Another Recommended Book: Go Green, Live Rich

15 Jun, 2010  Book Reviews

Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth (and Get Rich Trying) by David Bach with Hillary Rosner

Okay so there are a gazillion books, e-books, and pamphlets with tips on going Green, including my own Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle—so why buy this one?

A few things make this one stand out. First of all, it’s written by a retirement-planning guru: David Bach, author of such books as Start Late, Finish Rich and The Automatic Millionaire (with help from Hillary Rosner, who worked on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth). It’s very refreshing to have a celebrity personal finance author take on the topic of personal environmental responsibility.

Second, the book is crammed with hundreds of websites and resources (including documentation of pretty much every claim he makes) that make it easier to go Green, and Bach emphasizes the ability to be gradual. Start with the chunk or the task that makes sense for you right now, and add the next one after the first has become habit; that way, it never gets overwhelming.

Third, his emphasis, like mine, is strongly toward the Green steps that actually save you money (money that he suggests you reinvest in a socially conscious way). And he’s willing to make enemies in powerful industries, as hen he argues against bottled water He even includes such things as resources for recipes to make your own nontoxic natural cleansers form common household ingredients

Fourth, he covers a lot of areas given short shrift in most environmental action books, with sections on Green investing, Green voting, Green charity, and raising Green-aware children.

And fifth, a lot of startling facts that turn into action steps, such as:

  • When building a home, going Green can add as little as 1% to construction cost, but increase the home’s resale value by $20 for every dollar in annual energy savings—and the demand for Green homes far outstrips supply
  • Following the recommendations for a utility company energy audit can knock 30 percent off your household energy bills
  • 40 percent of all car trips in the US are less than two miles, and could easily be replaced with bicycling; in Copenhagen, 36 percent of the workforce—600,000 people—commutes by bike
  • Speaking of cars—the average cost of owning, driving, and maintaining one is a shocking $8580 (and the carbon impact is 3640 pounds of CO2), so if you live in a place with good public transportation, maybe you can get by without one
  • Little-known energy vampires stealing your fuel and your money include wildly inefficient gas lawn mowers as well as any electrical device that has a cube transformer plugged into the socket (plug them into power strips with off switches and turn the strips off when those appliances are not in use)

    I don’t endorse all of Bach and Rosner’s thinking; there are places where they may be failing to see the big picture (for instance, when endorsing hybrid cars, they don’t discuss the environmental impact of making and disposing of the batter, or the potential need to replace the battery after five years or so). But on the whole, it’s an excellent handbook, with accessible, useful information that’s easy to put into practice. Oh yes, and it’s printed on recycled FSC certified paper, just like my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Unfortunately, the production note doesn’t address the type of ink used, which, given the large amount of full-color interior printing, is something I’d have liked to see addressed.

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