Going Green not as Easy as it Seems
April 8th, 2008 by Liesl
A special report for the Cape Town Book Fair by Liesl Jobson.
Years ago, you began to support the recycling skip at the local school, washing your plastics, separating the glass. When water shortages hit Cape Town, you installed a "grey water" system so the laundry water kept your herb garden thriving. Now, power outages mean you've adjusted your geyser, and with oil at $100 plus per barrel, you've polished your bicycle and pumped up the tyres.
You are committed: determined to reduce your carbon footprint, ready to "go green", all the way. You want to save the earth and so you went looking for a book - a South African book, preferably - that would guide you on what else you can do to save the earth.
Because you won't make unnecessary trips in the car, you begin your research online and plug "green South Africa" into the search engine.
The first organisation claims to be a green search engine for South Africa: "Resource platform directory for information, products, services, consultants, contractors, institutions and magazines for the entire green industry…" How hard can this be? Click on 'information', click on 'books'. Oops - last updated in 2003.
Go to the next entry at the search engine site: Green Clippings Environmental News, which boasts "the most widely read environmental news service in Southern Africa with almost 2000 articles online. Our news analyses are read by more than 50 000 people every month, including government, business, the media, NGOs, academics and the general public."
If there's a book out there for South Africans by South Africans, they'll surely know. Give them a call. Leave a message.
Click on to the Green Party of South Africa. They espouse many of ideals you'd like to see Government embrace. Perhaps they even have a publication? You phone and leave a message. Four days later, you're still waiting for them to return your call. From the budget web page, you suspect they're under-resourced.
Click on to Global Green-South Africa. They're doing good things with schools in the George area. Encouraging for sure, but when you click on "literature" there is a single poem. A fine poem, maybe, but not a book telling you how to do this green thing. You call, but the land line is engaged and the cell phone message says this subscriber is unavailable. A link to Resurgence catches your eye, a UK magazine and international forum for ecological and spiritual thinking. If only you could find a local version…
On to Exclusive Books' website, where you enter 'green' in the search field. The first of 300 options yields a British publication with a dubious title Will Climate Change Your Life? How to Drive a 4×4 and Still Save the Planet. Humph! You happen to resent the gas-guzzlers who drive as if they owned the road and all the world's petrol resources…
You soldier on through 300 entries, feeling overwhelmed by imposing academic treatises at staggering prices. You try Exclusive Books' number and wait on hold: Sail away, Sail away… the tune plays.
"Hello Daphne," you said when Daphne answers, glad you didn't sail away, "I'm looking for a book that will help me 'go green'. I want to live in an ecologically friendly way. What's on your shelves?" Daphne sailed away for a bit longer and came back with an email for the marketing manager.
You called Green Clippings back some hours later, receiving copious apologies. Telkom on the fritz.
"There's not one complete book, to the best of my knowledge," said Richard Weeden, the editor of Green Clippings, "but if there was, we'd know about it. Sarah Ward's The New Energy Book is not bad… It's the only one of its kind and I'm not sure it's really a Joe Public kind of book. At R140, plus R20 local postage it's certainly a place to start.
"Leonie Joubert's Scorched: South Africa's Changing Climate sounds the warning bells, but it doesn't really give advice on how to live green," says Weeden.
Another online treasure appears in the Going Green Directory. Tons of great information and original ideas - but no "books" category!
Next you discover a blog about a delightful children's book: How to Turn Your Parents Green. You're a parent - maybe "kid power" is the answer: put the creativity and energy of the young to work, finding you go-green books!
Some days later an email from Maurice at Exclusive Books arrives. He has consulted various store managers all round the country - they are the folk who decide what to buy for each branch - but, he reports, "The current ranges of 'green' publications are not substantial."
By this time you've discovered for yourself that most of the information you want is available online, but precious little available in a book that you can hold between your hands. The capitalist in you is thinking, Oh! What an opportunity, a gap in the market. You always wanted to write a book…
But in your greenie heart, you're thinking of all the trees that won't get chopped down if you keep it that way.
Some recommended go-green titles, all available in SA, but none from SA:
How to Turn Your Parents Green
Diary of a Reluctant Green: Can You Save the Planet and Have a Life?
The Internet Shoppers' Guide to Going Green
Going Green: A Wise Consumer's Guide to a Shrinking Planet
The Science of Survival: Your Planet Needs You! A Kid's Guide to Going Green
