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Sherborn Recycling Recommends These Green Reads!
If you've read a great green read and want to submit a review or recommend the book, send an email to Carol.Rubenstein@verizon.net or d.veitch@comcast.net.
Bill
McKibben’s The End of Nature is about the human impact on
the environment. Even though this book was written ten years ago, there is
a new introduction by the author which reviews
some of the latest environmental issues that have
risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of
facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement.
McKibben writes of our earth's
environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect,
acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
calls this book "an eye-opening plea...that may convert or infuriate you...but
the world will never again look the same to you after you have read it."
Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
is Susan Strasser's easy
to read, in depth exploration of how we’ve become the wasteful creatures that we
are – in such a short time. Though her history goes back to colonial times,
much of the focus is on the 19th century when most waste products were used to
make other products. It wasn't called recycling, but nonetheless that was
the concept. With industrialization, movement to the city, and
development of public trash collection trash evolved into a big problem
With an easier way to dispose of trash, manufacturers began creating products
for disposal and replacement. Noting that Susan Strasser asserts that
"Nothing is inherently trash," Publishers Weekly, calls this book,
a " vibrant social history of American attitudes
toward superfluous or unusable material items".
Garbage
Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash is journalist Elizabeth Royte's
venture into the sordid afterlife of trash. While most of us may prefer
not knowing, Royte dives headlong into garbage and enlightens us with her
findings on the final resting places of yogurt cups, pc's and cookie wrappers.
There are also some fascinating discoveries. For example, anthropology
students discovered that forty year old hot dogs still look like the hot dogs
you can buy on the sidewalk in Time Square. Who would have guessed!
Readers have called this book "entertaining and interesting", but it's not for
those who easily get queasy.
Mary Appelhof has created the definitive guide to
vermicomposting with Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and
Maintain a Worm Composting System. Vermicomposting is a
process using redworms to recycle food waste into nutrient-rich food for plants.
This book provides complete illustrated instructions on setting up and
maintaining small-scale worm composting systems. Topics include different bins,
what kind of worms to use, sex life of a worm, preparing worm beddings, how to
meet the needs of the worms, what kinds of foods to feed the worms, harvesting
worms, and making potting soil from the vermicompost produced. This is a
great book for parents who want to teach their children about composting.
What fun!
In
Stirring it up - How to Make Money and Save the World Gary
Hirshberg, the co-founder and CEO of Stonyfield Farms asserts that economic
self-interest is the most powerful if not the only force capable of bringing
about the changes needed to ensure the well being of the planet. Sounds
unlikely? Maybe not. Hirshberg focuses on how Stonyfield succeeds in pursuing
sustainability and profitability—not to mention valuable shelf space alongside
giants like Kraft and Yoplait. He not only describes how his company addresses
such tasks as negating its own carbon footprint or establishes rapport with the
consumer in lieu of advertising, Hirshberg shares stories of similar successes
at other companies, including Whole Foods, Timberland, Patagonia and
Zipcar. Hirshberg has produced a user's manual for managers at any size
company with a sincere interest in learning how to save the world while
enriching employees and shareholders. He tells how Wal-Mart is making
"environmentally friendly" changes to its operations because those changes are
good business. Great news for Walmart and for any business seeking to make
greater profits with a smaller carbon footprint.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan is one of
the country's pre-eminent experts on global warming. In The Heat
is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover Up, The Prescription,
Gelbspan details how the coal and oil industries are trying to (and also
succeeding at) confusing the issue of global warming. He exposes the
workings of oil and coal companies and conservative politicians to undermine the
public's confidence in the scientific community and, consequently, defer actions
against global warming. The Boston Globe, for which Gelbspan once
wrote, called this book "an urgent, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face expose."
In The New York Times Book Review analysis, editors said, "No other
reporter has told this story as comprehensively or explored its implications for
human welfare as searchingly as Gelbspan. With a muckraking passion seen
all too rarely these days, Gelbspan...ably dissects the flimsy sophistry of
greenhouse skeptics". Gelbspan's latest book is
Boiling Point - How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists
Have Fueled a Climate Crisis - And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster.
Pulitzer prize winner E.O. Wilson has been likened to a modern-day Thoreau.
Like Thoreau's Walden, The Creation, walks the
reader through the wonders of the natural world and helps us to see why those
wonders oblige us to care, and to also notice the parallels between wild
nature and the best of human nature. This book's framework is in the form of
letters to a Southern Baptist preacher. Wilson, the Harvard
entomologist, pleads for the salvation of biodiversity, arguing that both
secular humanists like himself and believers in God acknowledge the glory of
nature and can work together to save it. The 'depth and complexity of living
Nature still exceeds human imagination,' he asserts. Between 1.5 million and 1.8
million species of plants, animals and microorganisms have been discovered thus
far, but most of the world around us still remains unknowable, as does God, he
says. Each species is a self-contained universe, and human life is tangled
inextricably in this intricate and fragile constellation of universes. Wilson
convincingly demonstrates that such rich diversity offers a compelling moral
argument from biology for preserving the 'Creation.' whether we consider it the
work of God or of man.
You've got to love Dr. Seuss. The Lorax is a children's book that was first published in 1971. It tells of the plight of the environment and the Lorax, who is a "mossy, bossy" creature who speaks for the trees against the greedy "Once-ler" who represents industry.. This story is a fable about industrialized society and its impact on the environment. The book can be enjoyed by adults as well as children, and is a great way to engage your children in a dialogue about taking responsibility for the environment.
Green
Building & Remodeling For Dummies
O.K., so not all of us are up to speed on green building, even when our hearts
are in the right place. Here is a book that will help us "Dummies" learn
how to build responsibly, reduce waste and help preserve the environment.
It is a step-by-step guide to every facet of Earth-friendly construction so you
can build or remodel conscientiously.
Green Building &
Remodeling For Dummies
includes ten green things to do on every
project and ten things you can do right now in your home in order to go green,
buy wisely and avoid costly mistakes to your budget as well as the environment.
Other titles worth mention:
Second
Nature - a Gardener's Education by Michael Pollen
The Omnivores Dilemma - a Natural History of Four Meals by
Michael Pollen
In Defense of Food - an Eaters Manifesto by Michael Pollen
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - a Year of Food Life by Barbara
Kingsolver
Markets and the Environment by Nathaniel Keohane and Shiela
Olmstead
Lost Mountain - a Year in the Vanishing Wilderness, Radical Strip
Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia by Eric Reece
A New Green History of the World - The Environment and the Collapse of
Great Civilizations by Clive Ponting
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
How to Pick a Peach - the Search for Flavor from Farm to Table
by Russ Parsons
And don't forget to check
out Amazon's Green Media.