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Canwest News Service
It feels like this fall's crop of environment-themed books have been one depressing read after another. With next month's United Nations conference on climate change rapidly approaching, there has been a steady stream of books about how the planet is changing, what some companies have been doing to confuse people about the scientific consensus on climate change, and how extreme weather events such as hurricanes and food and water shortages are already happening.
So I was happy to take a break from those kinds of books to check out two new ones about the environment, which shed some light on how people can, individually, do something for the planet.
The first, No Impact Man (McClelland and Stewart, $29.99) is the story of how a New York writer and his family tried, for a whole year, to have no impact on the environment.
Back in the winter of 2006, two things made Colin Beavan really think about global warming: a mild spell of weather when people were walking around his Manhattan neighbourhood in shorts and T-shirts, and a relentless wave of news reports about climate change. What better way to write about global warming than to put himself, his wife and their daughter on a carbon diet for a year?
Over a year, Beavan and his wife, Michelle Conlin, stopped using any kind of transportation that required fossil fuels – no taxis or subways. Instead, they travelled around on a three-wheeled rickshaw, or walked. They ate only local foods, carried a Mason jar for drinking water and coffee, and at one point, even stopped using electricity. They gave away their big-screen TV, cancelled Thanksgiving trips to visit their families, and did their laundry in the bathtub. Dinner was locally grown roasted turnips eaten by candlelight, and they walked up and down the nine flights of stairs in their building every day rather than take the elevator.
The idea, Beavan said, was to show people that it's possible to live in a more sustainable way. What they also got was a happier life: They spent more time with each other and friends, met new people, and got involved in their community.
"The story of No Impact Man is the story of a family that decided to try," Beavan said in an interview this month. "I like to think that this book helps confirm for people that they can try."
Beavan has been criticized for pulling a stunt in order to get a book contract, but he said that wasn't the case. The advance for No Impact Man was one-fourth the size of the advance he received for his previous book, he noted. His family's experiment was "extreme," he said, only because our society is set up in a way that makes it extreme to live in a sustainable way.
"You shouldn't have to go to extremes to live sustainably," he said. "Living sustainably should be as easy as falling off a log."
Now, more than two years after the experiment ended, Beavan's family still has no TV or air conditioner, eats locally produced food as much as possible, and gets around most of the time by walking or taking the subway. "We're continuing to do the stuff that makes sense for us."
For people who want to try to live more sustainably in a Canadian context, the Toronto writer Adria Vasil has just published Ecoholic Home (Vintage Canada, $24.95), a new book chock full of practical ideas for living a greener lifestyle. Vasil, who writes a weekly column about the environment for a Toronto newspaper, published her first book, Ecoholic, two years ago, but she felt people wanted much more information about the home.
"We make an enormous (number) of decisions in our homes every day, without even realizing it," she said in an interview. "Our homes are ground zero for some serious green crimes – everything from energy and water-hogging, to chemicals and toxins we bring into our homes."
Her new book includes product reviews for things such as dishwasher detergent and stain removers, and offers advice about everything from renovating your home, to setting up a backyard garden, to tips about using baseboard heaters more effectively.
"I don't want people buying one green product, finding it doesn't work so well, and then never buying green again," she says.
The nice thing about Vasil's books is that she includes Canadian options for all kinds of green products. Taking into account the financial difficulties many people are facing, Vasil also included several recipes for making your own green cleaning products.
The book also includes a chapter about greenwashing – misleading or token initiatives to hide or deflect from a company's environmentally destructive practices. It's for everyone out there who has been burned by a product's label that proclaims "Greener!" "Earth-Friendly!" and "Our Greenest Ever!" when it wasn't really true.
Three years ago an environmental marketing company looked into claims made by more than 1,000 products, and found that 99 per cent were exaggerating their greenness. When Terra Choice repeated the same study this year with 2,000 products, they found that 98 per cent were still not telling the complete truth.
"Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies out there jumping on the green bandwagon, knowing that people are willing to pay a couple of extra dollars to buy a product that is (one hopes), more environmentally friendly," Vasil said. "The (number) of products making green claims has tripled since 2006."
Your best bets are to look for third-party certification by organizations such as the Forest Stewardship Council or Green Seal and read the fine print on a product, Vasil says.
"Flip it over, look for ingredient lists. If they offer up details, then you can decide whether it's a load of hogwash or not. Don't be duped by a pretty green package."
Montreal Gazette
mbeaudin@thegazette.canwest.com
