Thrifty Green: Ease Up on Energy, Food, Water, Trash, Transit, Stuff and Everybody Wins

by Priscilla Short

Priscilla Short lived off the grid for a year in a strawbale house in Taos, NM, with no electricity, no running water, and a wood burning stove for heat. At the end of the year, Short returned home to Denver committed to making a smaller ecological footprint by consuming less and conserving more. In Thrifty Green , Short offers a unique, resourcebyresource approach that shows us that the best way to practice conservation, the real winwin, involves saving money as we lighten up. In the tradition of Ed Begley, Jr.'s Living with Ed , this book will help you make crucial decisions about transportation, heat, power, light, water, food, and garbage. Peppered with examples of people living both on and off the grid, eccentric and ordinary, who are deliberately making choices to live with less, Thrifty Green is much more than a howto book. It is a conscientious guide to the art of going green that includes a wealth of terrific tips, fun facts, and straightforward strategies that will make you think about conservation in a whole new way.

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Tina Cipolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it obnoxious when seriously wealthy people go blathering on about how we all need to reduce our carbon footprint and use less. I particularly dislike the sanctimonious ranting that usually runs rampant in these sorts of books. This book, while intersting, is in this category unfortunately.

The author at one point says she was unaware that anyone could pay $200 for a pair of shoes. Really? A Wellesly graduate ski bunny who is a former defense contractor was unaware that there are $200 pairs of shoes? I find this so impossible to believe that it hurts the credibility of the author. Anyone who has seen an episode of Sex in the City knows that you can pay a heap more than that for a pair of shoes! This kind of out and out lying is offensive.

The author and I, however share the opinion that all the lip service paid to "work life balance" in corporate America is just that, lip service. And she did indeed leave a corporate job after 10 years, and take a year to stop, think and change her life. This is where the book proves interesting and I wished she had focused more on the year in which she lived in a straw bale house off the grid outside of Taos.

You can find more informative books out there on reducing and living a lower impact lifestyle (Sharon Astyk's books are better in this regard). If you are interested in learning about her year off the grid and why and how she did it, then there is probably just enough in this book to sustain you.

[Tashie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It says Thrifty Green on the title and yet the beginning half of the book is about living "off the grid." Which I sure as hell can't afford, thus the need to be thrifty. In general, I didn't like the set up of the book. She didn't make many points I wasn't already familiar with and it is all in long form like a novel. I don't work well with that when its a browsing type of book. But that's just me.