The Green Book - author interview

Well, for those of you just dying to read more about The Green Book, I submitted some interview questions to the authors and the following is their responses. If you want to find out more, check out my review of the book.

Enjoy!

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1. What was your biggest influence (people or otherwise) that made you an environmentalist - that inspired you to write this book?

First can I just say what a genius name Crunchy Chicken is, I love it!!

It’s funny I forget that I am a environmentalist. I think of myself first as a mother and then as someone who has so many questions that I want answered and that was my main inspiration for writing this book to answer all of my own questions.

2. You've added quite a few statistics regarding what kind of impact each suggested tip has to help people really see why it matters to do them. How difficult was it to compile the statistics for each entry?

This book was incredibly labor intensive. It took three people almost a year to complete all of the research and then we had a team of people triple check all of the work.

3. What was the most surprising thing you learned when doing your research? Was there anything you thought wouldn't matter as much, but really made a difference and vice-versa?

One thing I had never thought about before was rubber bands. They are synthetic and a a large amount of them are made from crude oil. When these are incinerated at the dump, they can cause health risks.

4. As an environmentalist, were you concerned that, by focusing on allowing people to still be "selfish", it gives them the impression that they are off the hook? That by encouraging low hanging fruit, people will feel placated and won't try to do as much as is needed to really lower their footprint?

This book is meant to be a starting point for everyone. It is welcoming and user-friendly and will hopefully draw people deeper into the green movement in their personal lives.

It shows that little things really do add up to big make a impact.

5. Which of the celebrity writings do you like the best - that really gets your message across?

I think that all of the celebrity anecdotes have something different and unique to offer to the reader and to the book, that is why those artists were chosen to be in the book. They each have such different perspectives and voices. Each piece is funny and thoughtful and worth a careful read!!

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And there you have it!

Have a great weekend! I'll be gearing up for Local Food Month which starts on Sunday. So, there's a cherry pie, homemade tofu and okara veggie burgers in my near future!

See you tomorrow for a silly post...

The Green Book review - Crunchy Chicken style

Do you have a friend or loved one who is a budding Crunchy Chicken, but doesn't know where to start? Are you afraid of scaring them off with your eco-tales of composting toilets, cloth TP and the DivaCup?

Well, don't squelch their burgeoning interests. There's a new book out (released 6/19), called The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time that will help the green-curious get started. It's chock full of easy to manage things they can do to live a greener life, broken down into chapters such as home, work, school, travel and more. Each chapter includes a section titled "The Simple Steps" that highlight those actions that have the biggest bang for the least amount of effort. Interspersed throughout the book are celebrity's writings revealing the things they are doing to live green.

Now, given all that, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to a serious treehugger as they will have heard most of the suggestions already and will be left wanting more. Many of the tips don't go far enough and I found myself wondering why they didn't include this or that. It does have a laundry list of Internet links for each section to pursue more information, but who's going to type in 50 reference pages worth of URLs? I would like the see these links available on the authors' website for easier navigation.

As for the celebrity's personal "going green" stories, some are well worth reading (like Will Ferrell's take on his EV and Owen Wilson's musings on how he's turning into Ed Begley, Jr.), but others prompt an eye roll or two. I'm still trying to figure out how Jennifer Aniston manages to take a shower in three minutes and brush her teeth at the same time. Something's not getting done there. I know celebrities have a lot of power, but I didn't know they had control over the physical universe and could compress time. Maybe a shower saver should be in her next swag bag.

But I digress... Each tip includes statistics relating to how doing the suggested action would affect consumption. For example, "if every traveler in the United States stopped using paper luggage tags for each of their trips, sixty million sheets of paper could be saved per year." While these stats help demonstrate why doing that action will help, I found them to be distracting after a while. And I wished they had spent the space instead with suggestions of how to do more.

All in all I think this is a great introduction to living a greener lifestyle. The celebrity writings will appeal to many and adds an element of hipness to the book.

Interview alert!
This book was featured on the April 20th episode of Oprah and was written by Elizabeth Rogers (co-producer of MTV's Trippin') and Thomas M. Kostigen with a foreward by Cameron Diaz.

I will be interviewing the authors of this book at the end of the month and will be incorporating some of the questions you submit. So, if you are interested in asking the authors a question, please post them here by June 24th!

If you want more information, check out their website.

Celebrities and the environment

A few weeks ago I ran a poll asking who your favorite celebrity environmentalist is. So far, about 80 readers have voted; with Ed Begley, Jr. in the lead, closely followed by Robert Redford.

Today's poll takes a look at the connection between celebrities and the environment from a different slant. Does what a celebrity says about what they are doing to help the environment change your thinking? Do you even care? Or does it depend on who is saying it?

I was recently asked to review a book that will be published this Tuesday. It is called the green book and it is comprised of a listing of things you can do to lower your impact on the environment, interspersed with celebrity's writings on how they are living greener lives.

I'll be posting my review of the book this week and interviewing the authors at the end of June. I'll be collaborating with my readers for interview questions (if you guys have any), so stay tuned for more information!

In the meantime, don't forget to take this poll: