By Sophy

I gave up buying ‘stuff’ for a year in 2008 to reduce my own impact on the planet so when I first heard about the film of Colin Beavan’s year of no impact – in Manhattan – I couldn’t wait to see it.

My own project was an attempt to reduce my carbon footprint by giving up buying unnecessary material goods – anything that wasn’t food, a basic necessity like toothpaste and soap, didn’t grow or couldn’t be composted. But Colin Beavan is hardcore: he, his wife (a “retail worshipping” Businessweek journalist) and their two-year-old daughter forswear everything including coffee, the TV and - the big headline grabber – toilet paper, in an effort to reduce their carbon impact to zero.

Like Colin, I thought my own no-shopping experiment would help engage others with issues about consumption; and it was certainly a talking point among my friends and family for the year it lasted. Colin’s radical approach gets him a huge amount of media attention worldwide – one funny scene has him waving the contents of his wormery in front of his webcam, with a journalist from a French glossy magazine expressing her revulsion at the other end of the connection.

Six months into the experiment, Colin and his family switch off their electricity supply and start living by candlelight. When an experiment with a home-made fridge constructed from a couple of plant pots and some sand fails (they should have turned it upside-down!), they have to resort to blagging ice from a neighbour to keep the milk fresh – not the most sustainable of solutions.

Later he rigs up a solar panel on the roof which generates just enough electricity to power his laptop. Meanwhile, his wife must continue to read their daughter bedtime stories by candlelight (I would have slapped him). What a shame there doesn’t seem to be an electricity company like Good Energy supplying Manhattan, or they could have had plenty of zero-carbon electricity to live by without compromising any of their no impact aspirations.

The huge amount of publicity surrounding No Impact Man led to criticism that the project was more about self-promotion (there’s a blog, and a book as well as a film deal) than his ideals – but in my mind there’s no question that Colin believes passionately in what he’s doing.  At one point he talks about the importance of individuals taking action rather than hanging around waiting for the government to do something. That resonated with me – empowering individuals to take positive action is also a cornerstone of Good Energy’s mission.

Others have suggested he’s a naïve, idealistic eco-nutter – but the film makes clear that Colin recognises the project for the social experiment that it is, as opposed to espousing it as a way we should all live. Unsurprisingly, the lasting lifestyle changes the family make are simple things like eating locally and seasonally (lucky for the Beavans that the Union Square farmers’ market is just around the corner), cycling and getting more involved with their local community. Small but significant things that cumulatively can make a big difference to us all.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.noimpactdoc.com/index_m.php

Got some questions for No Impact Man? Head toThe Guardian's Green Living Blog.