Today’s New York Times has an article about people who approach sustainable living like an extreme sport.  This is way beyond compact fluorescents.  Are they “dark green” environmental heroes — or “energy anorexics” who are officially obsessed with carbon dieting?  I’d say a little of both.

Some of the ways they live über-green lives…

• Super-minimal driving, including not letting one child join a baseball team because the closest practice is too far from their home
• Unplugging the fridge and using it as an icebox in the summer (cooled with frozen jugs of water) and storing perishables outside in the winter
• Homemade composting toilet
• Scything the lawn instead of using an electric- or gas-powered mower
• Wood stove as heater (for an average indoor temperature in the winter of 52 degrees!)
• Running the car on used cooking oil from a local restaurant
• Occasionally peeing on the lawn to “save a flush”*

One guy, David Chameides (pictured above), is archving a year’s worth of his household waste in his basement and blogging about it.

Colin Beavan known as “No Impact Man,” is on an extended experiment with his wife, toddler and child, in living with no net impact on the planet.  That means no waste, no carbon emissions, no public transportation, nothing, and for the necessary electricity (needed to maintain his blog, presumably), he’s offsetting in a number of ways.

* I’ve come to really dislike flushing the toilet and since I don’t have a backyard (and my neighbors would be rather alarmed to see me poppin’ a squat on the fire escape), I try to flush only every 3 times I use the toilet.  That for Number Two.  For Number One, I splurge and flush away!