We are always looking for ways to lighten our load on the planet – from ditching single-use plastic, to choosing beauty products with sustainable packaging, to opting out of “disposable fashion” – when consuming, we always have the opportunity to choose for the planet and not just for ourselves. But we know all the messages about saving the planet can be a minefield to navigate, which is why we’ve chosen 3 of our top books about saving the planet to help you on your own journey. Read on to find out which one (or more) piques your planet-friendly interest.
Books About Saving the Planet
Zero Waste Home
Bea Johnson transformed her family’s health, finances and relationships for the better by reducing their waste to an astonishing half litre per year. It’s all down to the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot (and only in that order!). Zero Waste Home shows how these key principles can be applied to every area of your house, from the kitchen to the kids’ room, and it’s packed with easy tips for all of us: from buying in bulk and clever meal planning, to simply refusing unwanted freebies and using your plants as air fresheners.
Bea Johnson shows, by inspiring example, what green living looks like and offers a practical, step-by-step guide to diminishing your environmental footprint and improving your life.
The Uninhabitable Earth
Without a revolution in how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth could become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century. In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await—food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.
The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on what we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action.
Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things
‘Reduce, reuse, and recycle’ urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimise damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, this approach only perpetuates the one-way, ‘cradle to grave’ manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place. Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things?
Drawing on their experience in redesigning everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved in making anything can begin to do so as well.
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