Customer Reviews

Green Living For Dummies (For Dummies (Home & Garden))

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This book covers a vast amount of information in the typical Dummy fashion. If you know nothing about living a green lifestyle, Green Living for Dummies will teach you the basics and lots more. Because of the breadth of this book, virtually everyone will learn from it.

The book begins like most green living books do, with an overview of the importance of being green for our deeply troubled Earth.

However, unlike most eco-friendly books I've read, this one covers the gamut:

Green at Home: includes a section on detecting and banishing health hazards like asbestos and lead.Basics on green remodeling and building and on green cleaning.

Chapter on garbage. This was great, as part of the problem is the proper disposal of unwanted stuff. Includes how and what to recycle, including what to do with the problematic computers and cell phones.

Chapter on growing your own food.

The chapter on how to purchase the best green and ethical food was excellent.

Subsequent chapters included green clothing, ethical investments, donations and banking.

Transportation, green travel...

Even working in a green environment was covered.

Like I said, a green soup to nuts books. Lots of good, current information. Highly recommended.

Author of award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet

This book gives so much information on tips for living greener. From saving on your utility bills, using the latest CFL bulbs, sustaining a small green garden, to shopping greener, just about anything you can think of this book gets into. The main savings, money wise and green wise are simple, for the most part no cost things all of us can do to make our planet cleaner, and greener. If you want to help your children live a greener lifestyle, it goes into a chapter about raising "greener" children, and teaching them how to conserve energy, help in the gardens, help with recycling, and much more. It also has a chapter about "greening your finances, from how to decide on a "greener checking account", doing bill pay online, rather than have paper statements and bills, to conserving water, electricity, and gas. Most as I said are things you can start immediately, without any cost to do them. I highly recommend this book for an individual or family that want to learn ways they can conserve, recycle, reuse, saving our planet, reducing greenhouse gases, and save money doing it all.

A must for parents and grandparents , who want to leave a clean living place for their children and grandbabys . I try to live green , but even I, have learned much more I can do to help planet earth,. Written in an easy to read format ,;; reccomended. From growing your own vegetables ,to renewable energy sources.

Some 'For dummies' books can be very hit and miss, but this one is an excellent introduction to Green Living and ecology in everyday life. It looks at a whole host of topics such as, your place in the environment and getting started, how to make changes around the home, how to be a green consumer, going green at school and at work and green travel. It looks at all the facets of these various topics (and more) in great depth and in the 'dummies' usual format. Some idea are common sense and others need a change in lifestyle and general habits, but they are all clear and explained thoroughly. Not all of these ideas will be applicable to you, or will be easy to implement, but as a general guide to this very current topic, you can do a lot worse. This is a good overview, with some good ideas and written in a very accessible way. Worth a look.

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Great ideas for how to live a green life by improving aspects of your home

The ridiculousness of this book can be seen by a few quotes from chapter 7: Getting Green in the Yard.
"... in addition to chemicals for killing weed and pests, you're likely to find gas-powered lawn mowers and electric tools. Gasp!"
How do you remedy this deplorable situation?
"Replace This... [an] electric drill, With This... [a] Drill with rechargeable batteries"
What, pray tell, do you use to recharge the batteries?!
"Replace This... [an] electric or gas chainsaw With This... Manual pocket chainsaw"
Are you serious?! This is a backing tool for cutting up branches for firewood. If you had to do some yard clean-up, a hand saw, for the most part would be more practical. For anything mildly heavy duty, this would not replace a chainsaw by any means.
"...sell or give away the electrical and gas-powered tools so that they're reused."
Shouldn't you throw them away so they don't continue to pollute? Or does that just produce more garbage? Well, then why not just keep using your filthy power mower until it gives up the ghost?
Just a further comment on recharging batteries with solar panels: The only reason this may be remotely affordable for the average household is because the production of these units is heavily subsidized by the government (which means, of course, our tax dollars). It is very similar to the bio fuel situation where it is absolutely unsustainable without huge tax breaks and government cash. This is simply the way things are folks! I could say more, but if you're really curious about this book, check it out of the library. Spend your money on authors more deserving of your hard-earned cash.

Some of the advice was simply absurd and without logic. Wanted a practical resource, but this wasn't it. This is the first Dummies book that I've ever been disappointed in. There needs to be a practical green living book, for real people.