A few years ago, a gal named Crissy Trask noticed that everywhere she went, people she met were excited and interested in the green movement.  Everyone was talking about how important it is to live responsibly and be mindful of the earth.  Then she realized that all these people that seemed so gung-ho about an environmentally friendly life weren’t actually doing anything about it.

After a bit of research and asking around, Crissy realized that the people in her life were excited and interested in the prospects of a cleaner, more sustainable world, but didn’t really know what they could do to help or even where to go to find out what they could do.  That’s when she decided to write It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living.

Who should read this book: If you’re relatively new to the concept of sustainability, need some help navigating the lingo, or looking for some help figuring out what types of pursuits might fit your lifestyle, this book can offer some guidance as well as references that you can continually look back to.

Who shouldn’t read this book: If you’re looking for a matter-of-fact guide to tell you what to do, then this book isn’t for you.  Also, if you’re looking for playful storytelling, this book won’t be a good fit – it’s very middle-of-the-road in its presentation.

It’s Easy Being Green is just what it says it is, a handbook.  In fact, I prefer to think of it more as a reference manual as it is filled with definitions of commonly heard (but often misunderstood) terms from around the greenoshphere (I just made that word up so no, it’s not included in the handbook) as well as tons of external resources to get you going in the direction you want once you’ve read it and decided what that direction might be.

The real value in this book, in my opinion, is the 59 page list of tips (organized by topic) that allow you to define a roadmap of things you will do to improve your eco-footprint.  At 59 pages, it’s a bit cumbersome, but it’s really comprehensive.  Here’s how you use it (This process is also described in the book):

1. Read through all the tips, one at a time, making a check in the 3^rd box next to it if it sounds interesting to you.
2. Go through the list again, looking only at the tips you identified as interesting and place a check mark in the 2^nd box if you feel it’s something you’d actually like to pursue.
3. One by one, go through each tip and begin to accomplish them, giving yourself a time frame to complete each one.  To avoid overload, don’t focus on more than one item at a time.  Give each your full attention.
4. Using the 1^st box next to each tip, give yourself a rating of 1-5 to identify how you feel you performed implementing it.
5. Start over at step 1.

This section of the book has the ability to turn into a living document as you fill it out and pursue the tips you identified.  Once you’re done, you might find it useful to go back and look over all the ones you chose, implemented, and scored yourself on.  You’ll probably find that you performed a lot better in certain areas than others.  It might help you to prioritize your green pursuits going forward.

I should also mention that Crissy understands that her audience likes to buy stuff as she includes 2 chapters in her book titled Buying Green and Green Shopping Online. Personally, I prefer the Don’t Buy Stuff method to getting through life, but that’s not exactly realistic and it’s important to know how to make the best choices when you need to purchase something, so I’m glad she covered it thoroughly.

Crissy also writes a chapter titled Getting Involved where she provides numerous tips and resources for easy ways to connect with organizations that promote sustainability in areas you may be interested in.

Overall, I can’t say that It’s Easy Being Green was a great fit for me.  I feel like I’m slightly beyond the level of material that was presented, but I do appreciate all the external references provided.  I’ve written down a number of them that I will eventually check out to see if they could fit into my pursuits. But like I said earlier, if you’re just starting out or need help finding direction, you might find a lot of guidance from this handbook – especially from the 59 page worksheet.

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The Giving Tree is an illustrated children’s story, written by Shel Silverstein that chronicles the relationship between a boy and a tree.  In the beginning, they’re playmates – the boy climbs the tree, swings on its branches and eats apples in its shade.  They both enjoy each other’s company very much.  But the boy grows a little bit older and starts to come around less often.  This saddens the tree.  When he eventually returns he’s grown up a bit and no longer wants to play.  Instead, he wants money to “buy things and have fun.”  The tree doesn’t have money, but she is happy to let the boy harvest her apples to sell in the city.  So he does, and disappears again.

When the boy returns years later, the tree is excited and anxious to play, but the boy is a grown man now and hasn’t the time or desire to.  He wants a house so that he can find a wife and have children and raise them.  The tree cannot give the boy a house so, instead, she offers him her branches.  He cuts them and disappears.  Again the tree is sad.  When the boy returns, he is middle aged, sad, and wanting a boat that he can sail away. The tree, with no boat to give, allows him to cut down her trunk to make one.  The boy does and sails away.

When he returns once again as a very old man, the tree tells the boy she’s nothing left to give him.  The old man now says he has no need for anything else.  He’s too tired to do anything but sit.  The tree offers him a seat on her stump.  He takes it, and the two become friends again.  And the tree is happy.

I have to admit that The Giving Tree is my favorite children’s book.  I like it so much that, at one time, I considered having it’s cover illustration tattooed on my arm.  If that’s not the ultimate testament to my enjoyment, then I don’t know what is.  Maybe if I put it on my forehead?

This story silently speaks volumes about the unconditional love that can exist in a one-sided relationship while warning those that take advantage of such a relationship of the harm they inadvertently do to those who provide for them.  Looking at this story through our green goggles, it’s only fitting that the two characters happen to be a human and a tree.

Think back to the different life stages that you’ve been through. What were some of the things that you really appreciated and what did you take for granted? Can you say that you truly appreciated anything when you were just a child?  Probably not, but then again, you were too young to really take advantage of a relationship.  What about when you were a teenager?  A young adult?  Maybe you’re middle aged or even elderly now.  What has changed throughout your life regarding what and who you truly appreciate and what and who you might have taken advantage of?  As we age and aspire to new and bigger challenges, we shift our attention from one priority to the next, even though the resources and relationships that support us might not change at all.

I don’t say this to make anyone feel bad.  We’ve all been guilty at some point in our lives of taking from one relationship to give to another.  What’s really important is that we’re able to recognize when we’re doing this and make an effort to rebalance our focus.  Life is tough and we’ll never get it perfect, but just by trying we’ll allow ourselves to build stronger, balanced relationships.

From a frugally green perspective, try to think about some of the ambitions that you’ve had, or some that you have now, and consider the potential impacts that you have on various natural resources and systems as you pursue them.  Then, use that knowledge to focus on finding new, creative ways to lessen that impact.  The idea here isn’t to feel guilty or stop pursuing your goals, it’s to be aware of how they affect other people and things and then to take action on their behalf.

A personal example I can give is simply writing this blog.  Since I started Frugally Green in April, 2009 I’ve spent considerably more time sitting in front of the computer reading, writing, researching, and designing than I ever would have without this website as motivation.  As a result, my computer is using up a lot more electricity than it was before.

Realizing this, I wanted to adopt a small change in my life that I could use to offset it.  The solution I came up with?  Drive my truck less on the weekends.  Weekends are errand and chore days for me.  I go around town picking up things I put off during the week, visit friends, and run out to the farmer’s markets that Jessie sells cupcakes at.  When I realized that most of the places I go don’t require me to carry much  and that I have a perfectly functional bike, the solution was obvious.

Now, when I run to the hardware store or out to the farmer’s market, I just hop on the ol’ two wheeler and pedal off.  I still have to use the truck to pick up large items now and again, but I have significantly cut my weekend driving down – more than enough to offset the extra computer use (and it doesn’t hurt that I now spend a good chunk of my weekends huddled over a keyboard thinking of witty parentheticals to make you chuckle).

The relationships that we create with people, places and things can sometimes lead to unsustainable practices.  Lots of times, we don’t even notice because we’ve become so consumed by our pursuits.  Remember that, like the Giving Tree, the earth will provide to us all that we are willing to take from it, without making much of a fuss.  If we ignore that for too long, like the boy in our story did, we could come to the end of the line with little left to be harvested by those that will follow us.

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.”

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We recently hired a new employee at work to be our sustainability engineer, and to all of our benefit, she brought with her a whole stack of books about sustainable construction, architecture, and life at home to assemble a “Green Library” in our office.  Perusing through it the other day, one title in particular caught my eye – Homebrew Wind Power: A Hands-on Guide to Harnessing the Wind.  I was excited.  One of my long-term goals in life is to make my home carbon neutral and entirely off the grid.  I’m still a renter, and to be honest, I may never live somewhere where wind power would be feasible to employ, but I’m always interested in learning something new when it comes to sustainable do-it-yourself projects.  So I checked it out and spent a few minutes reading each night before bed.

Homebrew Wind Power, authored by Dan Bartmann & Dan Fink, leads you step by step through the process of building your own wind turbine as part of a renewable energy system. The Dans live entirely off the grid in a small community in the Colorado Rockies and have devoted a huge chunk of their lives to building and testing wind turbines made from easily obtained materials.  For an instructional manual, I was fairly impressed with the friendly, conversational tone that they kept throughout the course of the book.  The dog and cat haikus that are sporadically placed throughout the text are especially fun (you can tell how much they love their pets):

Nap under turbine
Blades spin, but no birds are killed
I was so hungry…

The book is basically divided into three sections which provide a comprehensive review of what you’ll need to know in order to take on a project like this.

1. Intro to renewable energy and wind turbines

In the beginning, the Dans give a run down of how a renewable energy system works, particularly with a windmill, from the turbine itself to all the bits and pieces that make a complete system function like inverters, battery banks, meters, and controllers.  I was happy to see that they also spent a bit of time making sure their readers understand the importance of energy conservation – adding a windmill to your property won’t make a lot of sense if you’re wasting all of the electricity it produces!  They even include a section on shop safety.  There are a few safety concerns specific to wind turbine building and the Dans hammer them into your head over and over again.  While it gets a bit tiring after awhile, I appreciate it.  They don’t want you pinching your fingers between any magnets, and neither do I.

Most importantly, this section helps you to decide if you have a feasible site for a wind turbine.   You need to know your area’s average wind speed (a complicated measurement to make), the height of obstacles around your site, as well as a host of other things when deciding if a wind turbine should be in your renewable energy future.

2. Assembling a homebrew wind turbine

The second part of the book moves into the meat of the topic, assembling the big, sexy machine.  If you’ve decided that you just can’t help but take on such a cool project, this is where you will learn, step by step, how to build and erect your turbine. Though it’s certainly no small feat, Dan & Dan do a pretty good job of holding your hand along the way.  Each chapter is dedicated to one bite size piece of the turbine.  You get a full list of tools and supplies you’ll need as well as suggestions on where to find any special materials.  Almost every major step of the process is documented with photos and very descriptive text.  Oftentimes, sidebars populate the pages to highlight any tips and tricks you might be interested in using to customize your turbine or to make it even more efficient.

3. Resources for researching your project

If, after careful consideration, you decide that a wind turbine will be a beneficial addition to your renewable energy system, this section is full of tables, charts, and graphs to help you size and place your windmill.  Homebrew Wind Power focuses solely on the construction of a 10 foot wind turbine (wingspan of blades).  This section, while much less robust than the rest of the book, offers help to any reader that decides that another size of turbine is a best fit for them by focusing on what will need to be done in order to scale the system up or down to fit more specific needs.

Is a homebrew wind turbine for me?

The honest answer to this question, unfortunately, is probably not.  Wind turbines are relatively simple machines, but the environment in which they can be successfully implemented is rather specific.

• Does your area have an average wind speed of at least 10 mph?
• Do you have a site on your property where you can feasibly get the machine 30 feet above any obstacle within 300 feet?  If for some reason your tower fails, will it fall entirely on your property?
• Are you already doing everything you can to reduce your energy use?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, then a homebrew wind turbine might be very beneficial to you.  If you can’t, it’s likely any machine you choose to erect will never be able to produce enough power to make a sizable dent in your home’s electricity needs. Most folks fall into the latter category.

One other incredibly important thing to consider when deciding if a wind turbine is for you is that using this windmill at a dwelling that is connected to grid power will add some considerable expense to the overall project.  The authors didn’t do the best job of explaining how much their system would cost to build, but from what I could gather, if you don’t currently have any renewable energy infrastructure at your home currently, you should plan to spend somewhere between $8,000 – $10,000. If you do, your costs will probably be closer to $5,000.  Consider that the average American Household uses around 9oo kwh each month and the turbine you build will only produce around 160 kwh per month at an average wind speed of 10 mph (this number grows exponentially as wind speed increases).

Looking at all this, you’re likely to believe that a homebrew wind turbine is not for you and you are probably right.  However, I will say that, if you like DIY projects and are interested in renewable energy, this book is a really fun read.  The authors are friendly and very honest about who their system will help and how much.  The dog and cat haikus also add a few chuckles along the way.  Even if you can’t utilize the information in the book, I feel good recommending it to anyone with an inquisitive mind interested in sustainable energy.

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We all remember the popular children’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare – a story that teaches us the virtue of setting and maintaining a pace to achieve our goals.  In it, a turtle becomes tired of listening to a nearby rabbit brag about how quick he is and challenges him to a race.  The rabbit sprints away at the start, taunting the turtle for being so slow.  Soon, though, the rabbit becomes tired.  Looking back to see that the turtle is so far behind him, he decides to rest under a tree, falling asleep.  He is later awakened by the cheers of the other woodland creatures as the turtle crosses the finish line, realizing that he’d slept too long and allowed the turtle to pass him.

It’s a simple and classic tale, the moral being, “slow and steady wins the race.” Such basic and wise words, but many times we find ourselves living as the hare rather than the tortoise.  We define goals for ourselves, become excited, pursue them with fervor, and, all too often, quickly become tired and unmotivated, abandoning what we’d started and moving onto the next flash in the pan.  On the other hand, it’s just as easy to become disenchanted with our goals when we slow down.  We’re excited and we want to see results.  When they don’t materialize as soon as we had hoped, it’s easy to think that we just won’t ever get there, and give up trying.

Slow & steady wins the race

Here at Frugally Green, I (and many of you) are on a quest for self-improvement on two fronts, and frugality and sustainability are two really broad targets!  I’ve written before about balancing multiple goals and how important it is to find opportunities to achieve them simultaneously, but how do we stay on track? How do we balance the pursuit of our dreams between speeding away and burning out like the hare and plodding along like the tortoise, afraid we won’t ever get there?  I think we all know deep down the tortoise is, undoubtedly the winner of the race, but the hare has its place, too.  The fundamental task in achieving our goals is breaking them down into many smaller goals and assigning “tortoise” or “hare” characteristics to them.

The role of the Tortoise

In becoming frugal and green, the tortoise represents our overall, long-term goals and the planning that is required to achieve them. We’re all different, so this could be anything from starting an international business or foundation committed to sustainability and becoming a financially independent philanthropist to simply reducing your energy consumption and recycling more than you throw away.  Whatever your ultimate goal is, the tortoise represents the careful and deliberate planning that must take place to realize these achievements.  These are not goals that can be completed tomorrow. You must set a pace for yourself to reach these landmarks by breaking them down into smaller, more easily attainable goals.  It is through this slow and calculated process that you will build the framework that will guide your decisions towards the end goal.

So now you have an outline of how you are going to attain your highest goals.  You may still feel like you haven’t actually done anything yet, but you have! You’ve given yourself a reference guide that will tell you when you’re on the right track and when you aren’t.  It might be pages long or it might just be a few items, but now that you’ve really thought about it, you’ve got a strong focal point. Einstein once cleverly stated, “If I had only 1 hour to save the world, I would spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem.”

The role of the Hare

We know, certainly, that we can’t sustain ourselves trying to sprint our way to a finish line that could be years away, so where does the hare and his hyperactive tendencies come into play for us?  Well, since we took our time when we started off and carefully pieced together an outline that breaks down our goals into bite size pieces, we can now pursue each of them, one by one, with lightning quickness.

Now, don’t get carried away like our rabbit friend did in the story.  What I mean to say is, from our example above, maybe a few of the first steps that you lay out for yourself are to remember to turn off your computer every night, change all your light bulbs to CFLs, and only run your dishwasher when it’s full.  Pick one of these basic tasks, like turning your computer off every night, and throw yourself at it! Spend every day focusing on it until the action is ingrained into your habits.  Don’t worry about the other goals until this happens, then move on to the next.  It won’t take a lot of effort because it’s simple and you know how it will contribute to your long-term success.  Continue on this path until you’ve satisfied all your base goals.  Then, give yourself a pat on the back and move onto the next rung of the ladder. You’ll probably find that your ability to adapt becomes quicker and quicker as you travel down the course you’ve set for yourself.

Putting it all together

The Tortoise and the Hare is a timeless classic that reinforces a lesson that we learn at a young age, but is often forgotten by adults as the demands of life in a modern world bear down upon them.  The tortoise teaches us that a slow, methodical pace is what will efficiently take us long distances.  The hare teaches us that quickness is useful for short durations.

Whether we vocalize them or not, we all have goals.  We all have dreams.  Attaining them depends upon the system of support we create that will ensure success.  State your dreams without fear and pursue them the same. Be it big or small, make it a point to take one step forward every day.

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