Colin Beavan, known as No Impact Man, gives the keynote address at the Sustainable UMD Celebration on Oct. 28 in the Stamp Student Union’s Atrium.

No Impact Man, sometimes known as Colin Beavan, lived in New York City without power, a car or a regular grocery store for a year.

When Beavan gave the keynote address at the SustainableUMD celebration on Wednesday afternoon, he emphasized that sustainability is about improving your life, not just doing without certain amenities. 

“It was about sacrifice,” Beavan said of his experience. “I baked my own bread, I rode my own bicycle and I spent time with my own daughter.”

And these things, he said, brought him closer to what actually makes someone happy — a message that resonated with his audience.

“A lot of people, when you try to teach them about sustainability, they think it’s taking back from their life,” said Devon Howard, a senior environmental science and policy major. “I think that [Beavan] was very human in how he made it seem like everyone is capable of doing something and you don’t have to make a sacrifice.”

At the SustainableUMD event, which took place in Stamp Student Union’s Atrium, members of the College Park community came together for a host of green-related presentations, including the release of B1G Steps, Small Footprints, the sustainability office’s biennial magazine.

The magazine covered last year’s most important sustainability efforts, including Terp Farm, an off-campus farming operation, and Terps Heart the Tap, a university effort to provide more water bottle-filling stations on the campus.

“Since my freshman year, there have been a lot of changes in sustainability on-campus,” Howard said. “People are out tabling and talking about things, and I think it’s going to make a difference.”

The Sierra Club also presented this university its 13th-place rank in the environmental organization’s seventh annual list of America’s greenest universities.

With sustainability as the university’s most popular minor and more than 3,000 bikes registered on the campus, sustainable living and thinking seems to be taking over this university, said Andrew Muir, sustainability office spokesman.

“It seemed to start with a few people who are passionate about it, then it spreads and everyone starts to take part in it ­— like recycling, it’s a huge thing on campus now,” Muir said.

B1G Steps, Small Footprints states that this university has a 78 percent recycling rate, counts 140 participant offices in its Green Office program and has seen an 18 percent reduction in carbon emissions since 2005. 

“The capacity for doing less bad is limited by what we do, but our limit to do more good is limitless,” Beavan said.