For all book lovers out there, we prepared a list of inspiring eco friendly books that would be your “food for thought”. Our collection will raise your awareness about several environmental issues we currently need to focus on. The books will give you guidelines, new perspectives, and hands-on ideas to have a more sustainable lifestyle and eco-friendly mindset.
The books introduce you to the three Rs of zero-waste techniques, vegan cooking recipes, eco-friendly products mainly notebooks and gives you an overview of the current eco-friendly activism. The books are inspiring, thought-provoking ,and will give you something you can relate to in your daily life.
Where does the story begin?
Let’s ask ourselves a very important question at the very beginning. Why we should be eco-friendly?
The move to industrialization in the last decades resulted in creating more products that made our life easier and more convenient, with more advancements in technology, our lives become effortless with more disposal of products or products designed for single use. Unfortunately, the price was more emissions, more pollution, and more waste!
We can link that to our daily life.
Imagine a day when you purchased all your needs online. Then, you ordered your dinner from your favorite restaurant. Later, you drive to meet some friends, and, on your way, you took your favorite drink in disposable cups. It sounds convenient, isn’t it?
It is convenient. However, it left you with online purchase packages, plastic bags, disposable coffee cups, tissues, papers, cartons, aluminum cans, single-use items, and of course organic waste.
- Have you ever thought about where our waste goes? We know that this is an unconventional question!
- Have you ever thought about the history and the future of these products?
We can say that it is a vicious cycle of using natural resources to manufacture goods and products. We use them for a short period of time then we put them all in the trash and it goes to the landfills or trash incinerators to be burned or recycled.
What’s wrong with that?
- First, we have a huge amount of waste that gives our earth more toxication and CO2.
- Secondly, we have a huge number of plastics. We can say that we live in “the plastic pollution “era. Plastics don’t biodegrade easily, and it is a huge burden for our earth to get rid of it.
What does zero-waste mean?
Zero-waste simply means that we follow certain practices to reduce the amount of waste, be more mindful of our purchases, consume less, buy when urgent or necessary, and reuse when possible.
We can summarize zero-waste in 3Rs: reduce, reduce, and recycle.
Zero-waste may sound overrated goal. However, we can give it a try and do it even imperfectly. It’s worth the try to save our environment! We can move gradually to zero-waste and have less waste every step at a time.
Now, you can go over our reviews of these eco friendly books to dig deeper and understand what zero-waste really means.
Zero waste cookbooks and lifestyle books
“The most environmentally friendly product is the one you didn’t buy.” Joshua Becker
1. 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste
You can get started with this book to guide you on how to implement and integrate new practices and new habits in your daily life to reduce your waste.
Kathryn Kellogg states in her book that according to EPA, Americans send 4-4 pounds of trash to landfills every day. It is an indication that more consumption means we will have fewer resources.
What will you learn from this book?
The book educates the readers about the whole situation of waste and its negative ecological consequences.
More detail about What we mean by zero waste.
- Send no items to the landfills.
- Reduce and reuse.
- Send less to recycle.
- Turn leftovers to compost.
The book encourages readers to consume mindfully: How to change the habit of overconsumption and prioritize what you need to buy and provides several reducing and reusing tips.
The author divided the book into chapters by topic themes so the readers can jump easily from one point to another. The book covers tips on how to go zero waste at home, at the workplace, on the road or in a store.
2. The Zero Waste Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Cooking without Waste
Remember that your kitchen is your biggest “trash maker”. Giovana Torrico, the author of this book, gives plenty of ideas on sustainable cooking practices. There are several instructions you can follow to reduce cooking waste as much as possible.
What will you learn from this book?
You will learn how to convert leftovers, fruit peels, rice, pasta, and a whole new dish. The book is visually beautiful, and it has a cheerful and vivid picture.
You will learn how to cook 100 meals using peels. For instance, from egg yolk leftovers, some coffee grinds, and caster, you can make delicious coffee ice cream.
It contains several recipes such as over ripped banana bread, pumpkin seeds, and Shia seeds delicious crackers.
You will learn how to use jars and re-use your bags tips on how to freeze and preserve.
3. Zero waste year 2022 Planner and Journal
Now, you have a lot of ideas now for a more sustainable life. You are more well-rounded about zero waste’s “whys” and “how’s”. You are inspired by a lot of new habits, new tips and hacks, and recipes. You are ready to adapt to a “more eco-living” and a more sustainable life philosophy.
You started to implement some ideas to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Now, you need to track your progress. Nothing is more memorable than writing down your goals, visualizing them, reflecting, drawing your attention to your failures, and celebrating your success too.
How can you use this book?
- Long-lifespan product repairable products.
- All in one place.
- Zero-waste ideas.
- Habit tracker.
- Calendar (annual, monthly, and weekly).
It can be an awesome gift to someone who starts an eco-friendly lifestyle. It can be your “zero-waste” diary. It can function as your notebook to jot down key points from other resources as well.
4. How to Go (Almost) Zero Waste: Over 150 Steps to More Sustainable Living at Home, School, Work, and Beyond
Setting the goal to go zero-waste may require you to be exposed to plenty of ideas to find your inspiration and help you choose what fits your lifestyle, and your needs best.
This book gives you 150 hacks and tips to go zero-waste. You can start with simple steps and then move to more complex ones that would make you move gradually toward your zero-waste goal.
How can you use this book?
This book has 10 chapters, and you can start with the chapter you think is best for your needs or to satisfy your curiosity.
One of the great advantages of this book is starting with educating the readers about the concept of zero-waste. Then, the book gives you “baby steps” in your zero-waste journey. Then the book moves deeply to food and dining, personal care, cleaning your house, daily life, school, work, fun time, celebrations, how to consume consciously and the book ends with a great end which is moving forward with the big steps of spreading the change.
5. Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint
We have already given you several tips on how to go zero-waste. The tips cover your-daily life activities, your fun times, your personal care routine, your travels, and your work. We have plenty of ideas to cultivate a culture of sustainability and form eco-friendly habits. Remember that we can summarize zero-waste techniques in 3Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
We consume less and reuse more to do a favor for our environment.
But how can we put that into practice or how can we measure success?
Sillo The Zero Waste Blueprint is a successful case study. Silo, in East London, Britain’s first zero-waste restaurant. The author of this book is courageous and open enough to mention his failures during the process of going zero-waste successfully. As we mentioned previously, we can go to zero waste imperfectly before we make it a reality. This book is not a conventional cooking book. It is an inspiring book that tells you what is behind the scenes of establishing a zero-waste restaurant. The book gives the readers a realistic overview of how to put zero-waste ideas into practice and how successful they can be.
The author of the book mentions that readers will know the inspiring story of a restaurant that doesn’t have a pin!
“Everything is connected, a web of life, serving one big system = zero waste”
Vegan cookbooks
“You are what you eat.”
Imagine that you started your day by eating donuts, waffles with peanut butter, or jam. Then, you took your cup of coffee with a snack. At dinner, you eat fried chicken, fries, mac and cheese, and drink some fizzy drinks.
Vs. another day when you start your day with a healthy breakfast and orange juice or yogurt. Then, throughout the day, you eat salad, smoothies, and homemade vegetarian dishes.
Whether you’re vegan or not, adding extra veggies to your table will never harm you. On the other hand, it is a great source of nutrition. We can say that you will give your body a gift when you add more veggies to your table.
- Provide your body with useful vitamins and fibers.
- Good for your digestive systems.
- Good for your stomach, your heart, and all your body.
- Stimulate your immunity system.
- Adjusts your weight.
- On top of that, it boosts your mood.
- It’s full of colors :)
- It doesn’t have too much cholesterol.
Forming good dietary habits is a lifetime achievement. we selected high-quality books that would help you to add extra veggies dishes to your table. We understand that your life might be hectic, and you may have a busy schedule. You can be a student, a working mom or young professional,or simply anyone who wants to have a healthier lifestyle, you will find one of these books talking to you.
You will enjoy the “know-how” of preparing breakfast, salads, smoothies, soups, pasta, homemade staples, and more with simple ingredients in your home.
6. Plant-Based Diet in 30 Minutes: 100 Fast & Easy Recipes for Busy People
The first book we recommended is very simple and easy to follow. Now, you can have more variety of meals with less time. Breakfast, smoothies, salad and bowls, handhelds, pasta and noodles, stir-fries, curries, soups, stews, homemade staples, and more!
The motto is “You don’t have to spend more time in your kitchen” to cook.
- You don’t have to have a repetitive or boring menu.
- First, learn basic cooking skills. Stick refrigerator, key pantry cooking ingredients.
- Recommend kitchen tools to make your life easier.
- Cooking short-cuts.
- Time-saving hacks.
- Cook in one pot (easy to clean your kitchen).
What is also great about this book is that it takes you on a journey of cuisine around the world.
7. The Vegan 8: 100 Simple, Delicious Recipes Made with 8 Ingredients or Less
You can cook several delicious dishes using 8 simple ingredients or less that you already have in your kitchen.
The book gives you creative tips to use the same ingredients with the magical touch of species to cook a great variety of snacks, appetizers, sauces and dressings, stews, staples, soups, and stews. oil-free, gluten-free dishes. You can check this website as a supplementary material.
8. Fermented Vegetables: Creative Recipes for Fermenting 64 Vegetables & Herbs in Krauts, Kimchis, Brined Pickles, Chutneys, Relishes & Pastes
Now, you can cook using 8 ingredients. Then, you learned more cooking hacks and you can cook more variety of dishes. You are more skillful in cooking. Let’s learn another skill which is fermenting foods.
You will master and learn the basics of fermentations. Fermented foods are inevitable in your kitchen. It can be used in meals and beverages. The book helps you to add more variety to your table and offers you a wide range of recipes, suggestions, tips, and advice that accompanies each vegetable.
What is great about this book is that it teaches you how to use fermented veggies to create a wide range of recipes from different cuisines such as Smoky Kraut Quiche, Tempeh Reuben, Pickle in a Blanket, Kimchi Mary, and Sauerkraut Coconut.
9. More Plants Less Waste: Plant-Based Recipes + Zero Waste Life Hacks with Purpose
This book is a call to have a “more plants, less waste” mindset. The book motivates readers to consume less and be more mindful of their leftovers. The book gives the readers more than 80 tasty, healthy affordable. All recipes are cost-effective and less time-consuming to make. The book has several natural home hacks from DIY deodorant to Citrus Bomb House Cleanser. Life tools to help you have a more sustainable living. The book leaves you with a 21-day zero waste challenge.
10. Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals
This is an unconventional cookbook. The book teaches you how to turn or how to use your peels, cores, rinds, and stems into delicious meals. The book’s motto is “all taste, no waste” as you don’t have to get rid of any part of your vegetables. Rather, you can use the whole plant. It has 85 innovative recipes and each chapter of the book has one specific ingredient you can use to create several recipes.
11. The Homemade Vegan Pantry: The Art of Making Your Own Staples
Miyoko Schinner The author of this book calls it a homemade revolution. The author teaches you a fresher, lighter, healthier, and more natural approach to cooking and eating. cream and pizza dough, granola and breakfast sausage, French-style buttercreams, roasted tomatoes, pasta, and more. The book guides the readers on how to cook easily without special equipment. The book is supported by artistic pictures that give it a beautiful visual appeal. What is best about this book is that it uses basic ingredients- without any overcomplications- to create basic food staples. You can use this book to create condiments such as ketchup, mustard, barbeque sauce, pesto, ranch dressing, and more. The book includes dairy and egg-free goodness, gluten-free snacks, and crackers as well.
Eco-friendly notebooks and journals
We all use paper for endless purposes. To study, to print important reports or documents, to take notes, or jot down our ideas. Papers are our companions to write in our diaries to vent and express ourselves too.
Have you ever thought about where we get our papers from?
Papers are usually made of tress, cotton, or other natural fibers.
We want you to imagine the huge industrial cycle to convert natural resources into the piece of paper we use in your schools, universities or at work, or even at home. Can you imagine now how many trees and plants or natural resources we consume to create papers?
We should fulfill our needs in a more sustainable eco-friendly way. We selected some eco-friendly products that floor the 3Rs of the zero-waste philosophy which are reduce, reuse, and recycle.
12. Eco-Friendly Natural Cork Hardcover Writing Notebook
This product adopts the philosophy of recycling to achieve zero waste. It is made of cork wood which is a recyclable and biodegradable material. It’s acid-free and cruelty-free as well. Cork is a durable material, and the papers are usually 20%-50% thicker and smoother than normal papers. What is also pleasant about this notebook is that it is free from fluoresce which means that it is more comfortable for your eyesight. It is stylish and comes with a beautiful gif tbox.
13. Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook
The second product is a smart reusable notebook. We can call it “the magical” notebook”. It comes with a small fabric to whip your writings and use again. You can take screenshots of your notes, and upload them to the cloud via the Rocketbook application. The app uses the power of AI to enable you to use smart search for your notes. This note adopts the philosophy of reuse to achieve zero waste through the “clean & wipe” cycle.
14. Dotted Notebooks [10 pack] 100% Recycled Notebooks With 100 Thick Pages
To have zero waste, we need to do 3rs. Reduce, reuse and recycle. The following products follow the concept of zero-waste philosophy. These books are all made of 100 %recyclable materials, and it comes with zero plastic packagings.
15. 2022 Sustainability Weekly Planner + Monthly Overview: Actions to care for the air, water, ocean, ecosystems and wildlife – Sunny Warm Patchwork
This weekly planner can be your companion to taking action to save the environment. It can also be used to track your progress and the new habits you are forming. The weekly planner is divided into categories as follows
• A healthy ocean
• Reduce plastic waste
• Reduce carbon emissions
• Sustainable fashion
• Protect local wildlife
• Eco-home
• Less Food waste
• Eco-Garden
• Sustainable travel
• Save water and energy
• Global conservation
• Reduce consumption
Eco-activism
Throughout the article, we talked about the concept of zero waste and the 3Rs of zero waste, and how it can have a positive and profound impact on our environment. We covered zero-waste practical tips, zero-waste cooking techniques, and some eco-friendly products and vegan cookbooks. We should be grateful to the eco-friendly activists who draw our attention to some hot topics area.
16. Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science
This book is a call to go back to indigenous science. The author Dr. Jessica Hernandes clarifies that indigenous communities are the most affected by climate change, yet they have gone through colonialism, extractive capitalism, and delegitimization. They were also systematically “otherized”. The author explains the need of having new perspectives to solve environmental issues since mainstream western conservatism is not the ultimate solution. Dr. Hernandez argues that indigenous alternatives would be practical. The book is full of inspiring stories and case studies from indigenous people in Latin America as well.
17. Climate Action Challenge: A Proven Plan for Launching Your Eco-Initiative in 90 Day
Climate change is usually an underrated topic although it has a profound impact on the planet and literally all of us. The author of the book starts with a reflection on the coronavirus pandemic.
Joan Gregerson, Founder of Green Team Academy guides you on how to work collaboratively with team members, and how to form your team’s own to start 50 Simple things you can do to save the Earth to a completely new level. The book cultivates the culture of benign “part of the solution.”
The book fosters sustainable culture through raising self-awareness, then acting and spreading the change.
Joan Gregerson is the author of the book and the founder of Green Team Academy. You can visit this link to know more successful stories.
18. Eco Winners: Uncovering the Traits of Successful Environmental Leaders
Throughout history, there were several events that had a profound impact on nature. The first was the agriculture revolution, then the industrial revolution, then it was followed by the current agricultural and animal markets.
The author of this book gives insights into the key historical events and their implications on nature. The book explains how the current environmental problems motivated activists to take action. The book also gives the inspiring stories of environmental activists such as the stories of Greta Thunberg, Wangari Maathai, the Mayor of San Luis Obispo Heidi Harmon, and the creator of Soul Fire Farm Leah Penniman. The author’s hope, in the end, is to pass the words to a new generation of people.
Final Thoughts
You can get started with the books closest to your heart, lifestyle, your preferences, and your needs. We need awareness, patience, and resilience to change our attitudes and get into new eco-friendly habits. It is never too late to achieve zero waste, eat healthier, and use more sustainable products. We can embrace our failures at the beginning. Then, we can do something more positive for our environment one step at a time.
