Here are 100 books that A Family Guide to Waste-free Living fans have personally recommended if you like
A Family Guide to Waste-free Living.
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Learning to live and work sustainably is the greatest challenge of our times. In an age of global climate change, natural resource depletion, plummeting biodiversity, and “failing states” that can no longer meet their people’s basic needs, the only way we can rescue civilization and preserve the natural environment is to live sustainably. Notwithstanding common misperceptions, sustainability is not simply about preservation. Rather, sustainability requires both preservation and change. To be effective in our conservation efforts, we must become ever more creative and adaptive. Practicing sustainability entails managing the scale and speed of change so we can preserve our core values and relationships, both in nature and society.
This book is an excellent primer on sustainable design by leaders in the field. They make the case as clearly as anyone that we have the knowledge and skill to design products that are functional, durable, beautiful, and sustainable. This isn’t just a hope or ideal. McDonough and Braungart have demonstrated their creed of sustainable design in practice.
How can we avoid environmental disaster? Nowadays, in the home, most of us do our bit: we recycle. But what about industry, where the real damage is done? The strategy is the same: 'reduce, resize, reuse' - we try to minimize the damage. But there is a limitation to this well-intentioned approach: it maintains the one-way, 'cradle to grave' manufacturing model of the Industrial Revolution, the very model that creates immense amounts of waste and pollution in the first place.What we need is a major rethink, a new approach which directly combats the problem rather than slowly perpetuating it. An…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a youngster I used to drive my parents crazy because I was so passionate about recycling. I rekindled this passion about five years ago and started Everyday Recycler. Through my website I help people improve their recycling habits by offering actionable instructions with a focus on explaining how recycling works and its intrinsic value. I also advocate strongly for recycled products. I believe that by purchasing recycled products, we can help generate demand for the materials we toss in our recycling bin and contribute to the overall success of recycling. These works have educated and inspired me over the years. I hope they inspire you as much.
Garbology is the wake up call we all need! It’s shocking and eye-opening and because of this it's an excellent place to start reassessing our own understanding of waste.
Despite being published in 2013, it remains extremely relevant. Unfortunately, the stats reported in the book have not improved all that much over the last decade. Not only does the author highlight the issues of our waste but he introduces you to the reality of the political, economic, and logistical nightmare that is waste management.
It's really important that we understand these challenges in order to accept the imperfections of waste management and recycling. Doing so saves us from getting discouraged when things don’t always work and feeling like giving up recycling altogether.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of America’s biggest export, our most prodigious product, and our greatest legacy: our trash
The average American produces 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime and $50 billion in squandered riches are rolled to the curb each year. But our bins are just the starting point for a strange, impressive, mysterious, and costly journey that may also represent the greatest untapped opportunity of the century.
In Garbology, Edward Humes investigates trash—what’s in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it; and how…
As a youngster I used to drive my parents crazy because I was so passionate about recycling. I rekindled this passion about five years ago and started Everyday Recycler. Through my website I help people improve their recycling habits by offering actionable instructions with a focus on explaining how recycling works and its intrinsic value. I also advocate strongly for recycled products. I believe that by purchasing recycled products, we can help generate demand for the materials we toss in our recycling bin and contribute to the overall success of recycling. These works have educated and inspired me over the years. I hope they inspire you as much.
Reading Material Value will deepen your understanding of how everyday products are made, motivate you to make more informed consumer choices, and inspire you to advocate for more sustainable and less wasteful manufacturing practices. Seems like a lot, doesn’t it?
But the book is jam-packed with detailed information helping the reader to appreciate what is required to make the products we use daily. In addition, I appreciate how the author gives the background information from a fair standpoint and emphasizes that cooperation and open communication are preferable strategies for change than direct confrontational tactics.
While bad companies do exist, more often than not, other circumstances impede companies from acting in a more ethical manner.
"Meticulous editing and a succinct style.... Exemplary for its balanced and reasonable viewpoint, the text deserves to be classified as a reference tool for countless professionals." —Publishers Weekly, BookLife Prize Creative Solutions from Smart Businesses
Are you concerned about plastic waste and its effect on public health and the environment? You're not alone.
Read Material Value to learn about the challenges facing the manufacturing world and how to make choices that are less wasteful and less harmful to people and the environment.
Discover:
How metals and plastics are made and what happens when they are recycled…
As a youngster I used to drive my parents crazy because I was so passionate about recycling. I rekindled this passion about five years ago and started Everyday Recycler. Through my website I help people improve their recycling habits by offering actionable instructions with a focus on explaining how recycling works and its intrinsic value. I also advocate strongly for recycled products. I believe that by purchasing recycled products, we can help generate demand for the materials we toss in our recycling bin and contribute to the overall success of recycling. These works have educated and inspired me over the years. I hope they inspire you as much.
In researching my own book I learnt that e-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams on the planet. It impacts the environment and humans at all stages from extraction of raw materials to the end of life disposal.
A key solution is to keep items in their originally intended use as long as possible. Right to Repair explores the critical issues of corporations limiting consumers' ability to repair their own products, leading to planned obsolescence and ultimately unnecessary waste. This is an urgent issue that requires more attention and plays a crucial role in reducing e-waste and its negative effects on the environment.
Right to Repair will help the reader understand their rights to repair-friendly technology and help them become a more informed consumer.
In recent decades, companies around the world have deployed an arsenal of tools - including IP law, hardware design, software restrictions, pricing strategies, and marketing messages - to prevent consumers from fixing the things they own. While this strategy has enriched companies almost beyond measure, it has taken billions of dollars out of the pockets of consumers and imposed massive environmental costs on the planet. In The Right to Repair, Aaron Perzanowski analyzes the history of repair to show how we've arrived at this moment, when a battle over repair is being waged - largely unnoticed - in courtrooms, legislatures,…
If I'm honest, I became a gardener because I like getting dirty. Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Tom Kitten is the story of my childhood (and my adulthood too, only now I don't have to pretend I'm going to stay clean). Of course, high-quality soil leads to high-quality produce, and I deeply adore the flavors of strawberries growing in deep, dark soil. Biting into a juicy, homegrown tomato still warm from the summer sun is bliss.
First, let me explain where I'm coming from – my husband and I spent over a decade growing nearly all of our own vegetables and a considerable portion of our other sustenance on our homestead. So even though our current smaller plot only feeds us a side dish or three per day, I tend to think of gardening as something that should be good for our wallets as well as our bellies and the earth. Gardening When It Counts is all that and is 100% based on the author's personal experience growing most of his own food. Highly recommended.
The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land…
Saving the planet one death at a time is truly what the world needs now: to reduce our carbon footprint and go out in eco-friendly style. As the one-woman funeral service in the rural town of Boring, Oregon, I support the philosophy of old-school burial practices that are kinder to both humans, the earth, and our wallets. I have humbly been baptized the Green Reaper for my passionate advocacy of green burial, and as an undertaker and the owner and undertaker of Cornerstone Funeral, the first green funeral home in the Portland area. I love to devour all literature possible on green burial and environmentally friendly death care.
A meaningful and absolutely pleasurable read that supports a treasured purpose in our complex world and justly speaks to one of the genuine accountabilities of being human: caring for and interring our dead. How do we plan for our final needs after passing and retain climate and community? Mallory faced these problems after her parents died in nearly identical biking mishaps a few years apart. She has inspired me greatly with how she writes about one of my favorite subjects. And how extra enjoyable to have my work attributed a few times throughout her book.
As we begin to contemplate death and to embark on practical planning for life's end, many of us long to leave a legacy beyond a transfer of money and property--one that ensures a sustainable earth for our loved ones, our communities, and generations to come. But where do we even begin?
With the sudden deaths of both of her parents, Mallory McDuff found herself in a similar position. Utterly unprepared both emotionally and practically, she began to research sustainable practices around death and dying, determined to honor their commitment to caring for the earth. For McDuff, an educator and environmentalist,…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
I am an author and illustrator who makes books for children and people who used to be children. I have worked as a sign painter, set designer, printer, and art director. After a long career in advertising, I stumbled into the job I was always meant to do, creating children’s books. Seven of my books have been New York Timesbestsellers and all are noted for their humor, expressive characters, and rich – sometimes hidden – detail. In my spare time I enjoy riding my bike, eating chocolate, and getting other peoples’ kids all wound up then sending them home.
Derwood the Goat is a fussy farmer who grumpily guards his garden against dandelions, pigweed, crabgrass, sapsuckers, and all manner of invaders, especially rabbits. So, when he catches a cute little bunny named Tabitha nosing around his vegetables, he’s very suspicious, and very crabby. Tabitha has one excuse after another, all delivered in delightfully pun-filled banter with Derwood, who’s having none of it. Tabitha finally offers to weed the garden while the exhausted Derwood dozes off in his rocking chair. When Derwood wakes up, the weeding is done, and he rewards Tabitha by sharing his harvest with her. In the end, everybody gets what they wanted: food, friendship, and nonstop nibbling. I love this story because it shows how humor, conversation, and cooperation can turn adversaries into friends.
From New York Times-bestselling author Beth Ferry and illustrator A.N. Kang comes a tale filled with fantastic word play that will have kids laughing and insisting, "No nibbling!"
One warm spring day, Derwood the goat planted a garden and patiently tended it as it grew. On that very same day, he noticed a dandelion puff--it was too early in the season, but Derwood was taking no chances. Growing a garden is risky business, after all. But as Derwood inspected the dandelion, he realized it wasn't a weed. It was a bunny! With Tabitha, a precocious bunny who is very interested…
The heroes and heroines in the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales face challenges inspired by my own fears, like giving a presentation in the front of the class, getting lost in an unfamiliar place, finding my place in a new school, or working out how to be fair to my friends when we disagree about the rules. Fears tell us a boring life is “safe.” They hide our extraordinary life behind their backs. I write books for and about kids attempting things that are absolutely positively “not for them”. Because kids are the bravest people around. That’s why they’re so magical.
The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden is about the magic of standing up for something you believe in, and discovering unexpected supporters.
With echoes of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. In the Vanderbeeker family, everyone might have different goals, talents, opinions, and personalities, but they all stick together when it counts. (Similar to Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes, and Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks).
These series are perfect to read alone or as a family read-aloud, because everyone will find a character to relate to.
But when catastrophe strikes their beloved upstairs neighbor, their sleepy summer transforms in an instant as the Vanderbeeker children band together to do what they do best: make a plan. They will create the most magical healing garden in all of Harlem.
In this companion to The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, experience the warmth of a family and their community as they work together to bring a little more beauty and kindness to the world, one thwarted plan at a time.
I grew up in a farming community where everyone understood where our food comes from; we were all either farmers or related to farmers. I’ve since discovered that is not the case everywhere. Many kids honestly believe our food comes from grocery stores. Those that have been told our food is grown, are still unfamiliar with the extent of our reliance on agriculture—not just for food, but clothing; building and cleaning supplies; sports equipment; fuel; and so much more! They also don’t understand the amount of time and hard work (even technology) required to grow, harvest, and process the plants used to create their favorite foods. Hopefully these books—mine included—will help.
A hands-on, child’s-eye-view of what it takes to grow your own food in which the main character, a young girl, works to prove to her parents that she is ready for the responsibility and hard work of gardening.
The author uses a combination of prose and diary entries to tell this story of perseverance, entrepreneurship, and agriculture—all big words described in a very child-friendly way. But it’s the illustrations that sell this book. I love the bright, scrapbook style. They add tons of humor and kid appeal while perfectly complimenting the writing.
I imagine kiddos spending hours pouring over the art's details, and using the illustrations as inspiration to create their own writing notebooks.
Jolie LOVES strawberries - and she’s on an unstoppable (and hilarious) mission to grow her own food from seedling to table in this colorful introduction to the joy of growing the popular perennial.
Through Jolie’s comical scrapbook-style journal entries, young readers will learn how she convinces the “old people” (aka her parents) to let her grow her own strawberries. Growing strawberries is a lot of work and responsibility, but Jolie is ready with the help of her faithful rabbit Munchy! Together they find out just how delicious, rewarding, and sometimes complicated it can be to grow your own food.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I grew up in a coastal landscape and aspired from childhood to read my way through it by knowing its plants. I once watched a master carver at work on a totem pole at a living museum and could relate the wood curls falling from his adze to the giant cedars growing at the site. As a university student, I worked in a botanical show garden, learning so much about the provenance of plants and what they tell us about geography, history, and beauty. These experiences, in childhood and early adulthood, formed my lifelong interest in ethnobotany, nomenclature, and mythology, explored through the lens of creative work.
As an avid reader of biography, I was thrilled to discover this brilliant saga of George Orwell’s life as a journalist and activist and the rose bushes he purchased from Woolworths and planted in 1936 in an English garden.
The roses are a tangible presence in his participation in the Spanish Civil War and his support for women’s suffrage, universal justice, and human rights. I deeply admire how Solnit follows Orwell’s influence as a gardener and a humanist through a world hungry for his integrity and clarity of thought.
'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood
'Expansive and thought-provoking' Independent
Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening - George Orwell
Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.
Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient…
