No Impact Man emphasizes personal integrity, means of protecting the environment

Colin Beavan identifies himself primarily as a father, but he is most well known as No Impact Man, who in 2006 pledged to reduce his impact on the environment.

Despite his knowledge regarding minimizing one's carbon footprint, Beavan's speech at Elon University Thursday addressed how each individual can contribute to the world. The first step is realizing we all have much more in common than we think, according to Beavan, the author of "Saving The World, Being Yourself."

"The few electrical impulses we have in our brain that form our opinions shouldn’t create such a large divide between us,” he said.

Currently, the majority of people are more concerned with shoving the blame elsewhere, rather than realizing we’re all scared of the same stuff and we can work together to fix it, Beavan said.

“We always argue about the big bang or if we were created by a God, but at the heart of it we’re all just failing to realize that we’re deeply insecure about the vastness of the universe,” Beavan said.

The key to beginning the process of working together is to take care of ourselves and realize who we are, he said.

“If we return to ourselves and do the things that we really care about chances are they aren’t going to be environmentally degrading things,” said Beavan, who lived the entirety of 2006 without toilet paper.

Living sustainably is difficult, but it’s also a lot easier than you might think, he said. We are causing more grief by attempting to gain non-sustainable resources than if we were using sustainable ones here.

“Instead of blasting apart mountaintops for coal and poisoning the groundwater all around the mountain, we could be researching and creating windmills and solar power, and creating jobs at the same time," Beavan said.

Freshman Josh Kaufman, who attended the talk for a cultural event credit in his Global Experience class, said it exceeded his expectations.

“I ended up writing more about the things he said about being an individual than what he’s accomplished,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman also said enjoyed the message behind the talk.

“I love how it wasn’t just about being yourself, but being more like yourself, too," he said. "It’s about taking your own values to heart and acting on them.”