Today I have the pleasure of reviewing a green book, which not only is very useful but also was co-authored by one of most interesting figures in the sustainability field - Jeffrey Hollender. Our book is:
Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most
Author: Jeffrey Hollender and Alexandra Zissu
Jeffrey Hollender is is the co-founder and former chairman of Seventh Generation, an award-winning company lauded for its progressive business practices. He is also the author of several books, including The Responsibility Revolution, What Matters Most, and Naturally Clean. He and his wife, Sheila, have three children and live in Vermont.
Alexandra Zissu is a writer, editor, speaker, and consultant. She is the author of The Conscious Kitchen and coauthor of The Complete Organic Pregnancy. She lives with her family in New York City.
Publisher: Random House
Published on: December 2010
What this book is about?
From the co-founder of Seventh Generation, the most trusted brand in environmentally friendly household products, comes this indispensable guide to maintaining absolutely everything in the home in a natural, nontoxic way. Jeffrey Hollender leads you through each room of the house with straightforward advice, comprehensive checklists, quick tips, and unparalleled resources while revealing the hidden repercussions of daily routines that most of us take for granted. From improving air quality in your bedroom to avoiding mildew in the bathroom, from sourcing local or organic food to safely laundering your clothes, Planet Home offers invaluable information for making conscious decisions for your family, your neighbors, and our shared planet home.
With additional information on power, garbage and recycling, air quality, and community activism, this book goes a step further to describe how any household is part of a much larger system. Planet Home offers a unique, comprehensive, educational, and easy approach to helping you and your family lead healthier lives as we collectively protect and maintain our shared resources for many years to come.
What we think about it?
Reading this book, I found myself feeling guilty again and again for not doing enough. Not just for the planet, but also and mostly for not doing enough to keep the house clean, safe and germfree. But don't get me wrong - Planet Home is not a downer that will give you guilt feelings. Actually, as weird as it might sound, it got me more energized to do the right things. Not that I put the book aside and started cleaning, but I definitely intend to make some changes, both in materials used and my own cleaning practices.
No room is left behind with Planet Home. The kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, the kids room, the utility room, and even the home office are getting thoroughly covered in this book, providing you with both explanations on the issues we need to think about and ideas how deal with them. And no, these are not expensive or inconvenient solutions - some of them do require some discipline (vacuum weekly!) and exploration of options (the best products to clean your kitchen with), but others are very simple like opening a window to get some fresh and clean air from the outside or adding a plant to absorb unwanted chemicals.
The book is also full with useful shopping tips, from how to choose a crib to finding conscious seafood. But by no means this is a shopping guide. In all, this is a guide for making the right decisions for your health, your family and your planet. It is also about connecting the dots and showing how all of these are actually just different sides of the same coin, or like Hollender and Zissu explain "everything we do ultimately touches everything and everyone else."
Well, enough writing. It's time to open a window and start vacuuming!
* If you want a copy of this book, you're welcome to join our 41 Reasons campaign and send us your reply to the question 'why it's a good idea to plant a tree for your book'. This book (as many other great books) is one of the prizes we'll give to the readers whose replies we'll publish on the campaign. For more information check our campaign's page.The book is printed with soy-based inks on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.
Disclosure: We received a copy of this book from the publicist of the book.
Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!
