Lifestyle
Our Favourite Books On How To Live A Sustainable Lifestyle
With so much conflicting nature presented to us about how we participate in the climate crisis as individuals, we wanted to share some of the books on how to live a sustainable lifestyle that we at REV have read, shared with one another, and used for some of our own research and editorials in the past. We hope these benefit you all as much as they have done us!
“Collective action is the way to save our home and way of life, and Jonathan argues it all starts with something so simple – what we eat, and don’t eat, for breakfast.”
Drawdown, Paul Hawken
If you are a solution based person, this is the book for you. With over 100 solutions to our most pressing environmental issues, this dives into everything from female education to better refrigerators as ways to solve our climate crisis. We love this book for its practical information and easy to digest solutions.
All We Can Save, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth and Katherine Wilkinson
This is a powerful call to action by some amazing women who use everything from politics to poetry when it comes to solving our climate crisis. Made up of various incredible essays from different female leaders, there is something for everyone in All We Can Save and it reminds us what exactly it is we are fighting for when it comes to environmental justice and preservation. They also have an excellent instagram page to check out!
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
This book is like a love letter to Mother Earth, reminding us of her power, grace and giving nature and just how much we owe it to her to respect and take care of her. Citing inidgenous knowledge of how to live in harmony with nature, this book is an emotional and beautiful guide on how to think about our relationship with the natural world. We cannot recommend this one enough.
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, Charles Eisenstein
This is a book that makes you change the way you think about the climate crisis and also the way in which we speak to one another about it. Eisenstein is a philosopher of social and environmental justice, and pushes us to imagine how beautiful the world could be if we learned to lead with kindness, empathy and a true love of nature. This is a book to help you think about how to speak to your family about climate change as well as make you think about how to approach your own mentality around the oftentimes difficult world we live in today.
Who Cares Wins, Lily Cole
This is a wonderful book for optimism even though it presents some pretty stark facts about the current state of the climate crises. Lily goes into depth on all of our possible solutions to climate change, from regenerative agriculture through to carbon capturing….ending with the knowledge that we all innately have that nature will most likely always offer us our best solutions. This is a book for anyone who is curious about the various ways we can approach the climate crisis with action and not apathy.
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have, Tatiana Schlossberg
In this book, Tatiana Schlossberg reveals the complicated, confounding and even infuriating ways that we all participate in a greenhouse gas-intensive economy and society and how some of the biggest and most consequential areas of unintended emissions and environmental impacts are unknowingly part of our daily activities. She brings awareness to all of these things we might be doing without knowing the harm of them, and gives us alternatives and solutions. This is a great book for both those just starting out on their sustainable journeys and also those who are further along….we learned a lot ourselves!
Zero Waste Home, Bea Johnson
Bea Johnson transformed her family’s health, finances, and relationships for the better by reducing their waste to an astonishing half litre per year. It’s all down to the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot (and only in that order!). Zero Waste Home shows how these key principles can be applied to every area of your house from the kitchen to the kids’ room, and it’s packed with easy tips for all of us: from buying in bulk and clever meal planning to simply refusing unwanted freebies and using your plants as air fresheners. Bea Johnson shows, by inspiring example, what green living looks like and offers a practical, step-by-step guide to diminishing your environmental footprint and improving your life.
The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells
This is a book that will make you want to immediately change your lifestyle, your outlook on the environment and will at times, seem quite hard to stomach. But it’s one of the most important books we at REV have all read – it tells us what we need to know about the severity of the climate crisis and what we need to do to concur it collectively. The time for action is now.
This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein
A call to arms from one of our favourite authors and essayists, Naomi Klein. Naomi has long been an advocate of taming corporate greed and calling on a Green New Deal, and in this book she lets us know exactly why this needs to happen. This book’s title says it all, it really will change everything for you when you think about living a sustainable lifestyle.
We Are The Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer
The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves – with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. But we have done it before and we can do it again. Collective action is the way to save our home and way of life. And Jonathan argues it all starts with something so simple – what we eat, and don’t eat, for breakfast. Cutting out animal products for just part of the day is enough to change the world for the better and in this book you will learn why. With his distinctive wit, insight and humanity, Jonathan Safran Foer presents the essential debate of our time as no one else could, bringing it to vivid and urgent life and offering us all a much-needed way out.
How Bad Are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything, Mike Berners Lee
Berners-Lee runs a considered eye over each area and gives us the figures to manage and reduce our own carbon footprint, as well as to lobby our companies, businesses and government. His findings, presented in clear and even entertaining prose, are often surprising. And they are essential if we are to address climate change. This is a great, straightforward guide to living our most sustainable lives and getting rid of our least sustainable habits – we loved this as it was a fun read despite the serious nature of the conversation!
Fashionopolis: Why What We Wear Matters, Dana Thomas
This is one of those books that will truly make you reconsider the way you consume – Dana’s incredible journalistic research and deep dives into some of the world’s largest fashion companies truly show us the environmental and human impact of the clothing we buy. What she reveals will leave you deeply troubled about the present state of the fashion industry, but also deeply compelled to be a part of the solution.
Listen to our podcast episode with Dana Thomas here.
