Showing titles in Sustainable & Green Living

Shedding her possessions and stripping back life to the basics, Charlotte Bradman used the last of her savings to buy a campervan...a creaky, old van with no loo or onboard water. It was the best thing she ever did. Come along on this moving ride as Charlotte finds true stability and security, learning that all she needs is a recharging van battery, a dry bed, and an unspoilt sea view. Self-confessional, observational and darkly humorous, this is an engrossing and inspirational story of resilience and fortitude.

If simplicity is an art, then Dominique Loreau is a master. Having lived in Japan for many years and inspired by oriental philosophy, Dominique Loreau discovered the beauty of a life well lived through the art of simplicity. Her lifestyle rests on the principle of 'less is more' and imbues all areas of existence, from the material to the spiritual.

Minimal makes simple and sustainable living attainable for everyone, using practical tips for all areas of everyday life to reduce your impact on the Earth. Leading environmentalist Madeleine Olivia shares her insights on how to care for yourself in a more eco-friendly way as well as how to introduce a mindful approach to your habits. This includes how to declutter your life, reduce your waste and consumption, recipes for eating seasonally and making your own natural beauty and cleaning products.

Looking for peace and happiness? Slow Living, is your guide on how to slow down your life and live peacefully. Helena Woods, author and creator of popular YouTube channel Simple Joys, reveals the wisdom she has learned by moving abroad from the US and living a slower life in France. With beautiful prose, she provides inspiration and guidance to create a simple living environment wherever you are.

Emma Mitchell has suffered with depression - or as she calls it, "the grey slug" - for 25 years. In 2003, she moved from the city to the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens and began to take walks in the countryside around her new home, photographing, collecting, and drawing as she went. Each walk lifted her mood, proving to be as medicinal as any talking therapy or pharmaceutical. In Emma's diary, she takes us with her as she follows the paths and trails around her cottage and further afield, sharing her nature finds and tracking the lives of local flora and fauna.

Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes.

What would the city of the future look like if we tried to build a better life from the ground up? And would anyone want to live there? Here, Des Fitzgerald takes us on an urgent, unforgettable journey into the future of urban life, from shimmering edifices in the Arizona desert to forest-bathing in Japan, and from rats in mazes to neuroscientific studies of the effects of our surroundings. Along the way, he reveals the deep-lying and often problematic roots of today's green city movement, and offers an argument for celebrating our cities as they are.

This book really is for the absolute beginner. We'll cover all the basics in a motivating, easy-to-digest way, and allow nature to do the heavy lifting. We'll discover your green thumb that's been there all along. We'll take good care of our fellow human and our planet. And we'll have a lot of fun doing it! Friend, you really can live the dream, and make it your reality. It all starts with one step.

Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding this relationship, home gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. This must-have guide will teach you how fungi interact with plants and how to best to employ them in your home garden.

Do you ever feel strange, gross, chaotic, underappreciated, or like you don’t quite fit in? Great news: you might be a goblin! That means your imperfections and idiosyncrasies are the most awesome things about you, and you can build a more balanced, comfortable, harmonious life by accepting and honoring them—taking inspiration from the frogs, fungus, moss, rocks, and dirt that goblins love.

In this practical guide, you will discover how mushrooms develop, cultivation techniques, ideal soil and climatic conditions, the best species to grow at home, and the exceptional health benefits of some varieties. Not many know how easy it is to grow tasty mushrooms independently in their own homes. Most people prefer to buy mushrooms of dubious origin in shopping malls rather than organically self-producing the healthiest and tastiest species.

Henry Mance sets out on a personal quest to see if there is a fairer way to share our planet with the other species who enrich our lives. He goes to work in an abattoir and on a pig farm, and meets chefs, hunters, activists, scientists and conservationists who want to redefine how we think about animals. Even on a planet shaped by human activity, we can find the space to allow other sentient beings to thrive - to put our love for animals into practice. This is not a book about what animals can do for us, but what we can do for animals.

A garden fork. Preferably forged from a single piece of steel. Not because, given a good enough shove, its tines would pierce a zombie's skull as easily as an overripe melon but because come the end of the world, gardening will be what saves your skin. This book, which is aimed at beginners and more seasoned gardeners alike, will tell you what you need; provide the basics of gardening language and technique; provide a planting plan; debunk gardening myths; and show you how to preserve your food and grow your own medicine even if there are no zombies around.

Colm O’Regan grew up on a small farm where his family planted lots of trees and grew most of their own food, but his father—who took Dutch elm disease personally—also happened to burn rubbish out the back and loaded the soil with 10-10-20. Most of us would like to live more sustainable lives, but what’s the point in picking up litter if you have to commute 80km just to get to the office? Climate Worrier is a book full of hypocrisies—how in trying to do the right thing, there’s always someone who will point out that, actually, you’re wrong.

It's amazing how little can change in a decade. In 2009, a book transformed the way we see our frying pans, thermometers, and tuna sandwiches. Daily life was bathing us in countless toxins that accumulated in our tissues, were passed on to our children, and damaged our health. To expose the extent of this toxification, environmentalists Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie offered themselves to science and undertook a series of over a dozen experiments to briefly raise their personal levels of mercury, BPA, Teflon, and other pollutants.

The fundamentals of permaculture are simple: care for people and the Earth, and share what you have. With these in mind, practitioners promote a system with a sense of respect for all life on the planet. You may, however, be anxious about not knowing what to do. After all, not everybody knows about permaculture. But don’t worry–you don’t need to be an expert to start your own permaculture garden.

A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone.

Backyard Homestead & Prepper's Long Term Survival Handbook is a collection of four books that are focused on preparing for disaster and building a self-sufficient mini-backyard farm. The practical tips inside the four books will aid you in self-sufficient living. These books include Prepper's Long Term Survival Bible, Backyard Homestead Handbook, Raising Chickens for Beginners, and Raising Goats for Beginners. Each is crammed full of effective yet simple tips to enable you to create a homestead and remove your dependence on modern conveniences.

Transform your garden into a thriving ecosystem of biodiversity and sustainability—one seed at a time. Are you ready to make your garden more than just a beautiful landscape? Start your seed-saving journey here, and create a sustainable garden that feeds your family and enriches your community.

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.