The 10 Best Books on Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Living

You’ll often hear that we should be adopting more eco-friendly and sustainable habits and lifestyles for the sake of preserving our planet.

It’s easy to say that you will start being more responsible with the environment, but it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out where to start.

The changes that you make to your lifestyle in order to be eco-friendlier don’t have to be huge or sudden – small and gradual changes will add up over time.

One way that you can learn more about sustainable and eco-friendly living is by reading books – there are several books out there that will give you pointers on how to start your sustainability journey.

Books are a great starting point as they’ve already done the hard work of compiling eco-friendly tips into a single place — and they can serve as tangible reminders for us to make greener choices.

Plus, once you’re finished reading them, you can pass these books on to friends or family that also may be stumped on how to make more sustainable choices.

As an example, reading used books in and of itself helps reduce CO2 emissions by cutting down production and transport emissions associated with new books.

The books we’ve listed here are very accessible, so pretty much anyone from children to seniors can get involved in making their lifestyles more sustainable.

They provide such a variety of different perspectives and ideas on how to be eco-friendly that there’s sure to be several ways for anyone to leave a reduced carbon footprint and to live a greener life overall.

This book covers how to be more energy-efficient and how to take control of energy usage in your home.

Some of the energy-saving tips in this book can even lead to improved air quality in your home – something that directly relates to your own quality of life.

Don’t let that fool you into thinking that this will be a dry read – personal anecdotes and misadventures involving energy keep this guide to energy efficiency fun and engaging to read.

Kathryn Kellogg is a living example that it’s possible to really reduce our environmental footprint – she was able to significantly cut down the trash produced by her lifestyle so that two years worth of garbage fit into a single jar.

This book is filled with several tips ranging from DIY beauty products to eco-friendly shopping tips for your home.

Perhaps, the most important thing to take away from this book is that, while you may not always make perfect decisions regarding sustainability, you can always give yourself a second chance to make things better.

If you’re looking for an easy read on how to live a greener lifestyle, look no further than Green Living for Dummies.

This guide covers a little bit of everything when it comes to sustainability.

Some of the topics this guide covers include how to make eco-friendly home improvements, how to eat locally and organically in order to reduce emissions and how to raise green kids so that the impact of living sustainably will last for generations.

Related: What Is Environmental Sustainability and Why Is It Important?

This charming hand-illustrated book by Raleigh Briggs is a useful resource for how to make non-toxic DIY household cleaners.

In other words, products that aren’t harmful to the environment and don’t break the bank. In addition, it shows us a unique way to live a greener life – it shows us which herbs can help us with sicknesses (as opposed to solely buying pre-packaged medications.)

This short read will surely teach you something new that’ll help you on your journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle.

In this book, Christine Liu takes you on a tour through your house and shows you step by step how you can make changes in each and every room of your house that will help your household become eco-friendlier.

Tips include using natural light whenever possible or even making your own toothpaste. Whether you’re looking for small changes or larger ones to your lifestyle, this book makes living a greener lifestyle accessible to just about anyone.

This book is all about realistic and manageable ways on how to adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle without shaming or guilting anybody.

With tips for gardening, budgeting, laundry and even on how to make greener hygiene products like deodorant, this guide is as practical as it is simple and easy to read.

Several people worry that adopting a greener lifestyle might equal adopting a more complicated life, but this book shows the exact opposite – living more sustainably can make your life a lot simpler.

This book can help even the busiest people move towards sustainable living – not all tips for living a greener life are super time- or energy-consuming.

In fact, a lot of these tips require minimal efforts. For example, getting rain barrels will help you save on water costs associated with watering your gardens and lawns.

In addition, such changes will be nice to the environment. After all, you will need less power to water your plants.

For those of you who are ready to make a larger commitment to a more sustainable lifestyle, this book could be the perfect read for you.

Living off the grid doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing all the comforts that living on the grid provides you nor does it mean being socially isolated.

This book will show you how practical it can be to go off-grid. This includes tips and ways to break down complex topics into easy-to-apply solutions from someone who lives off the grid successfully.

While living a greener life is something many of us would like to achieve, it can be somewhat cost-prohibitive. However, some things don’t have to be all about money.

This book focuses on practical home energy solutions that won’t completely empty out your wallet.

This book contains step-by-step instructions and illustrations that will show you how you can obtain wind or solar power for an affordable price or even for free.

This book is a great resource for any homeowner who is unsure of where to start their eco-friendly lifestyle.

“Green Remodeling” will present you to the benefits of remodeling your house (e.g. upgrading something as small as your toilet can lessen fossil fuel pollution), as well as what you can do in each room in order to minimize the amount of energy and resources used each day.

Such home enhancements are a win-win game: They will benefit your finances and the environment, but also protect the health of those who live with you.