Make your own earth- and life-safe cleaning products.
Re-use glass jars for homemade juice or your own garden spices and herbs.
Re-use straws.
Use unbleached toilet paper made from recycled paper.
Support local businesses.
Meditate.
Use wood products from sustainable forests.
These are just some of the almost 500 suggestions made in the new novelty book entitled 365+ Ways We Can Help Sustain Life On Earth. It was written by Cariboo first-time author Kimberly Price (co-designed by Kelsi Brown and printed by SpeeDee Printers of Prince George) and hit store shelves this past week.
"My boys were born in the early 1990s. I just started writing down little ideas about things I could do and things we all can do to help Mother Earth - things I wanted to remember and things I wanted to teach them," she said. "After awhile they started to pile up and I knew what I was supposed to do with them. I compiled them into a book. I copyrighted it in 1998, and started pecking away at it. I wrapped 'er up this year."
She proudly says all the suggestions are made in the positive tense. There are no "don't" or "thou shalt not" instructions.
There are some ideas that may seem especially strange, though, and those could be different ones for different people, she said. That's the consequence of living in a First World country where most people have safe streets, a comfortable bed, access to food, clean water, and prospects for the future. But out there on the societal horizon, she said, are increasingly fierce natural disasters, climate change, food and water imbalances, bee shortages threatening ecosystems and agriculture, and many more threats to humankind and the organisms we share the planet with.
"Jump on the green wagon," she said. "You don't have to change the fortunes of the planet on your own, but there are things you can do, everyone can do. I don't expect people to be perfect. Sometimes you're going to fall off the green wagon, that's going to happen from time to time, but get back on."
The book is already available in Coles, Ave Maria and Books and Company stores in Prince George. She will be doing an official book launch on Oct. 2 in her hometown of Quesnel at Greentree Health and Wellness, then on Oct. 11 she will be in Prince George at Books and Company from 1 to 3 p.m.
The book retails for about $15 and a portion of each sale goes to the David Suzuki Foundation. Price is a DSF-certified Queen of Green coach for the Quesnel area, teaching household sustainability lifestyle skills.
"You might think organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace will do all the fighting for you, or you might think the government will be all over it, so we don't put our own efforts into saving the planet," Price said. "But the more we go green as individuals and communities, the more it becomes our mindset, the more we set the example for our future generations. You have to role-model; you have to do what you personally can to move us towards sustainability and wellness. I'm someone who knows the planet is in trouble, but who thinks it isn't too late."
Price is already working on follow-up books to 365+ Ways We Can Help Sustain Life On Earth. For more information about the book and its philosophies, look up the Facebook page For Life 4 All Environmental Products and Services, or email [email protected], or get the book from participating local bookstores.
