Hey Mr. Green: Sierra Magazine's Answer Guy Tackles Your Toughest Green Living Questions

by Bob Schildgen

Book Overview

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 into one enormously useful and entertaining resource. It's organized by subject -- household issues, food and drink, transportation, reuse and recycling, and "big picture" environmental questions -- making it easy to find answers to common questions. Whether puzzling over the intricacies of product life cycles or taking a reader to task for blasting his air conditioner, Hey Mr. Green is an indispensable, opinionated, and authoritative guide to minding one's environmental footprint.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578051436
• ISBN13: 9781578051434
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Great reference and gift

Good, straight forward tips for greening our lives. Bob Schildgen mixes in some humor and doesn't get preachey.

The Big and Small of Green Living

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~]

Fun and quirky advice for green living

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.