Tuesday 10 February 2009

Drive Like a Woman, Shop Like a Man by Mary Mulvihill


New Island €8.99
USEFUL right now, this is a fantastic guide to being a keen green mean machine.
With the emphasis on ‘mean’.
Mary Mulvihill’s guide to living sustainably has 101 tips, most of which save you money.
The default settings on printers use too much ink. “Do you really need to print your airline confirmation in full colour?”
No you don’t! Mulvihill says to set your printer to black-only to save on dear colour cartridges, and select the ‘draft’ setting, or 300 dpi if you’re using a laser printer, and the toner saver option if there is one, and your ink and money will go twice as far.
Ka-ching!
Some of her ideas are a step too far for me - drying yourself all over with a facecloth after a bath, erk.
Others are brilliant, like freezing surplus cream in ice-cube trays, then dropping a cube into soup as needed.
She has truly scary information: the world supply of hafnium (used in computer chips) could be gone in 2017, as could indium, used in LCDs and flat screen TVs. Recycle, she says, while we still have stuff to recycle.
This book is the perfect present for anyone with even the palest streak of green in their makeup.
Author's site

2 comments:

Arja said...

Book sounded interesting so got it (on loan from the library).
One piece of green advice I have doubts about- Wash at 30˚ because "modern detergents" work fine at low temperatures. Surely this is just soaking your clothes in enzymes and chemicals?
Is notwashing in something a little less toxic at 40˚or 60˚(at night time when electricity demand is low) better? Only wondering.

Pageturners said...

Who knows.... we but act in faith.