When I was at Kohl’s of all places, I grabbed the book called “The Green Book”. I know – how did they POSSIBLY come up with such a clever title?? Anyway – I figured it would be a fun and helpful book to have around. It’s listed as “the everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time.”

So I started reading it bits at a time. It’s an easy book to just pick up and read for a few minutes – check out a few tips. And while I’ll say I don’t think all of the tips are necessarily 100% thought through (don’t consider the total environmental impact) and they are certainly simplified, it is still overall a pretty good and handy and thorough list of tips and tricks. It’s broken down by subject, and even some of the more “obvious” tips still offer a tidbit of something new/interesting (see the Farmer’s Market tip below).

The other thing that I like about the book is it has a very extensive reference list at the end of the book. The sources are well-known, recognizable and credible.

I thought I’d share a few tips and then continue to periodically post others that I find interesting. For now, I’ll focus on food shopping tips:

“Farmer’s Market vs. Supermarket

Try doing some of your shopping at a local farmer’s market. And if you can, walk or bike there. Of the total energy used in the United States per year, 4 percent is used to produce food, and between 10 and 13 percent is used to transport it. On average, U.S. supermarket food travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles before it reaches the family table. Buying local food can reduce the amount of petroleum consumed to transport your dinner by as much as 95 percent.

Meat

If you have the option, choose your meat at the butcher counter and purchase only as much as you know you’ll use. You’ll reduce food waste, save money, and conserve resources. The average person wastes over twenty-two pounds of edible store-bought meat each year. Given that it takes five pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef, that’s more than one hundred pounds of wasted grain and 55,000 gallons of wasted water per person! If all households decreased their beef purchases by just one pound per year, 250 billion gallons of water would be saved. It would take five days for this amount of water to pour over Niagara Falls.

Organic

You can lower your exposure to pesticides by 90 percent just by choosing organic varieties of certain fruits and vegetables. If just 1 percent of the nation’s farmlands converted to organic (non-chemical) agricultural systems, it would remove twenty-six million pounds of pesticides per year from the food we eat and from the environment. If you buy organic, you’ll encourage this type of farming.”

As I said, some of the tips – like the ones I highlighted here – are ones you have probably heard before. But they are able to add a new twist to make you think even more about making the change. And most are fairly simple changes. I will offer more of their green ideas in a future post, so stay tuned! And if you are interested in getting your own copy, just click on the book picture above and it will take you to the Amazon.com page.