwing out there….. How do we Not throw out the baby with the bath water? So of course this got me to thinking about my own design studio. What I do or could do to have a lower impact on the environment. Laura from Whosiepie works in my store/studio with me. I can definitely say we barely a scrap of fabric gets thrown away. Anyone who has been in, has seen the scrap pile at the end of the cutting table. We either eventually us the scraps ourselves to trim other garments or give them to young girls to design clothing for their dolls. We use a Brita water filter. But I have to say in my ignorance, I have to now go research which is worse for the environment, the filter or the endless stream of plastic bottles? I drink a lot of water. We also keep our production as close to demand as possible. The most fabulous thing I like about No Impact Man, he just wrote a post about the positive impact, of positive impact. It is about volunteering as a way to balance our negative impact and learn more about what it is we are actually doing.

Susan Och said it wonderfully in the comments section of his blog:

“One of the cool things about trying to change the world is that you eventually have to go out and talk to “strangers”. You have to turn off that voice in your head that gives you reasons to avoid people (”Too Fat!” “Too Old!” “Carrying a Plastic Shopping Bag!” “Wrong Team Sweatshirt” “Not Like Me!”) and to greet others with sincerity and humility. When you’re just trying to save the world in your head, it seems that progress depends on getting everyone on the same page. ‘If only everyone rode bikes….’ or ‘If only everyone was a vegetarian…..’ When you get out and talk to people, you find that reality is complicated, and that the solutions are many. Instead of sitting alone, fretting that ‘people will never change,’ we find that people are changing, and offering fresh solutions for our seemingly intractable problems.

I would love to here how you can or would like to be lower impact on the environment. If you have suggestions for others in the community let us know that. Let me know if you need a few scraps. If you are nearby, stop and grab some. I think I will leave the the spotlight off today, unless someone is shopping.