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

How one woman's year living off the grid made her think about conservation in a whole new way—and how to apply what she learned to your own lifestyle.

Priscilla Short lived off the grid for a year in a strawbale house in Taos, New Mexico, 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, resource-by-resource approach that shows us that the best way to practice conservation, the real win-win, involves saving money as we lighten up. 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 how-to 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.