Combine more than 400 simple environmental solutions with a dozen of the world’s biggest celebrities and you have THE GREEN BOOK: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time (Three Rivers Press Original; June 19, 2007). It’s fact filled, positive, and a user-friendly approach for people wondering how they can participate today to help save the planet. Will Ferrell, Robert Redford, Ellen DeGeneres, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Justin Timberlake, Tyra Banks, Owen Wilson, Martha Stewart, Tiki Barber, and Jennifer Aniston are just some A-listers who explain how they are living greener lives. THE GREEN BOOK shows how everybody else can, too.

THE GREEN BOOK is written by Elizabeth Rogers, co-producer of MTV’s eco-friendly show Trippin, and Thomas M. Kostigen, a longtime journalist and writer who pens the "Ethics Monitor" column for Dow Jones MarketWatch. With a foreword by Cameron Diaz and William McDonough and many celebrity testimonials sprinkled throughout, THE GREEN BOOK is the first guide of its kind to bring practical green living to a wide audience by showing it the small steps that people can take at home, at work, and in the world at large to make a huge difference. Rogers and Kostigen address nearly every aspect of life, from making lunch to listening to music, and-without inducing guilt, nagging, or preaching-offer more than 400 simple solutions you can pick and choose from to suit your lifestyle.

Every solution is accompanied by details on the impact that one small change will have on the environment.

Here’s what you can do at home . . .

If every home in America set its thermostat a degree higher for air-conditioning and a degree lower for heating, we could save more than $10 billion a year on energy costs, enough to provide a year’s worth of gasoline, electricity, and natural gas to every person in Iowa!

At the office . . .

Avoid using a cover page when faxing documents to save paper on both ends of the transmission. Seventeen million trees per year are cut down to supply fax paper in the United States.

At the bank . . .

Don’t take an ATM receipt. ATM receipts are one of the top sources of litter on the planet. If everyone in the United States left their receipts in the machine, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator fifteen times.

Online . . .

If you can, send a text message or e-mail from a handheld device or cell phone instead of from a computer, especially for quick, one-line notes. You’ll save yourself time and conserve energy. Compared to sending a text message, e-mailing and instant messaging from a computer uses more than thirty times the electricity per message.

With THE GREEN BOOK as your guide, you can see how one person’s actions truly can improve the health of our planet, one paper clip at a time.

About the Authors
Elizabeth Rogers has worked with the Clinton campaign and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and she created and produced MTV’s eco-friendly show Trippin’. She is currently an environmental consultant and lives with her son in Venice, California. She tries to shift a habit daily.

Thomas M. Kostigen has written about personal, business, and social issues such as global warming and the environment for almost two decades. He currently pens the "Ethics Monitor" column for Dow Jones MarketWatch, and his work regularly appears in publications around the world.

Questions and Answers:

What was your inspiration for THE GREEN BOOK-how did this get started?

Elizabeth Rogers: The idea for the book came when I was with Cameron Diaz working on MTV’s Trippin’. We wanted to leave the audience with one simple solution they could implement in daily life that would connect their behavior globally. We dug deep, went through tons of research, all these different eco-friendly websites and resources, to find what we could and realized that-though we had access to the right people-this sort of information didn’t exist. We thought, this is crazy, there has to be a resource guide that is user-friendly with information on why you turn off the lights, why there’s a connection to your behavior, and what is going on in the environment. It didn’t exist, so we wrote it!

In the book, Cameron Diaz refers to herself "a selfish American," an eager consumer of goods, but someone who wants to do good, too. Are those desires mutually exclusive? And why is that perspective missing in a lot of the current environmental discussion?

Elizabeth Rogers: I realized when I started talking to environmental organizations that there was a disconnect in how they were speaking to the masses, what they were expecting from the average consumer. I want to be selfish, I don’t want to give up luxuries, and I’m not going to put a stationary bike in the closet and ride it to create power for my home. Not everyone can afford to go buy a Prius today or wants to go through the trouble of outfitting their homes with solar panels.

Environmental experts get very involved in a narrow perspective-to their credit, that’s why they are the experts. But sometimes they forget the perspective of the stay-at-home mom, the busy executive, the NASCAR fan, etc. THE GREEN BOOK casts a wider net to draw in the masses because, in some ways, the environmental movement has been a very elitist, tree-hugger mentality. The middle ground is very affected by this and may not know how to get involved but would want to if they had the information. With THE GREEN BOOK, we are hoping to bridge that gap.

Thomas Kostigen: I think people want to know-in all seriousness-paper or plastic? Because one is better than the other and there is a reason why, and once they are aware, they can make informed choices on something that basic. Consumers want to know technical but simple answers to questions that immediately impact their day-to-day lives: How do I make my home not green but greener? Is tap water better than bottled water because it saves the plastic bottle? This book drills down to a lot of much-needed basic information.

THE GREEN BOOK is refreshing because it doesn’t make the reader feel guilty for being a consumer and it doesn’t make the reader feel discouraged by the plight of the earth-was that intentional?

Elizabeth Rogers: We were really, really aware of not being judgmental-there is no finger-pointing, no one being told to spend money, and in fact it saves most people money. This is a book filled with ideas that are easy, that make you feel good, and that save you money. The reality is, you could follow the advice of every expert in the environmental movement and there would still be no "perfect" way to exist, because just being alive on this earth means we all make an impact on the environment. Our idea is to just do the best you can, to realize that the little things you do can make a big difference.

Thomas Kostigen: In THE GREEN BOOK, we stayed away from what we call the three Ds: dull, dry, and dense. We are not academic, not preaching to the choir, we don’t ask people to change their lifestyle drastically and become hippies. We don’t make readers want to blow their brains out because the sky is falling and the world is ending. Our ideas are simple, accessible, and for those who want to make a difference.

Why did you think it was important to have celebrity involvement in THE GREEN BOOK?

Elizabeth Rogers: I think that the more we can saturate pop culture with the green message, the more it will be accepted, received, and embraced. And if someone picks up the book because they are a Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan or because they want to read about Justin Timberlake’s trip to Africa, or because they love listening to Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, that’s terrific-with the celebrities involved, we have twelve more reasons for someone to want to access the content and the message.

Thomas Kostigen: I think celebrity is the best, biggest, most effective way to bring eyeballs to a cause. Last year, the most searched-for words on Yahoo! were "Britney Spears." Celebrity is what people are drawn to, it’s like the color red in a room-your eye goes right to celebrity. If that gets more people to pick up the book and adopt the solutions, all the better"¦

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