Hey Mr. Green: Sierra Magazine’s Answer Guy Tackles Your Toughest Green Living Questions
April 7, 2010 by Admin
Filed under Green Living Articles
Product Description
When is the right time to replace an old refrigerator? Is it okay to knit a sweater with acrylic yarn? Is it more environmentally correct to buy beer in bottles or cans? For the last several years, Bob Schildgen’s popular “Hey Mr. Green” column has tackled real-world questions from real people. Readers trust his answers, which are backed by Sierra Club’s research, but they also enjoy his realism and irreverent humor. This book distills the best of the column… More >>
Hey Mr. Green: Sierra Magazine’s Answer Guy Tackles Your Toughest Green Living Questions
Good, straight forward tips for greening our lives. Bob Schildgen mixes in some humor and doesn’t get preachey.
Rating: 5 / 5
Mr. Green knows how to fight back when an inquiry requires it. He’s certainly funny and knowledgeable about the underlying political forces that prevent sensible measures from being widely adapted. It’s great that he is not discouraged in the face of those “stake holders” and others of us that simply have trouble changing very old habits and mind sets, but want to blame it on something else. For those who do know more about what we all should be doing, he covers little content that is new, but I still found it a fun read and picked up a few new good web sites for future reference. Best of all, I was encouraged to be a bit more spunky myself by his spirited commentary.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book compiles material from Schildgen’s readable and informative monthly column in Sierra magazine. Mr. Green doesn’t have all the answers on complex environmental debates, but he doesn’t pretend to either. Thus, readers of this book will feel equally informed by his answers to old readers’ questions and by the questions themselves, which can be surprisingly esoteric and insightful. While this book does contain some environmentalist philosophy and ethics, those aren’t really Schildgen’s strongest areas and he occasionally lapses into cranky opinionating (though I do like his no-nonsense approach to the obstructionist and non-intellectual strategies employed by typical anti-environmentalists).
Regardless, what makes this book (and the original Hey Mr. Green column) unique are the thoughful answers Schildgen comes up with for esoteric questions about all aspects of green living, big and small – like the energy requirements of producing beer bottles vs. beer cans or the true environmental costs of farmer’s markets vs. store-bought foods. The answers are well-researched too, with nearly a fourth of this book’s bulk dedicated to footnotes. Schildgen also does a great job trying to figure out the happy medium between contradictory environmental philosophies and encourages readers to strike the best balance between the big stuff and the small stuff. Thanks to Mr. Green, sometimes you don’t need to follow portentous ethical philosophies to do your small part for the planet. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating: 5 / 5
I’ve read Mr. Green’s advice column in Sierra Magazine for years, and was eager to get a copy of his book. Just as I expected, it’s chock full of answers to questions that have been on my mind for years, “How much paper do you really have to recycle in order to save one tree?” as well as new green quandaries that I’d never even considered “Is it better to buy your beer in bottles or in cans?” The book is written in a friendly, chatty style, answering real letters that readers have written in to Mr. Green over the years, and Mr. Green’s quirky humor shines through. Instead of being a preachy book, it tackles tough questions in a light way, and helps give you good realiable ammunition to convince your friends & family to make greener choices (my favorite is when he does the cost benefit analysis of turning off your lights when you leave a room– over 10 years, you will save over $2,600! If that doesn’t convince your relatives & friends to save electricity, I don’t know what will!). This would be a good gift for anyone you know who is trying to live a more green lifestyle.
Rating: 5 / 5
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