Growers and Grocers

We are inundated these days with green living advice, but often it’s doled out in sanctimonious or judgmental tones, which can leave us feeling unempowered and guilty. Sometimes the advice feels absolute, uncompromising: if you aren’t 100 percent green — from the food you buy, the car you drive, and the solar panels on your house — you’re cheating. Even less frequently do we see advice geared toward ways you can take that advice and apply it while raising a family. Helen Coronato aims to remedy that, however, with her book Eco-Friendly Families, recently published by Alpha Books, and relies equally on common sense and cleverness.

In her first chapter, she explains how the birth of her sons, Michael and Thomas, contributed to changing her habits. At first, she thought she’d have to throw out everything she owned and overhaul her entire approach to heating and cooling her home, for example — the proposition truly seemed that daunting. But instead, she turned her attention toward the small ways you can improve what you aleady have in place and make good choices when the time is right to, say, replace your water heater or your refrigerator. Your home will become more eco-minded little by little, and the prospect of greening evolves more naturally.

Like the end credits of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, Coronato stresses the importance of the seemingly minor choices you can make that do make a difference — buying recycled paper towels, energy-efficient lightbulbs, and reusing containers for craft projects, for example. She also points out that it’s necessary to put things in terms that children can understand. While they might not understand the logic behind going green or the implications of global warming when they are small, children are receptive when you put things in their language. For example, she came up with a clever way of keeping them on track from wasteful practices (such as using too many tissues or napkins) by calling themselves, a la superheroes, “Green Team Coronato!” As someone who is pregnant with twin boys at the moment, I can foresee the wisdom of such thinking.

Elsewhere, the book is chockablock with suggestions for family activities for Earth Day and every day, along with guidance at the grocery store and practical information on what you can do around the house in terms of cleaning, reusing and recycling materials. Ever thought about donating old towels to an animal shelter? (My mom actually used to take them to our dog’s groomer.) Making your own granola bars? (Too much packaging in store-bought ones.) Vacuuming behind your refrigerator? (The coils collect dust, which acts as an insulator, thereby making your appliance work harder.) She’s even got suggestions for broken crayons, orphan socks, Christmas gifts, and so on.

Eco-Friendly Families is thorough, accessible, and useful in both its presentation and its information. Sounds pretty green to me.