Monday, January 21, 2008

Monday's green book: Big Green Purse

Today we have a great new book on our Monday's green book series targeted especially for green women:


Author: Diane McEachern

Diane MacEachern is a bestselling environmental writer, sought-after public speaker, and founder of www.biggreenpurse.com. She has advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, World Bank, World Wildlife Fund, and many other agencies and nonprofit organizations focused on protecting the planet. The author of the bestselling Save Our Planet: 750 Everyday Ways You Can Help Clean Up the Earth, she lives in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the energy-efficient home that she helped design and build more than twenty years ago.

Publisher: Avery Publishing Group / Penguin Group

Published in: March 2008

What it is about: Diane MacEachern argues in Big Green Purse that the best way to fight the industries that pollute the planet, thereby changing the marketplace forever, is to mobilize the most powerful consumer force in the world-women.

This book is a call-to-action for women to use their power as buyers (women spend 85 percent of every dollar in the marketplace) to make a difference. MacEachern's message is simple but revolutionary: if women harness the "power of their purse" and intentionally shift their spending money to commodities that have the greatest environmental benefit, they can create a cleaner, greener world.

In the book, McEachern targets 25 commodities where women's dollars can have the greatest impact, including food, clothing, cars, computers, coffee, cleansers, furniture and flooring.

Why you should get it:

1. We forget too much how much power we hold in our hands as consumers and how much good we can do with it. This book is a perfect guide for using this power in a green and wise way.

2. The book demonstrates the important concept of small steps can make a big difference.

3. You can find in the 'Big Green Purse' recommendations (both 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down') on hundreds of green options.

What others say on the book:
"Big Green Purse explains, in layman's terms, concepts like nanotechnology, lists names of companies women can trust and walks buyers through difficult choices in everything from food to lawn care to clothing" (
Plenty Magazine)

This book will be published on March, but you can already preorder it. You are also welcome to check Diane's website - The Big Green Purse, which offers eco-lifestyle tips and shopping suggestions, as well as opportunities to join One in a Million, a campaign to encourage one million women to shift $1,000 of their household budgets to eco-friendly products and services.

Enjoy the book, and if you're looking for the full list of green books reviewed and presented on our blog, check out our green books page.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Consuming more green products does not make you less of a CAPITALIST PIG. Perhaps it makes you a GREEN CAPITALIST PIG, but still...

Diane MacEachern said...

Soursob - I think you miss the point. Big Green Purse does not encourage consumption. It recommends over and over again that people buy less, reuse what they have, recycle, and minimize their overall environmental footprint. But when you have to shop, do it so that it makes a difference. The earth needs all the help it can get. We can help by making our money matter.