Customer Reviews

The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

"The Green Book" is not so much a cohesive manuel on how to save the planet as much as a collection of little paragraphs highlighting insignificant things which would have minimal positive impact on the Earth. While there are paragraphs on insulating your home and sustainable forest products most of the book focuses on such things as consuming fewer staples, buying unwrapped candy (wrappers are difficult to recycle) and using non-petroluem based lipstick. (After reading that section I had visions of a woman driving her Denali across town to Whole Foods to buy all new make-up.)
The book is also riddled with factual errors. For example, in the section on phone books the authors stated that "Telephone books make up almost 10 percent of waste at dump sites." A visitor to the dump would be hard pressed to find a single phone book amongst the thousands of tons of asphalt shingles, old carpet, construction debris and other household waste that really fill the nation's dumps.
Although somewhat dated a much better book on this subject is "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists." It details which consumer activities are the most harmful and least harmful and what everyday people can do to lessen their footprint on the environment. While it does not have cute little vignettes by Jennifer Aniston or Justin Timberlake it is written by real scientists who have provide a thought provoking analysis of environmental issues.

This is great execution of a fantastic idea. It's non preachy and illustrates the million little things we can do to be greener without any real inconvenience. While it is a practical / how-to kind of a book, it also supports it's suggestions with statistics that are reminiscent of Freakonomics (or an even better book called Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan). Who would have known that if all vinyl floors were made of linoleum instead, we would have saved 600,000 barrels of oil?

There are 50 pages of web-site references, indexed by product and a well executed index for quick reference. The topics are broken down into bite sized pieces and the book just begs to be picked up again and again.

Even the celebrity comments are interesting and well written. Jennifer Aniston doesn't display an ounce of sanctimony when she points out that all we have to do is think about our consumption, and new, greener habits will develop. "If we all begin to learn from one another and sharesome of the things we do, we might just be able to affect the world for the better though these little rituals. In a curious way, this would be a great wave of awareness; doing the right thing without being told to or without having to think why."

Can't afford a hybrid car? Don't have the funds to convert your house into a fully self-sustainable dwelling? Unfortunately, most of us can't help the environment as well as Bill Gates or Al Gore can. However, this book gives us the good news that we can all do our parts every day much more efficiently in little ways. Celebrities impart advice and tips are given to help you and me to make our lives a little greener. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to help save the world on a low budget!

- Jeff
Gimundo
Good News...Served Daily

I've read all the green guides out there (some, very good) but this is the first book to really change my habits...truly helping me make small changes that I know will have a big impact. By offering so many simple solutions that are so so easy to put into action, my family and I have made a shift in our lifestyle and have become evangelists for green living. Thanks to this book, I will NEVER take another ATM receipt, never eat from my own bag of popcorn and I will ALWAYS bring my cloth bags to the market. I may not be ready to compost...but there are so many other changes I will continue to make in my life -- and will encourage my 3 kids to do also -- that I know will make the planet a better place to live. Buy this book for yourself and for everyone you know.

The power of The Green Book lies in its strict adherence to its vision: to make a practical, accessible guide for the average consumer to live a little more greenly, one day at a time. The Green Book is not revolutionary in the scientific concepts or practical advice presented. The strength is that all these tips are collected together in a small book, with the rationale behind each idea. Yes, you could probably dig up all this information elsewhere on the Internet, but who would want to?

I just read an energy saving "tip" on my electric company's website saying that a mom fed her kids off paper plates for the whole summer to save energy running the dishwasher. So she saved water and electricity at the cost of trees, landfill space, and manufacturing waste? When that's the quality of information you can find for free on the Internet, I'll pay $10 for a well-written, well-researched, and heavily endorsed green guide.

This is the guide for everyone who liked the concept of the July 2007 Live Earth concerts and wants to start taking one step at a time to live a greener life. If you can't afford a Prius or retrofit your home with solar panels, look no further. You still can make a dent in your energy footprint, and without becoming obsessive about the topic. The Green Guide will make you cognizant of what your shower, air conditioning, computer use, and buying habits do to the environment and the power of small changes if enough people adopt them.

The book is structured into chapters on the functional areas where you can apply tips: at home, work, school, while traveling, while shopping, and so on. The tips apply not just to saving Mother Earth, but to keeping our own bodies healthy (bicycling outside when you have the least exposure to smog, not using plastic containers to avoid chemical leaching). The Green Book made me think in new ways about environmental consciousness. Buying local made toys saves petroleum that would have been used to ship them across the Pacific from Asian countries. If you are going to buy a non-replantable Christmas tree, go for a live one instead of an artificial ones, because the artificial ones have a short 6 year-life span and end up in landfills with their PVC and lead waste. Paper or plastic? Go for paper, because they baggers will fill more groceries per bag, and paper has a better chance of being recycled.

The Green Book is complete with an exhaustive guide to online references for more information.

I'm not sure about this book. It contains and explains a nice collection of easy to implement 'green' actions, but I don't think any of it will stick. It doesn't really make you think about the whole process of production and consumption and therefore only hands some tips for people that want an easy way out of their wasting consumption pattern.
I think awareness about the intricacies behind consumption en production will leave you with a more motivated state of mind about changing your habits. If you think you agree I recommend the WorldChanging book.
But nevertheless, any book that hands tips for a greener future is a beneficial waste of trees ;)
Or subscribe to DailyBite and get daily tips in your email for free and paperless.

I agree 100% with all the 1-2 star reviews. This book is bogus. There is more
clear, practical advice in these reviews than contained in this book.

One of my complaints about this book that wasn't covered yet is the erroneous
and misleading attempts to use crude oil to help the reader visualize the impact
of his or her efforts.

For example, the authors suggest that you purchase retreaded tires for your
car. They claim that if the demand for retreads increased by 10%, "the total oil
savings per year would be about 290 million gallons." The authors take a lot of
liberties with using oil as an analogy to represent energy consumption. In
this case though, they seem clear that its the conservation of "1/3 the petroleum
resources" that the retreads yield over new tires which they are contributing to
the 290 mil. gal.

I don't disagree with these statements. It very well may be the case that it
takes 290 million gallons of oil to produce enough petrochemicals to manufacture
that synthetic rubber. What the reader should really understand is that along
with some new tires , those barrels of oil also would have produced:

149 million gal. of gas
44 million gal. of diesel fuel
35 million gal. of jet fuel

...as well as 55 million gallons of dozens of other products like, candle wax,
lubricating oils, propane, kerosene, asphalt, etc. In fact, only about 4
million gallons, by volume, of that 290 million gal. of oil directly contributed
to the raw material of the tires.

If we depended on oil simply for the rubber, it would be trivial
to find ways to use less rubber. We use the rubber because its
basically a free byproduct of our unquenchable thirst for the gas, diesel, and
jet fuels.

Oil is first and foremost a fuel source. The rubber and plastic that this book
advises you to conserve should really be measured only on the real benefits of
conservation, which are the reduction of landfilled waste and litter.

The authors recommend that you not buy books, or borrow books from the library.
I think you should take their advice for this one.

I just started reading the Green Book and I have already found many ideas I can implement now. Composting, sorting, closing the fireplace damper..wow. I am a big advocate of reduce, recyle and reuse. This book give you easy ideas to help our planet and save you money. I recommend to everyone.

This book has found a way to teach us valuable lessons about our responsibilities towards the environment (and each other), while at the same time providing humor and wit. The writing and editing are excellent.
I highly recommend it!

This book is decent in the following ways:
--It's mostly a tip book; there are some irrelevant "essays" or blurbs provided by some of today's popular celebrities (like Tyra Banks, Ellen Degeneres) but fortunately, you can skip them

--For the most part, it's an optimistic book. It just offers ideas that make you more aware of the way you're living and ways you can change it. It means well enough

--The Book is printed with 100% postconsumer recycled paper/fiber

BUT

This book is horrible in the following ways:

--In terms of Eco-Living Guides, this book is hands down awful! It's insulting to a reader who really wants to change their way of living (they want you to put down $13 to tell you that when you aren't in the room to shut off your lights to save energy.... Really?!).

--The book is 200 pages but more than a quarter of it is simply references for info like that above... honestly

--This book could've been written in 3 words: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Instead this book beat those three magic words to death by nit picking every aspect of your life (ex. instead of just saying "buy recycled school supplies," each supply has its own tip, "buy recycled paper" "buy recycled binders")

--The tips are regurgitated throughout, for instance the same tip to "reuse your paper clips" is found in the sections for both the office
and school

--While it means well with its tips, it could have been much more helpful. For instance, if they recommend us to buy recycled office supplies, it would've been nice to provide the reader for some places or websited to actually BUY recycled office supplies. Instead, they stayed generic and offer the reader nothing

--Plus, it's so bad that it has to get some celebrity opinions so it could desperately draw an audience.

So overall, this book is terrible. This book was written for people who want in on the "Green" trend and get that warm fuzzy feeling without it really changing their current lifestyle. I would not recommend this book to someone who really wants to make a difference in their life and take the "Green" trend seriously.