All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free
Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity by Madeleine Somerville
Rating: 4 out of 5
At the beginning of Madeleine Somerville's All You Need is Less: The Eco-Friendly
Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity, the author
says that there should be more emphasis on the "reduce" segment of
the environmentalists' "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" war cry. To that end,
she focuses on strategies designed to help people acquire and use less stuff. Some
of those strategies are more realistic and practical than others.
Everything lands on Somerville's chopping block, from
personal care items, to home cleaning supplies, to clothes driers. The idea is
that all the everyday products we purchase at the grocery store can be replaced
with less expensive, more environmentally friendly alternatives. For instance,
you can shampoo your hair with baking soda, shave with coconut oil, clean your
home with vinegar, and hang your laundry on a clothesline outside to dry.
It almost goes without saying that Somerville is an advocate
for rain barrels, backyard gardening with heirloom seeds, and cloth diapers, but
she goes a step further with a chapter about how to improve your relationships
and "green" your pets. It's all written in a friendly, easy-to-read
style that usually tries to avoid inflicting crushing guilt trips on readers.
A few things particularly stood out about this book:
1) The author is deeply infatuated with vinegar. She uses it
for everything from first aid to housecleaning to hair conditioner. She admits
that after using apple cider vinegar as conditioner, her hair might smell a
little vinegary if it gets wet and you stick your nose in it, but she believes
it's a small price to pay for not having to buy actual hair conditioner that's
full of chemicals.
2) Some of the author's ideas are excellent and entirely
possible for some people. Drying clothes on a line outside, for example, would
work fine during dry, warm weather for people who have backyards with
clotheslines. People living in apartments and/or in Minnesota in January are
still going to need a drier. Plus there are plenty that are beyond the realm of
how much trouble the average person will go to. For instance, traditional leg
waxing is out. Instead, you're supposed to mix up a concoction of hot, sticky sugar
and reusable cloth strips. Uh, no.
3) This book isn't just about using less stuff – it offers a
new lifestyle. A reader can pick and choose which specific techniques work for
him/her, but an environmental zealot can use the book to transform every aspect
of his/her life.
As thorough and interesting and potentially useful as this
book it, it did have a fundamental flaw. Many of the tips and techniques don't
actually result in using less stuff; they just change which stuff you're using.
For instance, let's say you want to use a skin moisturizer. Somerville says
that instead of buying moisturizer which is specifically for that purpose, you
should use coconut oil. And if you've got a cat, you shouldn't buy regular cat
litter, but instead either buy the more expensive natural kind or make your own
using shredded newspaper that you wet then mush together then dry in a process
that takes 1-2 days.
Basically, you're not reducing
anything. You're still buying and using stuff. You're just using stuff that's
not as good as the stuff that you used to use. It's not necessarily even
cheaper. Take coconut oil, for example. It's expensive and it comes in jars
that you have to throw away, just like the skin lotion that it's supposed to be
replacing. So why bother? I've tried to use coconut oil as a skin moisturizer.
It's greasy and it gets oily spots on my clothes. The author advises readers to
avoid that problem by toweling themselves off after using it, but that adds
another step to my post-shower routine. And I smell like coconut, which isn't
bad exactly, but it's not as nice as the fragrance in my skin lotion. So, to
recap, people are supposed to stop buying expensive skin lotion which
moisturizes their skin and smells nice. Instead they should buy expensive
coconut oil, which moisturizes skin but leaves a greasy residue that needs to
be removed and smells like coconuts. What exactly is being saved here?
Especially if the skin lotion you already use is a natural kind that doesn't
contain parabens or test on animals.
Overall, All You Need
Is Less contains a lot of excellent tips. It's helpful to keep it in
perspective, though, and remember that every little bit you do will help the
planet. You don't have to follow all these guidelines to make your life a
little greener. Realistically, there are a finite number of hours in the day to
grow your own food, make your own baby wipes, and give your partner deep tissue
massages instead of buying him/her anniversary gifts. And as for me, life's too
short to have hair that smells like vinegar.
Reviewed by Peter
