Customer Reviews

Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm fairly new to the "green scene" and I've got to say that I really love this book. The fifty tips offered are broken out into 11 different sections: Knowing Your Impact, Driving, Energy, Water, Real Estate, Shopping, Recycling, Family Values, Work, Investing and Giving back to green charities.

The author's tips are really useful and he backs it all up with solid stats (some very surprising ones too that really drive his points home...)

It's an easy read with each chapter summed up into specific actionable steps you can take...which for me is extremely helpful.

But the BEST part about Bach's book is that he shows you how to SAVE and actually EARN money by going green. I found this to be a unique perspective since the common misconception is that going green is expensive.

I highly recommend Go Green, Live Rich!

Having read several of David's other New York Times Best Sellers on finances, saving money and living wisely I expected this book, Go Green, Live Rich to be interesting. Go Green is spectacular- a wealth of information, how to make small changes that will impact the planet and still be easy to do and improve my life. And the added bonus of
Web sites that provide additional information and green products make it easy for me to follow through on the information . The chapters are a quick read with short Go Green Action Steps within as a side bar. I keep putting the book down to think about what David has written. Although I work with charities every year and try to make a difference.- Go Green has opened my eyes- each day we can make changes that are beneficial for our personal health and help the environment. I only wish this was a 10 star system - his book is brilliant!
Imal Wagner

The author presents a grocery list of helpful changes that can save you and the environment. Some are common sense, like favoring high MPG vehicles, while others might not seem like such a great deal until you crunch some numbers and look at statistics. For what it is, the author did a good job but I'm not sure it's worth the normal purchase price. Mostof the information can be found for a little Internet research yourself. Indeed, that's where most of the author's information comes from. Buy it only to save yourself a few Google searches.

The book is really little more than a bullet list of ways to go green - in that respect it is useful for triggering ideas - but it does not really go into depth on anything or tell you how to do things. For this it simply points you to web sites, so it is a bit of a cop-out! Feels lacking in solid research by the author (he probably just "googled" everything in the book), feels like a rush-job. Disappointed to see biofuels recommended. Yes, let's run our cars on food while millions starve. That should work!

In typical David Bach fashion, he has simply restated the obvious, added a snappy title and failed to come up with even one new or original idea of his own. Need an example? How about Tip #3: Increase Your Fuel Economy by downsizing from your SUV or big truck which averages 18 mpg, to a Honda Civic which averages 36 mpg on the highway and 25 mpg in the city. Brilliant and terribly, terribly obvious. I recommend saving your green and your time.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it presents a simple list of green things to do and it probably reaches an audience who would not normally think about doing them. For that, I applaud it. If everyone made small changes, collectively, it would have a significant impact.

On the other hand, I don't really believe that David Bach is really an environmentalist. He claims his epiphany was a sick building he was in. Then he somehow extrapolated that to his gas guzzling SUV and then to children and saving the planet. His co-author however, Hillary Rosner, is the one with the credentials. It seems she probably wrote the whole book and David Bach wrote the intro section.

Having just self-published my own book, I've been learning a lot about the publishing industry and some it is very eye-opening. This book feels very packaged, like Bach's publisher decided they needed to cash in on the green trend so they dug up an environmental writer, and then pasted Bach's name on the book.

Does that mean the tips are not valuable? No, but they are very simplistic. I think most people know now that fluorescent light bulbs use less energy.

It's a pretty book, it's easy to read and it's definitely aimed at people who are new to the environmental movement. I just feel there should be more integrity behind the message. For example, if I wanted advice on how to raise my children, I'd prefer to get it from someone who was passionate about kids even if the person who didn't care about kids also had good information.

Anyone who truly lives a green lifestyle knows that it's not really cheaper to be green. It actually costs more, but you're willing to pay for it because it's the right thing to do.

So, three stars because the book is great for a green newbie. One star if you already know the tip about the light bulbs.

I bought the book hoping to find savings on things that are done daily. You know those daily purchases that little by little drain hundreds of bucks.

Unfortunely I was dissapointed. It does talk about the large issue things like home insulation. Green car purchases etc. If you haven't been able to figure out the large purchases that save you money well this book is for you. But I found that I spend twice as much on the long run in the small purchases that I do little by little, day in and day out and I didnt find much.

The authors books aren't bad but this one I believe was created to join the fad.

David

In the past 50 years we have lived a wasteful lifestyle. We throw lots of stuff into the landfills and use a lot of energy and fossil fuels. There has been a movement in favor of using our resources in a more thrifty manner, with the color green applied to this movement because it is the color of vegetation. We hear of all kinds of ways we can save the environment.

Here is another one, with David Bach's "Go Green, Live Rich". He presents 50 different ways of living life in a more earth-friendly manner. Some examples include "Grow a Greener Lawn", "Switch to Compact Fluorescent Bulb", and "Upgrade to a Hybrid". Further, he provides a way you can calculate your planetary footprint.

The biggest advantage of this book is the large number of references it gives. Everywhere you look there is a URL that you can access to find more about the subject. There is a list of references at the end of the book. Mr. Bach provides references for many of the statistics he provides us, so the book is well documented.

I think the book would be improved if it had a table of contents so you can go quickly to the area you want. Some of the statistics tend to be hyperbolic. For example, Americans use 800 million gallons of gasoline in lawn mowers. Don't use huge illion numbers when a percentage gives a truer picture. In this case, 800 million gallons is around 19 million barrels of oil; since Americans use 8 billion barrels a year, this is 0.23% of the total. Although gasoline-powered mowers do use fossil fuels, they pale in insignificance compared to the usage in automobiles.

Like most green endeavors, this book does not go far enough. In the future we simply will not have all these resources to use. His emphasis is on driving cars, maintaining lawn and so forth with less fossil fuels, even though we may not be able to drive at all when impending oil shortages occur. He talks in terms of pollution and global warming, when the running out of fossil fuels is by far a worse problem. Further, he advocates driving hybrids, using solar panels, and using CFLs without considering the possibilities of shortages of lithium, nickel, tellurium, indium, and other resources this might cause and the possibility of mercury pollution from CFLs. He does mention "Grow your own food", which some peak oil experts say will become necessary in the years ahead. But I think a slant towards living within our resource means and a warning about the impending fuel shortage would improve the book.

This is an elementary book. He does not go into the details of solar panels, for instance, as to whether you have southern exposure, the dimensions required and so forth, for example.

I still think this is a good book to get if you want to get started with living more within our planet's means.

I found most of the tips in the book to be things I have already heard before. "Change your light bulbs", "Bike to work", "Change your thermostat". However, Bach tried to do calculations for every tip to show how it helps you and it helps the environment. I questioned a few of the calculations, but he provides sources and he shows the calculations in the back of the book. As an engineer, I appreciate that. Bach also provides a lot of online resources to find more information or for products to support his tips.

Overall I thought the book was a short read that was full of interesting facts that helped support many of the things we have heard before.

Pros:
* Easy to read, somewhat informal style
* Kindle version available
* Many facts and calculations to back up the tips

Cons:
* I have heard most of the stuff before
* Many of the facts and resources will be out-of-date quickly
* The "Green Investing" chapter did not help me much

Many tips fall under the category of obvious, such as maintaining your home and automobile to save money and resources. This wouldn't be too bad on its own, but many of the extreme green tips are questionable in practicality or point. For example, Bach suggests taking your home off the grid by going completely solar without any mention of what to do at night when the sun doesn't shine. The silliest suggestion is using recycled toilet paper instead of the soft stuff made from "virgin fiber" that comes from "old growth trees, and entire forests of them are clear-cut in order to produce it". This forty year old argument is just plain wrong considering that the forest community plants over 1.5 billion trees a year in the US and forests are growing at rate faster than they are harvested according to [...]. Overall the book is disappointing compared to Bach's previous works. I was really hoping for some innovative, practical, and well researched ideas. It seemed like if an organization said something was green then it made it in the book regardless of what more thorough research might have said.