Making it easy to "go green"!

"Going Green" - what is it? And how do we do it? Why does it make a difference?

These days "going green" is like a Hollywood craze. Seeing celebrities cruising around in a Prius or saving the rainforest...some people care more about the habitats in Antartica or in the jungle. Some people love to be in nature and live on roots and berries. Others of us just want to do small things to help our little part of the planet be less toxic.

I am one of those "other" people. I like the products I use to be free of things I can't pronounce, and warning labels, and smells I don't recognize. I don't want to worry that my vitamins are doing nothing for me except going right thru me, a waste of my time and energy.

I needed to find out more for myself on what "going green" meant to other people. I ask here in what I think is a "common sense" approach to why people pick "natural" vs. "storebrand" - is it time, convenience, not enough knowledge? I hope I am able to shed some light on the subject here on this video - thanks for watching :)

So - if we believe it IS important, how do we do it? I decided to look online...

I found out there is a lot out there these days to look at. I found one former investigative reporter with a common sense approach -she and her husband appeared on Oprah not too long ago talking about their favorite natural cleaners - I think she does a great job describing how we can help the planet and our own home by using natural organic cleaners and other products as well as organic food without pesticides -

To see her talking about her philosophy on video, and why she wrote this book - go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eFu_ShwOfM&eurl=http://www.myspace.com/laurelsenergy&feature=player_embedded

You'll see it on my site - then come back if you'd like to read an excerpt from it here.

Thanks for watching!

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Here is an excerpt from her new book - "Green Goes With Everything" --

By Sloan Barnett
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416578451

INTRODUCTION

Let's begin by agreeing that we are all creatures of habit. We do what we do every day because that's the way we've always done it. It takes a big reason for us to make big changes in our lives. And the reason is usually very personal.

Much to my surprise, I've become a green activist. I wasn't always. Oh sure, I cared a lot about our planet and the changes we've made to it. But it wasn't clear to me what I could do to make a difference. Then something very big and very personal happened and I saw the light, and the light was green.

Here's my story.

My son Spencer had just turned three when, one day, I noticed he was coughing a lot. At first, I didn't think anything of it. Kids get sick. I told him to lie down, thinking he'd be fine -- it was just a cough. A short time later I realized that his heart was pounding, as if it were trying to beat right out of his chest. Terrified, my husband Roger and I rushed him to the hospital. The emergency room doctors placed our son on oxygen and gave him strong steroids to help clear his airways. We spent the next two nights in the intensive care unit. The doctors told us he had something called reactive airways dysfunction syndrome -- a form of asthma.

Asthma? How did our little boy develop asthma? We'd never heard of asthma coming on so suddenly. We were confused and sick with worry.

We talked to our son's doctor. We talked to other doctors. We asked questions but never got satisfactory answers. Ultimately, we knew our son's condition had to be either genetic or environmental. Neither my husband nor I had any family history of asthma, going back for four generations. So we concluded the cause was environmental.

I've spent most of my career working as a consumer reporter, so I knew how to dive right in and begin researching. It didn't take long to discover that the United States is in the midst of an asthma epidemic. One of every thirteen school-age children in the United States has asthma. Asthma in children younger than five has increased 160 percent since 1980. Nine million U.S. children under the age of eighteen have been diagnosed with asthma. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease in the United States, and it's the third leading cause of hospitalization among children younger than fifteen. The suspected cause of these stunning changes? At least six well-designed epidemiological studies have found one answer: a strong link between the use of certain cleaning products and asthma.1 That stopped me cold. The cause of my son's asthma may have been me. I may have been poisoning my own son.

At the time, Roger had just become chairman of Shaklee Corporation, the leading natural nutrition company in the United States. Shaklee also produces a line of natural, nontoxic cleaning products, and has since the 1960s. Shaklee was green when green was just a color and "biodegradable" was a word only scientists used. We started using Shaklee products exclusively, and Spencer has never again visited the emergency room. Coincidence? I don't think so, and once you've read this book, I don't think you will either.

After that scare, I went to work learning about living clean and green. Much of the information you need to get clean and green is out there, but we're all so busy we don't have time to weed through all that material on the Internet and in books. Plus, it's all so scientific, it's easy to lose your way.

Since my husband and I began our crusade to help others get clean, my family and friends have bombarded me with questions about everything from cleaning products to baby clothes. I found myself becoming the go-to person for all sorts of well-educated but woefully misinformed people. And the more questions they asked, the more I realized the depth of the need out there for information in plain English. The media assault us daily with scary statistics and dire warnings about harmful products. Sometimes the information is reliable, sometimes it's not. Who can hope to separate what's important and relevant from what's just sensational and frightening? I thought that if I could compile the most crucial information, make it accessible and user friendly, and maybe even a little entertaining, people would be able to absorb the message.

Writing the book you have in your hands became my mission.

......

When it comes to the environment -- and many other things, for that matter -- I think most people make choices based on three criteria: health, convenience, budget. Then, if their choice happens to be good for the planet too -- great. Bonus. Hard to think about melting glaciers when you're tired, hungry, and operating on a tight budget.

That's where this book comes in. It helps you make greener choices without sacrificing convenience and budget. More important, they'll be choices that will also be improving your family's health. And be warned: Once you get started, you won't be able to stop. There's a natural momentum that comes with doing the right thing for yourself and your family and your planet. You buy one nontoxic cleaning product, you start using one baby bottle made from materials that are safe for your infant, and the next thing you know you're recycling and riding a bike to work and buying organic cotton towels. I think helping the environment is a lot like working out. I always say that just putting on the workout clothes is something to be proud of. It's a step forward. That's the thing that matters: starting.

When I first thought of calling this book Get Clean, my mother told me she thought it sounded too much like a rehab book. I laughed. But now I realize she was on to something. This is a rehab book. It's life rehab. And though I can't help you kick all your bad habits, I hope to help you kick some of them.

So let's get started.

Copyright © 2008 by Sloan Barnett


Laurel - www.bestlifepossible.com