Columbia Pictures Takes Green to the Next Level with 'No Impact Man'

While I am, by no means, a queen of green, I do a good deal of recycling -- much more than many people I know. I reuse containers until they can't be used any more; I have a green bin; I rip those damned windows out of envelopes before recycling the paper; I walk almost everywhere, even in the winter. And even so, I think the story of Colin Beavan is scary. Variety reports that his upcoming book, No Impact Man, has been picked up by Columbia Pictures for a feature treatment. What's it about? Well, a man who tries to live a completely green lifestyle in New York City.

Beaven, who has written interesting stories before, like the first murder to be solved by fingerprints, chronicled "a year in which he, his wife, and young daughter redesigned their lives with the goal of doing no damage tot he environment. As he says: "I set out to eliminate the negative net impact we made, while creating a positive impact so that we could be as close as possible to creating no net impact. If the typical cosmopolitan New Yorker can do it, anybody can." And he doesn't mean just environmentally-friendly living, but also no television, AC, or even electricity...not even any carbon-producing transportation like buses or cars.

During this year, he not only got closer to his daughter because there was no television to distract them (or electricity to do anything with), but also because they only ate "local seasonal natural foods (grub trekked cross-country creates carbon emissions)." They've hooked me, if only to see what sort of locally-grown food one can eat in the dead-winter of Manhattan (wouldn't electrically-powered greenhouses be a no-no too?), and how the hell they stayed warm. Speaking from experience, it's easy to wait a bit longer to turn on your heat in the fall, but at some point, no amount of clothing will stop the shivers.

And besides, doesn't putting out a wide-spread book and film negate all he did for the environment? I hope it'll at least be printed on fully recycled paper...