Gary D. Branson

The best enviro guide I've read...

...too bad it's out of date!

In the past several months, I've read somewhere around a dozen how-to manuals about saving money by reducing, reusing, and recycling materials. While many of these enviro guides all follow the same basic format and largely offer the same repetitive and common-sense advice, "The Complete Guide to Recycling at Home" is different. It's written more like an actual book, with chapters that focus on various strategies to "Take Responsibility, Save Money, and Protect the Environment." Rather than briefly presenting an environmental problem in a paragraph or two, and then giving readers a quick checklist of advice, Mr. Branson analyzes both the dilemmas and his proposed solutions in detail.

"The Complete Guide to Recycling at Home" is organized into fourteen cohesive, well-written chapters: Precycling; Paper; Lawn and Garden; Plastics; Organizing for Home Recycling; Water Conservation; Cars; Reducing Home Maintenance; Hazardous Waste; Indoor Air Quality; Business Recycling; Conserving Home Energy; Aletrnative Energy; and The Next Generation. The author is a building trades contractor and contributing editor to `Workbench Magazine,' so those chapters which focus on home maintenance issues are especially strong.

At 176 8.5"x11" pages, the volume is much more substantial and well-researched than are most other "save money, save the planet" how-to guides. This is a welcome change, as my major complaint with such books is their lack of documentation; many make vague yet serious environmental claims yet fail to back up their statements with references. Mr. Branson is much more even-handed in his assessment of environmental problems and solutions. Although I doubt he's a member of Greenpeace, neither is he oblivious or indifferent to the damage we're inflicting on the planet. Nonetheless, he doesn't accept every admonition put forth by environmentalists. Though I consider myself to be a HUGE enviro-geek, I do think that a healthy dose of skepticism is always a good thing - and by assessing the validity of different claims as well as the pros and cons of different strategies, Mr. Branson comes off as much more credible than many other how-to enviro authors. In the end, I think his style of writing is more likely to persuade the disbelievers that there is indeed a problem, one that's our collective responsibility to address.

I only wish the author/publisher would issue a revised and updated copy, as the only edition available is almost 15 years old!

http://www.easyvegan.info/2005/05/10/the-complete-guide-to-recycling-at-home-by-...… (más)