Green for Life: 200 Simple Eco-Ideas for Every Day

Janet Collins is a freelance writer in Sechelt, British Columbia.

Gillian Deacon could certainly teach Kermit the Frog a thing or two. The CBC-TV personality has come up with 200 simple ideas that can make even the most skeptical amphibian realize it really is easy to be green, or at least greener.

Deacon has divided her book into 30 sections, each focusing on a different aspect of everyday life. From making dinner to doing the laundry, from buying a car to running an office, she offers several suggestions for little things anyone can do that will have a big impact on the future of our planet. Heck, she even has a segment on how to have sex the eco-friendly way! Sources of background information and helpful website addresses are peppered throughout the text. The final section also provides tips to assist readers who want to increase their commitment to live a greener lifestyle.

A word of caution: Like most members of the media, Deacon is not an expert on all (if any) of the topics covered in this book. As a result, much useful information has been watered down to the point of being useless, and misinformation is unintentionally included. For example, the complex issue of GMO food is sensationalized by insistence that such products are the work of “shady characters and mad scientists.” Further, there is the repetition of the popular notion that monarch butterfly larvae died after eating GMO corn pollen—without mention that larvae in the over-hyped experiment were force-fed and had access to no other food source (even though they have been shown not to like Bt pollen and generally avoid it if other food is available). She also doesn’t point out that most of our food has been hybridized or crossed over the centuries, thus avoiding the need to answer the underlying question of what food is truly “natural” and “unaltered.”

That said, there is much to recommend here. After all, everyone can benefit from walking or taking public transit rather than using the car to go to the corner store. And reducing the amount of plastic bags we use along with reducing accumulation of over packaged goods will certainly help solve the problem of overflowing landfills. Just be sure to do your own research before writing that poison-pen letter to a corporation or staging a protest.