It's Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living [Paperback]

Crissy Trask (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2006

Surveys find that over 80 percent of Americans agree with the goals of the environmental movement. Sadly, most Americans admit to doing little more than basic recycling when it comes to acting on that disposition. What is the reason for this great divide between environmental sentiment in this country and individual actions? Author and environmental consultant Crissy Trask seeks to answer this question-and solve the disparity-with a new book that makes it easy to be an environmentalist, no matter how busy or hectic your lifestyle. This is a day to day guide with simple, practical suggestions that anyone can put into action, like:
Install rain gutters and rain barrels to collect rainwater from your roof to use in the garden.
Shift appliance use to off-peak hours. Some utility companies offer off-peak rates, so you'll save money!
How to make effective household cleaners instead of relying on toxic commercial products.
Submerge a plastic bottle in your toilet tank to save one quart of water per flush and thousands of gallons a year.
This is what the busy person needs to start making changes today. Get informative, comprehensive and practical information for adopting greener buying habits and identifying earth-friendly products; shopping for green products online; participating in online activism; and learning from tips for cultivating a sustainable environment.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

It's Easy Being Green is a handy tool to help you make better choices for the environment. This is what the busy person needs to start making changes today. Get informative, comprehensive and practical information for adopting greener buying habits and identifying earth-friendly products; shopping for green products online; participating in online activism; and learning from over 250 eco-tips for cultivating a sustainable environment.
Take the difficulty and guesswork out of greener living by learning the following:
Install rain gutters and rain barrels to collect rainwater from your roof to use in the garden.
Shift appliance use to off-peak hours. Some utility companies offer off-peak rates!
Make your own household cleaners instead of relying on toxic commercial products.
Submerge a plastic bottle in your toilet tank to save one quart of water per flush and thousands of gallons a year.
This book concurrently presents a plan, tips and an Internet resources list that you can use to follow-through on good intentions. An extensive product labels list is also provided to help interpret how some foods are produced. If you haven't invested in substantially greener behaviors, consumerism and politics because you didn't know how or thought it was difficult, help is here: It's Easy Being Green is a handbook for all those who aspire do more to protect the environment but want it to be simpler. You can make a difference!

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Many Americans agree with the goals of the environmental movement. Yet, nearly as many Americans admit to doing little more than recycling when it comes to acting on that disposition. Both the number of people expressing support for environmental protection and their acknowledged lack of more meaningful efforts to back it up got me thinking, "Why is their such a great divide between environmental sentiment in this country and individual actions?" Clues to the answer came from my own inadequacies in the area of meaningful environmental stewardship. I was consumed by a career, my sensibilities weren't tuned to recognize opportunities for improvement, and I was unaware of simple, practical suggestions on which I could follow through. If other people were anything like me, a busy lifestyle, some unknowingness as to their role in the problems and solutions of today and a lack of guidance on what to do and how to do it was rendering many other "eco-minded" people predominantly "un-eco."
Everyone is leading busy lives and is therefore, to some extent, wrestling with how to balance better environmental stewardship with modern pressures and reliances. I became convinced that the way to increase the ranks of practicing environmentalists was to take the difficulty and guesswork out of greener living by adjusting expectations, stressing learning as a motivator and enabler, and above all else, providing constructive tips and resources to prepare the eco-inclined for action on terms they could live with. It made sense that if busy people were going to start doing more, they would need a lot more help.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith, Publisher; 1 edition (January 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158685772X
• ISBN-13: 978-1586857721
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #808,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Crissy's journey to becoming a green author and green living specialist started long before green living was as popular and talked-about as it is today. She recalls her early experiences with green living, which included everything from making her own natural cleaning concoctions to riding her bike to work (rain or shine) to eyebrow-raising examples of reuse (that's a whole other story!)--as gratifying, but lonely. Reducing, reusing and recycling back in the 1990s was looked upon as more hippy-dippy-trippy than ecologically imperative. And it was precisely these misconceptions about greener living---as well as complacency about choices and habits that were eroding environmental health---that prompted Crissy to launch GreenMatters.com, a unique website (this was the 90s, remember) that would debunk myths about greener living and would be a resource for busy, modern people looking for information on going green, practical green tips and trustworthy sources for earth-friendly products.

Since starting GreenMatters.com in 1998, Crissy has dedicated herself to helping people learn how to create greener spaces and adopt greener practices. Her first book, It's Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living, was a labor of love that took two years to finish. Taking the title and the "handbook" angle seriously, Crissy created a book that shows how people living busy, complicated lives can do a lot more than just put their blue recycling box out on the curb each week.

Crissy's second book, Go Green, Spend Less, Live Better: The Ultimate Guide to Saving the Planet, Saving Money and Protecting Your Health, details the money-saving side of greener, healthier, simpler living. Crissy wrote this book because, while the message that we need to change the way we live has been out there for some time, voluntary change has increased only slightly since 2000. She knew that encouraging people to engage in more green behaviors would require powerful incentives--like saving money. With this in mind, Go Green, Spend Less, Live Better mobilizes readers to follow through on earth-friendly actions by showing how they can begin reaping economic rewards right away as a result of adopting a greener lifestyle.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Well, the info is good, but widely available without this book November 3, 2006

By Alex Censor

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you need to have almost all the ideas for ways YOU can reduce your ecological damage of your lifestyle all in one easy to read place -- or know someone who you think is open to being greener but unaware of all the big and little changes one can fairly easily make, this might be a book for you.

If you've been paying attention to ecological, green, and sustainability issues for years there's not much point in this book. All the info in it is widely available on the 'net and other sources free.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars For the busy person who wants to go green! August 9, 2006

By Diane Moore VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

What a great little book! It's chock full of information and even created out of recycled paper! As someone who wants to "go green," but doesn't want a lot of long explanations and hard to understand terms, this book was perfect for me!

The author starts out by crushing the "green living myths," which is helpful, because I'm constantly explaining to others that it's not as hard as you think!

There are hundreds of tips with 3 boxes by each one so you can check of what you want to work on, or number your success with it. The tips range from the ones I was already familiar with (such as buying organic, or letting fruit sit in a bowl of cold water rather than letting the water run) to those I wasn't familiar with (take used motor oil to your local service station for recycling. Motor oil never wears out; it can be recycled, re-refined, and used again and again).

The author really did her homework because there are not only many ways to "get involved" in the back of the book, but lots of "green shopping" pages as well!

I hope to find more books like this!

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy and No Preaching! July 26, 2006

By D. Burk

Format:Paperback

Ms. Trask's book was my first book about how to live green. I've wanted to learn more but have always felt overwhelmed by the information in other books.

This book is easy to read and to understand. Ms. Trask does not preach to you and she is not radical. The book is fun to read and has a great section of checklists: she lists pages of green ideas and you can check off what you are interested in working on. I really enjoy this book and plan to buy copies for my friends.