Green Living for Dummies by Liz Barciay

Inspiration for a sustainable lifestyle is always good if you’d ask me. I read a lot of books and from each book I learn something new. If you have to come up with all the solutions yourself every time you have a sustainability problem, life would be harder than it should be. That’s where books can help. Usually somebody else has thought of that problem already. And that’s why today I want to share with you: Green Living for Dummies by Liz Barciay.

The base of a sustainable lifestyle

This book was the first book I’ve ever read about a sustainable lifestyle. I wanted to start somewhere easy and so I grabbed a ‘for dummies’ book. That moment was about 5 years ago and my life has changed ever since. My sustainability quest has officially started about 7 years ago, when I found Rae Strauss online, but that was all about zero waste. Living Green for Dummies was the first book I read about sustainability in general and so much more started there.

However, I want to say that this book is not a book to start off with if you’re new to a sustainable or eco-positive lifestyle. I have said it before and I am going to keep saying it. This book is the absolute base and should be the first book to read. If you got that base, then it’s possible to look for other areas in your life you want to make more sustainable. This way you work from big to small, you ditch your biggest negative impact first.

Green living for dummies

Green Living for Dummies has a lot of information and practical tips about a sustainable lifestyle. I would say it even has more information than the book I recommended above, but Green Living for Dummies doesn’t give you a way to measure your impact and that’s why it can all seem so random. That’s why I recommend reading a little later. But when you get to it, oh! I love this book. It is so practical and that’s what I like so much about it, besides the fact that it contains a loooot of information on a great number of topics. The book has 6 parts and each part is then divided again into different chapters. Here’s an overview of the 6 parts:

Part 1 – Your environment, your responsibility

This part gives you an overview of the why on sustainability. Why should we change? It also explains the environmental problems we face today very clearly.

Part 2 – Green living

Part 2 tackles things inside the house. It gives you tips on how to make your house itself more sustainable, your behavior inside (like recycling and using less energy) of it and how to be sustainable in the garden.

Part 3 – Green shopping

This third part of the book is about three things you use your money for: food, clothes and banking.

Part 4 – Green thinking outside of the house

Section 4 of Green for Dummies talks about things your can do at work or at school to make sustainability an issue there.

Part 5 – Traveling without harming the earth

Obviously, this part is about traveling. It’s about the traveling itself, but also how you can live green while you’re on holiday.

Part 6 – the part of the dozens

The last part of the book contains 5 chapters which are all sum up 10 things about a specific (and random) topic. 10 green steps you can take today, 10 informative websites, 10 green ideas to try, 10 things to tell your children about sustainability and 10 ways to mobilize others.

‘You can have a wonderful holiday in your own country or somewhere you can go by train’ – Liz Barciay (a random tip from the book)

My overall opinion

Of course I love this book! Otherwise I wouldn’t share it here. I love this book since it taught me how many aspects of a sustainable lifestyle there are, small and big. It holds so much information and it very well organized. If you want to look up something about a specific topic, you can find it easily. I love that it’s a sort of guide, it’s covers so many subjects. The only thing I don’t like is that this book doesn’t point out which steps or choices make the biggest impact. It makes it seem that having your own vegetable garden is just as green as never flying again (for example). This is just not true and therefore I would recommend it as a book to read after The Hidden Impact. So, green living for dummies by Liz Barciay isn’t entirely for dummies, but it still has a lot to offer!

Yours sincerely,
Romee