BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Author Colin Beavan had a message for the students of Illinois Wesleyan University on Wednesday at the President’s Convocation: No one has to make a choice between helping the planet and helping themselves.
“We have this idea in our culture that you can help, or you can take care of yourself. You can be a monk or a merchant, but you can’t be both,” said Beavan, who is famed for chronicling a year he and his family spent trying to live without negatively impacting the environment. Addressing the audience in Westbrook Auditorium, Beavan explained people give themselves the “false choice” of either following their passion to help others, or thinking they need to be “realistic” and care only for themselves. “There is more than this ‘you can do good or you can make money’ concept. The idea that you have to choose between doing for yourself and doing for others comes from a supreme lack of creativity.”
Creativity is something Beavan does not lack. He is known for his adventurous No Impact Project, during which Beavan, his wife and their daughter spent a year trying to produce no trash, going without electricity, riding in no cars or taxis, eating only locally produced food, and avoiding all paper products while living in New York City. He wrote of their efforts in his blog and book No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process (Picador, 2009). “I responded to the world’s problems in a way that aligned with my own passions and talents,” he said.