Happy 2010! We (Amy and Radica) hope you had a safe, local and sustainable holiday season.

As many people do, you’ve probably set yourself a number of New Year’s resolutions. Now is the time to stop thinking about them and get started!

Here is our pledge to follow through on our New Year’s resolution to live local…

Inspired by Vaike Neeme’s November experiment, we have dared each other to re-create the ‘No Impact’ week challenge. We will be starting on January 10, together with people from around the world.

Over the week we will attempt, day-by-day, to reduce our environmental impact, while connecting more with our local community.

Each day we will add a new focus to our commitment to live no impact:
-    Day 1: consumption;
-    Day 2: trash; 
-    Day 3: transportation;
-    Day 4: food;
-    Day 5: energy;
-    Day 6: water; and
-    Day 7: giving back.

We challenge you to join us!

Sign up and get details at the official ‘No Impact Project’ site, as well as from Vaike’s experiment page ‘No Impact’ week.

Once you’ve signed up, contact us via the live local website and we’ll support you throughout the challenge.

If you miss the January 10 sign up date, don’t despair, you can still fulfil that resolution by committing to the live local challenge to live local for one week. You can start this experiment any time.

Your challenge is to live local for seven days and to document and share your efforts.

What is living local?

To live local is to make the most of your community:

• meeting your neighbours and the people who work in your community
• eating delicious food grown as close to where you live as possible
• minimising use of fossil fuels, especially for transport

Rules

1. Send an email to info AT livelocal DOT org DOT au and tell us when you're starting or post a comment here. (You don't have to do this, but we'll offer you love and support if you do.)
2. You can't be disqualified or fail. You are merely trying, and thinking about how hard and/or easy it is to live locally.
3. If you HAVE to drive a car somewhere, we're more interested in you discussing the factors that led to that. If you've got to fly to Melbourne, what reasons made this necessary? And when you do manage to avoid driving or flying, what compromises did you make?
4. Document! We want people to share in and get inspired by your experience and your victories and trials and tribulations. Blog, Twitter, call your friends, talk about it during meals.
5. Or, why not add an experiment to tell the stories about some or all of your adventures?

Check out previous experiments for details and inspiration:

• Piers Dawson-Damer’s “taking the live local challenge”
• Dave Gravina’s “take the live local challenge”

Follow our progress

We will be posting our experience of ‘No Impact’ week on the live local site and will be tweeting on Twitter via @Aklud and @radzster.

Posting to the live local site

We would love you to publish your re-creation of the ‘No Impact’ week experiment or the live local challenge to the live local website. Here's how:

1. login or create a live local account
2. click on one of the above links
3. click the “Do this experiment” button in the right hand column to start documenting your re-creation

We look forward to sharing the ‘No Impact’ week and the live local challenge with you.

Good luck!