Showing titles in Sustainable & Green Living

Nearly every US city would like to be more walkable - for reasons of health, wealth, and the environment - yet few are taking the proper steps to get there. The goals are often clear, but the path is seldom easy. Jeff Speck’s follow-up to his best-selling Walkable City is the resource that cities and citizens need to usher in an era of renewed street life. Walkable City Rules is a doer’s guide to making change in cities, and making it now.

In Clean Mama's Guide to a Healthy Home, Becky Rapinchuk, author of Simply Clean and creator of the popular cleaning website Clean Mama, provides a step-by-step guide to take charge of your home's wellness with a comprehensive, all-natural cleaning system.

Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is a how-to manual for the budding gardener and experienced green thumb alike, full of creative and easy-to-follow designs that guide you to having your yard and eating it, too. Permaculture designer and avid grower Michael Judd takes the listener on a step-by-step process to transform a sea of grass into a flourishing edible landscape that pleases the eye, as well as the taste buds.

Current global trends are bleak: weak economic growth, too much debt, declining incomes for the lower 99 percent, a dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, and ecological destruction - just to name a few. Many of us understandably feel resigned to an eroding standard of living in the years to come. At best. But what if we told you that there are specific attainable steps you can take today that can limit your vulnerability to these trends and help you be richer, healthier, and happier?

Call it "Zen and the Art of Farming" or a "Little Green Book", Masanobu Fukuoka's manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book "is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical."

Mini Farming describes a holistic approach to small-area farming that will show you how to produce 85 percent of an average family's food on just a quarter acre - and earn $10,000 in cash annually while spending less than half the time that an ordinary job would require.

The Upcycle is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, the most consequential ecological manifesto of our time. Now, drawing on the lessons gained from 10 years of putting the cradle-to-cradle concept into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people, William McDonough and Michael Braungart envision the next step in the solution to our ecological crisis: We don't just reuse resources with greater effectiveness, we actually improve them as we use them.

Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary holistic method to overcome overwhelm in the complex process of resilient land design. It distills the authors' decades of experience as engineers, farmers, educators, and consultants into a five-step process complete with principles, practices, templates, and workflow tools.

Go Gently is a guide for sustainability at home that offers simple, tangible steps toward reducing our environmental impact by looking at what we consume and the waste we create, as well as how to take action for environmental change. The title reflects Bonnie Wright’s belief that the best way to change our planet and ourselves is through a gentle approach, rather than a judgmental one. This is a book of do’s rather than don’ts. It’s also an invitation to Wright’s followers to join her on this journey to sustainability.

In this book, Eve O. Schaub, humorist and stunt memoirist extraordinaire, tackles her most difficult challenge to date: garbage. Convincing her husband and two daughters to go along with her, Schaub attempts the seemingly impossible: living in the modern world without creating any trash at all—for an entire year and, as it turns out, during a pandemic.

Are you concerned about the rising costs of feeding your family, where your food comes from, or what’s in the cleaning products you use every day? Melissa K. Norris, host of the popular Pioneering Today podcast, wants to help you embrace a simpler, more natural lifestyle. In The Made-from-Scratch Life, Melissa shares easy-to-follow instructions and plenty of inspiration. Filled with helpful charts, checklists, and recipes, this guide gives you the know-how you need to incorporate time-tested homesteading practices into your everyday life.

Less Stuff is a guide for people who find it difficult to declutter and who don’t want to see things go to waste. Step by step, you’ll explore finding your ‘enough’, learn how to let go of your old possessions without sending them to landfill, and eventually break the cycle of stuff. The end result is a planet with less strain, a home with more peace and a life with more meaning.

What we eat matters—to us, and to the planet. Cool food is a game-changing new food category and way of thinking that can help fix the climate. This engaging and persuasive book will show you how to make simple choices, starting today—in the supermarket, in your kitchen, and in the world—to reduce your environmental impact. Hundreds of cool foods exist, but until now have gone largely uncelebrated for their climate-positive powers. Some of these foods may already be on your shelf, and some are just on the horizon.

In an interconnected world filled with goal-oriented perfectionists, Lagom reminds us to slow down, to decompress and destress, to be mindful of sustainability yet not deny ourselves pleasure. But lagom is not a rigid set of rules - sometimes you need more, sometimes you need less, and that's fine, too! With this idea-filled guide, you can learn to find greater balance, well-being, and harmony - and, most importantly, make time for the things that matter most in life.

Last seen sleeping off his wedding night in the back of a 1951 International Harvester pickup, Michael Perry is now living in a rickety Wisconsin farmhouse. Faced with 37 acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home, Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood - his city-bred parents took in more than 100 foster children while running a ramshackle dairy farm - for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.

From our offices and homes to schools, hospitals, and restaurants, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized impact on our performance and well-being. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick - jeopardizing our future and dragging down profits in the process. Joseph Allen and John Macomber make a compelling case in this urgently needed book for why every business and home owner should make certain relatively low-cost investments a top priority.

Fatal conveniences are the toxic products we routinely use and the unhealthy things we do that our culture and corporations have made us believe are safe and necessary for living well and efficiently. These things—from deodorant, cosmetics, dental floss, and sunscreen to laundry detergent, air fresheners, carpets, and crayons to candles, tea bags, cell phones, and chewing gum—are ubiquitous in daily life . . . and they are wreaking havoc on our health and our planet.

In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.

Become a farmer without leaving your backyard! Have you ever dreamed of growing your own food? Between the fresh air, the exercise, and the savings on rising grocery prices, there are so many great reasons to garden. But you can go one big step further when you start your own mini-farm. With backyard farming, you use the land you already have to grow your own fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices. Some people even raise livestock at home! A mini-farm is easy to start and doesn’t have to be expensive. You’ll eat healthier, help the environment, and relieve stress.

Do you dream of walking through your own kitchen garden with baskets full of delicious food you grew yourself? But are you waiting to begin because you think you don’t have enough space, sun, time, or experience? Then consider this: Plants want to grow. And when you match a plant’s needs to your own resources, you’re just one step away from success in the kitchen garden. Nicole Johnsey Burke—founder of Gardenary, Inc., and author of Kitchen Garden Revival—is your expert guide for growing your own fresh, organic food every day of the year, no matter where you grow.