Green Goes with Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Cleaner Planet

This book is wonderful! It has made me think of how many ways I am harming my family and didn't even realize it! It has many great websites to refer to for additional resources and gets you to change your way of living immediately. I shared it with a bunch of my girlfriends and they love it too!!

Well researched - lots of help for 'going green'. I was sad she did not mention Norwex products, as I think they rank up there with some of the others mentioned, but I still would highly rec. the book.

I've been using green products (Shaklee) way before the word "green" became a popular addition to our vocabulary and yet I still have learned so much more after reading Sloan Barnett's book. She has done so much for us with the amazing amount of research and love that went into writing this treasured book. Everyone should have a copy of this in their home.

Going green is the hot right now. However, living a greener life doesn't have to be a trend; it can be part of your daily routine. That is the premise behind Sloan Barnett's Green Goes with Everything. Her concept is sound, but the book is somewhat lacking in execution.

A large portion of the book seems to be devoted to promoting Shaklee Get Clean products. Barnett's husband is chairman of the company. This seems like a conflict of interest. I do have to give Barnett a bit of credit regarding this problem. She does admit to being a shameless pitchwoman for the company. However, she also spends time pointing out her journalism credentials. By promoting her husband's company at every opportunity, Barnett loses her credibility as a journalist. She is far too biased in this respect. I actually could have tolerated the Shaklee promotion more easily if she had limited it to the chapter on cleaning products. Unfortunately, Sloan Barnett is the shameless pitchwoman that she claims to be. References to Shaklee or its products appear in almost every chapter.

Now that I've pointed out the biggest flaw in Green Goes with Everything, I also need to tell you what works in this book. The format is excellent for this type of information. Each chapter opens with "The Plain Green Truth." This is a section of bullet points that explains the key ideas in the chapter. In many cases, this section breaks down various myths about the difficulty of going green. This section also has a strong visual impact. It is printed on a light green background with strong black type. Barnett closes each chapter in a similar manner with "Five Green-Hot Tips." The tips recap the suggested changes and often offer encouragement in making those changes.

Sloan Barnett has organized this book into easy to follow chapters. Personally I think she has devoted way too much ink to the subject of cleaning, but those are also the chapters that promote her husband's company repeatedly. Most of the other topics are handled in approximately twenty pages. Each chapter is broken down into easy to read subsections. This makes the information easier to handle for most readers.

Green Goes with Everything features a wonderful resource guide at the end. Barnett has included web site listings for dozens of companies with green products. She has also organized this information into easy to use categories. This is the one place where she doesn't promote Shaklee. It is simply included on the list. This is a great go-to guide for information ranging from advocacy groups to green mattresses.

There is another flaw with Green Goes with Everything. Barnett writes with two different tones- alarmist or holier than thou. When she wants to tell you how horribly unsafe everything is, she favors an alarmist tone. When she wants to tell you how much better her family's green life is, she goes with the holier than thou tone. Barnett's research is strong. She definitely knows her subject, but her connection seems too personal at times. Basically, Barnett is too close to her subject. A frightening incident with her eldest son led to her green lifestyle, and it seems like she can't quite distance herself from that moment. A more detached tone would work better.

Green Goes with Everything is an interesting book. It has quite a bit of valuable information. Unfortunately, Sloan Barnett seems to have checked her journalism credentials at the door. As a side note, this is definitely not a book for hypochondriacs. According to Barnett, unless you have already gone as green as she has just about everything in your home is going to kill you. (This is part of the alarmist tone I mentioned earlier.) I was expecting a more approachable book. Green Goes with Everything has moments of approachability, but the overall tone seems intimidating for someone who is just starting to go green.

With apologies to Kermit the Frog, it ain't easy being green. Although I believe I'm "doing my part," i've always thought that these actions were purely altruistic. I had a lot to learn.

Sloan provides a simple guide explaining:
* What does it mean to be green
* Why it is important to be green
* How one could become more green

Her prose is jampacked with a depth of research fitting a phd thesis. Yet, her writing is approachable because she is able to distill into digestible bits. She intertwines rich humor ("safe" dirt vs "scary" dirt) without compromising her credibility. And even though we all should read this book, perhaps the most important audience is parents with newborns. Impossible to get more than a few moments to yourself, right? Forunately, the capstone thoughts are bolded (in green of course) and repeated in callouts just in case you missed something.

I hear other reviewers knocking her self-disclosed bias for Shaklee products. Maybe her home-cooking simply tastes better. Stated differently, don't trust her because she happens to be married to the CEO of Shaklee; trust her because she has conducted as much if not more research on these subjects (check out the 45 pages of research and notes in the appendix). I much prefer having her disclose this potential conflict of interest and still make the recommendation of what she believes to be the best products in category, than to make an artificial recommendation of an inferior product. Who really loses here?

Thank you Sloan for kissing this frog and turning him into a prince.