All You Need Is Less: The Eco-friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity

With a chatty, friendly, guilt-free tone, All You Need is Less offers a plethora of ideas for living a greener, healthier, more eco-friendly and sustainable lifestyle. Author Madeleine Somerville tries to avoid shaming and judgment (and mostly succeeds) as she details recipes for body washes and shampoo (baking soda to wash; vinegar to condition); gardening compost and weed killer (boiling water); laundry detergent and window spray (yep, vinegar again); stinky pet spray and pet toothpaste (baking soda this time). Some tips are probably familiar; others are quite original (wool balls instead of dryer sheets; banana peels as leather shoe polish). Each section (Home; Body; Lifestyle; Food; Gardening; Relationships; Health; Baby; Pet; and Holidays) is an entertaining read in its own right; it reads like a snarky, self- and spouse- deprecating blog, written from the author’s own experiences. While any (or, for the true eco-warrior, all) of the tips will help preserve the planet, the main lesson the author reiterates is the importance of actually reducing consumption. It’s a great collection of little changes you can make, a little at a time. However, the irony of buying a book about accumulating less compels me to suggest your earth-friendliest option is to borrow a copy from the library.