Taking care of the earth is more important than ever, but the problems we're facing can seem overwhelming. Living Green: The Missing Manual helps make earth-friendly decisions more manageable by narrowing them down to a few simple choices. This all-in-one resource is packed with practical advice on ways you can help the environment by making simple changes in your home routine, work habits, and the way you shop and get around town. You don't have to embark on a radical new lifestyle to make a difference. Living Green: The Missing Manual shows you how small changes can have a big impact. With this book, you will:

• Learn how to make your home energy efficient and free of toxic chemicals

• Discover how to reduce waste, repurpose and recycle, and do more with less

• Build and remodel earth-friendly homes with new techniques and materials

• Learn tips for buying organic food and what it takes to grow your own

• Get helpful information on fuel-efficient cars, including hybrid and electric models

• Make your workplace greener and more cost-effective -- from changes at your desk to suggestions for company-wide policies

• Explore how to choose renewable energies, such as wind and solar power

The book also provides you with ways to connect with like-minded people and offers a survey of exciting new green technologies. Learn how you can help the planet with Living Green: The Missing Manual.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

A powerful survey - 2010-01-17
Reviewer Rating:
Living Green: The Missing Manual packs in everything a consumer needs to know about building up a 'green' lifestyle, from conducting a home energy audit and replacing harmful cleaning chemicals with natural alternatives to eating greener, shopping better, and connecting with others. A powerful survey, this offers plenty of information for newcomers to green living and is a pick for any general lending library.

Simple Steps Everyone Can Take to Help Save the Planet - 2009-09-29
Reviewer Rating:


This book is part of the Missing Manual Series. "Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computer products that don't come with printed manuals." The books offer a way for the readers to help update the series by going to their website. The site "invite and encourage you to submit such corrections and updates yourself. In an effort to keep this book as up to date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies of it, we'll make any confirmed corrections you've suggested."
The book also mentions "Safari Books Online," which means the book is available online. "Safari offers a solution that's better than e-books. It's a virtual library that lets you easily search thousand of top tech books, cut and paste code samples, download chapters, and find quick answers when you need the most accurate, current information." This reviewer mentions all these minor plugs for the products because making books, magazines and newspapers digital e-book or available on-line releases will save millions of trees.
Most of this book consists of simple things each person can do to cut down on pollution and save energy as well as money. Part I is entitled, "Living Green Begins at Home." Part 2 is entitled "Greening Your Lifestyle." Part 3 is titled "A Greener World."
Each of these chapters and their subchapters consists of dozens and dozens of tips on what anyone who really wants to help the environment can do in his or her every day life.
While lists of "do's and don'ts" doesn't sound like very exciting reading, it is absolutely great for passing odd moments when the reader has a little time to kill. I sometimes refer to it as bathroom reading. And everyone will learn how some minor changes in their own lifestyles can save energy and the environment as well as saving money. That last factor is a very important motivator for following some of the suggestions.
How did this reader shape up as far as being a Greenie? Better than I expected before starting the book. In many cases I was simply following some of my parents teachings about saving money and that also greatly helps save the environment. My parents, who grew up in the Great Depression, never left a light burning in an unused room. It used to annoy me that my father even turned off all the hall lights at night. I eventually convinced him to add a night-light to those hallways without windows, but it wasn't easy to get him to break the no light phobia.
In our family we have five adults, but not a single car. That's probably our biggest contribution to saving the environment. We walk, bicycle, take the bus or subway or if need be a taxi or rent a "Zip Car" by the hour. We live in the city and are able to get to work, school or anywhere without enjoying the hassle of car ownership. It saves us a small fortune because with the "Zip Car" rentals the modest hourly rate includes car insurance, gas and parking. Living in the city and not having to buy auto insurance is a serious saving. We use monthly bus and subway passes.
We do turn out the lights when we leave a room. We use screw-in fluorescent light bulbs; we turn off our computers and other optional electrical appliances when we aren't using them. We recycle, we don't leave the water faucets running when brushing our teeth, and we don't do half loads of laundry or dishes. We all take short showers rather than baths, we fix leaky faucets or running toilets. We do many things that save money and that also helps save the planet. However, the lists in this book include many suggestions that most of us have never considered. Flying first class uses more airline fuel because of the extra weight. That would never have occurred to this reviewer. We also travel with only a single bag because again it uses more fuel to move more weight. When we are driving a rental car we don't accelerate rapidly because it uses a lot more fuel. We drive slower because that also saves gas. One of the surprises to this reader was that having the car windows open when driving on the highway causes drag and it's better to use the air-conditioning and keep the window closed. Not so in the city.
This reader didn't agree with some of the ideas listed in this book, but that didn't mean the book was very, very helpful. What is important is for people to take some of the simple ideas and apply them to their everyday activities. The book does discuss some of the changes in technology that are coming, but aren't yet practical. The Solar Hot Water Cells we put on our home in California costs thousands of dollars saved very little on our gas bill and immediately after we sold the house and moved the new owners junked our expensive energy saving solar panels. They complained that they didn't really work well. Improvements in technology will eventually make some of these so-called Green Energy Sources much more practical and affordable. In the meantime things like living in smaller, more energy efficient homes, living closer to work, school and friends as well as having only one car per family can make a huge difference in energy savings as well as expenses. Turning down the temperature a couple of degrees has the same effect. The money savings the reader will glean from reading and applying only a small portion of this book will more than pay for the cost of the book and the time spent reading it. "It's the little things that count" to quote the old time-tested clichGÇÜ.

Lots of great information on living green - 2009-09-13
Reviewer Rating:
This book can be preachy and a bit breathless in some of its content, but it's really a fascinating and educational read.

Conner works hard to cover a lot of topics and gives you material on everything from the chemicals you may not know about in your home to alternate and renewable energy sources. Along the way she also covers raising a green family (I raised two kids via cloth diapers and was happy to see them covered), building/remodeling, eating green, responsible shopping, and a number of other topics.

A number of topics were thrown out without enough evidence of whether or not there's really a basis for concern (the impact of volatile organic compounds offgassing from foam in furniture or dryboard markers, for example), but generally Connor does a very nice job of giving you a good background on the topics she's writing about. There are also a lot of resources referenced in the book so you're able to go look at more material from one side of the story, at least.

While there's a chapter dedicated to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," Brown seems to carry that theme through the book. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I found it very helpful to consistently find small reminders of those principles in many of the book's topics. I'm a proponent of reducing the number of things around me and trying to reuse as much as possible - but I'm nowhere near as good at it as I'd like to be.

Overall I enjoyed the book and found it very useful.

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