Photo: Responsible Travel
'While you are lounging next to a pool or resting at the top of a mountain, why not use the time to catch up on your green reading?'

Suzanne Elvidge looks at what you can read on holiday and stay green

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Are you heading off for an eco-holiday, either here in the UK or abroad?

While you are lounging next to a pool or resting at the top of a mountain, why not use the time to catch up on your green reading?

Eco books for grown-ups

Green Places to Stay: Eco-lodges and Other Green Places to Stay – Many places call themselves 'eco' or 'green' and don’t really hold up. The authors of this book have looked for places that also go the extra mile to provide responsible holidays.

Green Living for Dummies – An introduction to sustainable living, covering home, garden, travel and work. For those of you who listen to Radio 4, one of the authors is Liz Barclay from You and Yours.

The Organic Directory 2007/8 - From more than 2000 listings, find your nearest farm shop, or look for a farmer’s market to visit while you are away.

Eco Deco: Eco-friendly Design Ideas for the Home - This book looks at re-using materials we would usually throw away for interior design, including card, paper, fabric, wood, ceramics, glass, plastic and metal.

How to Live a Low-carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change – Chris Goodall’s book is designed to be a one-stop reference guide to calculating carbon emissions and helping reduce your carbon footprint, including transport, heating, food and holiday travel.

Energy: Use Less, Save More and Water: Use Less, Save More – Two suggestions for the price of one - together, these two books give you 200 eco hints and tips.

Everything you always wanted to know about birds... but were afraid to ask An RSPB book to dip into and to amuse and educate, with over 450 questions and answers and including black and white line drawings.

Green Essentials A series of 12 paperbacks on green gardening, from attracting wildlife to banishing it (well, slugs, anyway). Small enough to tuck in your pocket.

Eco-books for kids

The Best Eco Book Ever - A book for kids that covers recycling, the environment, and ecology, with lots of activities.

Nature's Playground: Activities, Crafts and Games to Encourage Your Children to Enjoy the Great Outdoors - When I were a kid, all of this were fields and we roamed for weeks with now't but a Marmite sandwich and a dog on a string!

Kids are apparently suffering from nature deficit this book is full of games, crafts and adventures for the great outdoors, throughout the year.

If you fancy a bit of fiction, try to make sure these have the smallest possible environmental impact by borrowing from a library, buying them second-hand from a charity shop or online (you can sell them here too), or seeing if anyone is giving any away on Freecycle.

And when you’ve read them, you could always ‘release them into the wild’ using BookCrossing.

And finally, mark your book with a recycled metal or card bookmark and enjoy your reading.

Read some of our other Ethical Living articles

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