Green Enough by Leah Segedie – Book Review

Disclaimer: I received this book free in exchange for a review. If you purchase from various links below, I will make a commission.

I don’t talk on here often about my crunchy granola chick tendencies. After all, this is a running blog, not a parenting or green living blog. But in my daily life, I try to make choices that are good for the environment and good for my family. We buy grass fed beef from a local farmer, I get organic produce as much as possible, my husband takes his lunch in reusable bags/containers, vinegar is my favorite cleaning agent, and I recently started replacing all of my beauty products with Beautycounter items. (And Shoo was born at home, but I’m not sure if that helped the environment LOL)

But I’m not perfect (and I don’t try to be)- my kids eat way more processed foods than I’d care to admit and you’ll have to pry my Tide Sport out of my hands (I’m sorry, but teens stink).  But we all make compromises and that’s what I love about Leah Segedie’s new book – there’s no judgment and she presents options. It’s all about giving you information so you can make your own choices.

Leah Segedie’s Green Enough (affiliate link) looks at the different ingredients in our foods, storage products, cleaning agents, and personal care products and lists what ones are best to avoid. Much of her research is well foot-noted and she has a scientist and a pediatrician offering their feedback on various items and ideas. Much of what she discusses is not new news. Many of these items have been in the news for years. BPA, anyone?

So, why read Green Enough? Because the book offers lots of useful, easy to access ideas and substitutions. Each chapter offers Bad, Better, and Best for products to use. There’s an analysis of favorite produce and which ones you should definitely buy organic. That’s right – it’s not an across the board “you must buy organic or else” recommendation. I really appreciate that because, let’s be real, sometimes things are too expensive or not available. And for a bonus, there are a bunch of recipes in the book for you to try.

The best part about this book is that the organization allows you to decide what areas you want to change and then presents you with ways to improve. It’s not a guilt inducing book. You can pick and choose the areas that matter to you. Do I agree with everything in the book? No, but I also haven’t taken the time to do a lot of research on some of the topics. For now, I’m going with the “low hanging fruit”. I’ll do what makes sense to me and take the steps that are easily attainable and affordable. Progress not perfection.

Want to give it a read? It’s available on Amazon for purchase now.

And now I’m going to go out and shovel all of the lovely snow that has fallen today. At least with a March snowstorm, things should be back to normal soon…