The No Impact Experiment

I think one thing I forgot to mention while writing my introductory post is that the more I live in the Triangle the more I seem to become a huge hippie. By this I mean I have started to use a bicycle as transportation, flirted with veganism (I am currently pescatarian), and recently started using mostly natural beauty products and toiletries. So when I heard about the No Impact Week put on by Colin Beavan and the Huffington Post, I decided to sign up and challenge myself to see just how far I was willing to go to be greener. In case you haven't heard of No Impact Man, it is a book and now a movie about one man and his family's year-long quest to live greener in the midst of New York City. I've been following his project for a little while, and feeling inspired by his dedication to his ideals and perseverance. At least, it certainly added to my enviro-guilt when I opted to drive a distance less than 2 miles instead of cycling or taking the bus.

I just took the pre-week survey for the No Impact Project, and since any good experiment starts with a hypothesis, I was prompted to write one. What I came up with was, "This week I will begin to take some steps towards forming daily habits that are better for the environment, my pocketbook, and my personal well-being." I'm hoping that dedicating myself to this completely for one week will make some of the changes stick around for while, or at least change my perspective (i.e. inspire more enviro-guilt).

A brief outline of the things I'll be working on each day of the week:

Sunday: Consumption
Monday: Trash
Tuesday: Transportation
Wednesday: Food
Thursday: Energy
Friday: Water
Saturday: Giving Back
Sunday: Eco-Sabbath

The week begins this Sunday, October 18th, and I'll be blogging about my progress here as my first series of posts on Science with Moxie.

Welcome to Moxie!

Hi Readers (perhaps all 6 of you, but this is the internet, and one may never know for sure),

Welcome to this first entry in this fledgling blog about science, culture, and related topics of interest. My goal for this blog is to have fun talking about science in a way that the everyman can understand, to touch on the ways that science intersects with culture and our everyday lives, and to finally have a little fun throwing around my humble little opinions about the crazy issues that come out of all those intersections. I want to keep this blog interesting and filled with spunk and, yes, MOXIE, so that it feels less like a boring classroom lecture in textual form and more like an adventure with your eccentric babbling nerdy but lovable aunt that was such a blast that you learned something on accident. Since my favorite topics are also politics and music, some stuff related to those topics might pop up in here too. But this ride is just starting up, so we'll see where it takes us.