No Impact Man

Is it possible to exist comfortably in an urban setting like Manhattan without making an impact on the environment? For a new book, Colin Beavan dragged his reluctant, TV-loving, fashion-fixated partner Michelle and their baby daughter into an experiment to see whether they could survive a year without mod cons: no electricity, plastic packaging, elevators or public transport and they could only use eco-friendly cleaning products and consume local produce. You could argue that having cameras around gave the couple more impetus to continue, especially when the chips were down. You could also argue that Beavan was simply attracting publicity for his book. Yet there’s something engagingly honest about the modern day ‘Good Life’ couple’s efforts to adapt that makes this fly-on-the-wall documentary both entertaining and faintly inspirational.