We have created a list of books which have been a source of inspiration for this blog and recommend that you read. They burst myths, make it easy to understand how our choices impact our carbon footprint and provide good tips of how to properly cut our carbon emissions. These books are written by experts in this field, with their suggestions backed by reliable evidence.

How bad are bananas? By Professor Bernes-Lee

This book written by Professor Mike Bernes-Lee is truly a bible when it comes to understanding how everyday things you do impact your carbon footprint, such as text messages, watching TV, pets, clothes and diet. The book starts with actions that produce very low carbon emissions and gradually show which actions create increasing amounts of emissions. It is good at showing how options we face impact our carbon footprint. This book gives advice on how to approach reducing your carbon footprint by dividing your life into four areas: diet, housing, travel and everything else. It is the most useful book I have come across when addressing how to cut your carbon footprint and is often quoted on this blog.

Not the end of the world by Dr Hannah Ritchie

This book by Dr Hannah Ritchie provides a refreshing and optimistic approach to explaining the challenge of dealing with climate change in the 21^st century. She uses data to put the carbon emissions in historical context, providing gives us an interesting perspective and burst myths about what we think is eco-friendly. She explains how organic food and plastic straws makes little difference to our fight against climate change and helps us to understand what actions really will reduce our carbon footprint. It is thought-provoking and makes us realistic about the challenges of climate change. It is also linked to the website ‘Our world in data’, which provides up-to-date, accurate data on a wide range of topics including climate change.

Low carbon travel by Lonely Planet

This book has great ideas of alternative ways to visit European countries using trains rather than using planes. They design exciting journeys across the whole of Europe packed with things to do depending on what you would like to do. It caters for all types of holidays: whether it is long or short, cultural or a party, families or friends travelling together. It is persuasive in advocating that flightless travel leads to much more fun holidays and that it is possible to pack many more places and activities into a week’s holiday.

The Rubbish Book by James Piper

The Rubbish Book by James Piper provides a comprehensive list of what can and cannot be recycled and the reasons why. He lists every item you can think of and gives tips on how to recycle properly such as not crushing bottles before you put them in the bin and that black plastic cannot be recycled. The book is helpful in explaining classic mistakes that people make in recycling, such as ‘wish-cycling’ and how throwing the wrong items in the wrong bin leads to contamination. This is a useful book for people who finds recycling very confusing.

Food and climate change without the hot air by Professor Bridle

This book by Professor Bridle is brilliant in helping you understand how to reduce your carbon emissions in your everyday eating habits. Our diets make up 25% of our carbon footprint and it is the easiest area to cut our emissions, so it is a good place to start. She breaks down our eating habits into sections: break, lunch, dinner, drinks, snacks, cold drinks, hot drinks, alcohol, desserts. She compares the carbon emissions of different options in these areas and breaks down how certain ingredients can really make a change to our carbon footprint. The book is useful in demonstrating that some options you would expect to have a lower carbon footprint, do not and some vegetarian options can be worse for carbon emissions than meat options. This book makes it very easy to understand how we can make better choices in our diet, whether it is eating at home, getting a takeaway, eating out or getting lunch at work.