The Martinsey Isle Trust

Green Book Review

Natural Burial honouring life's sacred thresholds

Creating an idyll of Martinsey and Lidney Islands

The following book review was written for the Simon and Shuster website

THE NEW GREEN CONSUMER BOOK

BY JULIA HAILES

PUBLISHED BY SMITH AND SCHUSTER 2007

Julia Hailes judges a coffin-design competition in Frome, Somerset

What I like about Julia Hailes' The New Green Consumer Guide - and I LOVE it - is that she expresses her own undeniably personal and unbiased views: her ability to 'investigate the questions' that we pose on ecological living. She does not provide us with regurgitated 'spin' or 'bias' in order to prove a point". Instead she gives us (and forgive the pun) a down-to-earth, individually researched opinion of 'my view'. A case in point being: "...there's absolutely no point in buying degradable bags for your partially biodegradable nappy that's on its way to landfill". (p201)

Add to this her admission to weakness over her AGA (although she is at pains to urge us not to buy a new one now, only to keep that which some of us already have!) and I am completely won over to at least listen to her arguments. This is not only because I lust for an AGA myself but because Julia is not an automaton enslaved to 'green'. She allows us all the occasional lapse! It is a very 'human' user-freindly book, in more ways than one.

There is throughout an openness and detachment (ie. not emotive), and a relaxed style, each of which is entrancing.

I would only ask for the addition of source references, the author of the various pieces of information, their credentials and any bias they may have, plus full publication details for ease of research. While endearing, Julia's explanation that "...much of it was conducted through long conversations on the telephone" (p252), though entrancing in its way, is inadequate for any follow-up of our own that we may wish to make.

More than academic study, however, what we need is a change of consciousness - what Satish Kumar calls 'Soil, Soul and Society'. For until there is a change from within, as individuals, there can be no sustainable change for our society and for our planet. Julia is the exponential model as she clearly lives this internal dialogue and change on a daily basis and gives the reader the confidence to do the same. We too can indeed make a difference. For her, consumerism is not only about what we buy in this so-called 'consumer society', but the lightness of the footprint we are to make upon our environment, lest we do indeed consume it.

Subjects include: considering the future resources required - or more tellingly given 'Consuming the Future'; home and garden; food and drink; personal matters; and transport - with some surprising conclusions. Perhaps the most worrying of these is: "...just over four decades ago everyone in the world could have lived the same lifestyle as people in the UK - now we'd need three planets... Even on a global scale human beings are using more resources every year that the Earth can produce". (p230)

Sections have a supporting interview from personalities, Pen Hadow, the polar explorer, Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs, and Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall of the Riverside Cottage programmes, and there is a foreword by Rosie Boycott.

My own bias is in green funerals and I am delighted by their new inclusion in this new edition, details of which Julia brought to a recent Natural Death Centre Conference in London. Her Death Tips are:

   • Donate your organs,

   • Say no to embalming,

   • Remove all jewellery and gold teeth before burial or cremation,

   • Dress minimally in death,

   • Choose natural fibres such as hemp for cloths,

   • Select a 'green' coffin,

   • Give cremation a miss,

   • If you're buried, find a site that will be used for other purposes,

   • Do without a head stone.

Also she says, burying as deep as "six feet under, there is little air and therefore no worms and pretty few microbes working away at turning us to mulch". And "...the brutal reality remains: burning our dead is an environmental disaster". (pp223-229)

A weblink follows each section.

The material's presentation makes it superbly accessible, rather like a study module, full of illustrations, boxed fun, with good use of colour, format, fonts and print size, with a useful index and glossary. Colourful bubbles highlight commonly held views and then another points out clearly points of advice, leaving us to make the final choice. One example: "...without pesticides it's estimated that almost a third of the world's crops would be lost before they've been harvested", with the eco-bubble then asking "But are we happy to pay the price?" (p133). A real 'zing' of a read.

Eco-friendly printing? If so, please tell us. If not, please change it.

Personally I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a fair, well researched - both personally and academically - guide to the options we have to be 'green' and I am delighted to pass this 'tour de force' from Julia and Smith and Schuster on to anyone and everyone.

JP. The Martinsey Isle Trust

The Martinsey Isle Trust

Ivy Cottage, Bath Road
Sturminster Newton, Dorset DT10 1DU, UK

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