Humane Home: Easy Steps for Sustainable & Green Living

by Sarah Lozanova, Candace Rose Rardon (Illustrator)

Overview

Create your own unique sustainable home and life with tools, tips, and inspiration from The Humane Home. Sarah Lozanova shows us how to evaluate all the ways our lifestyle and living choices can be more sustainable, from powering our homes to the food we consume and the air we breathe. Small steps empower us to act immediately by starting an herb garden, reducing utility bills, and learning how to conduct a home energy audit.

The fun, DIY activities and easy-to-follow, ecofriendly practices reshape how we think about our living spaces and help us create a blueprint for our own personal version of a humane home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616898502
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	04/20/2021
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.55(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Sarah Lozanova has worked as a sustainability consultant, environmental journalist, and copywriter. Her writing appears in Mother Earth Living, Green Builder, Solar Today, Home Power, Windpower Engineering, and Green Business Quarterly. She teaches environmental business courses at Unity College and lives at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage in midcoast Maine.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Is the Humane Home? 7

1 Establishing Your Humane Home 10

2 Sustainable Building Materials and Techniques 32

3 Energy Use 46

4 Food and Waste 70

5 Nurturing the Land 102

6 Conserving and Protecting Water 126

7 Air Quality 144

Resources 165

Acknowledgments / Contributors 168

Editorial Reviews

In The Humane Home, Sarah Lozanova imagines her readers seeking a “green life” in order to exist in harmony with nature, as she writes in an opening chapter that touches on downsizing, decluttering, and aiming small. She has loftier aims thereafter, including water conservation and waste reduction. Lozanova says that lately, actions that support a sustainable home and planet have “become appealing options,” and the trade is taking notice.
– Publishers Weekly

"This slim volume is a handy guide to help people identify and change behavior regarding resource usage, waste and conservation, with chapters on eco-friendly housing, building materials, energy, water, food and waste, air quality (especially inside the home), growing your own food, even how to identify toxins in the home. Best of all, Lozanova doesn’t preach. Instead, her writing is focused, conversational and lucid, pointing out how folks can improve their health with easy, clearly explained steps."
– Kennebec Journal and Augusta Morning Sentinel,

"

"The dream home of the future will no doubt involve the concepts of sustainability, self-sufficiency, connectivity, and green-living as we design habitats for what is known as the 'new normal.'...The Humane Home helps the reader assess how to scale down their carbon footprint in ways that go far beyond downsizing and decluttering."
– ARRAY Magazine ,

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"[Sarah Lozanova], a sustainability consultant and environmental journalist, shows readers how to easily  incorporate ways for sustainable living. Chock full of fun activities and inspiration, the book is a gem for beginners who are unsure where to start."
– Cincinnati Enquirer,

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"Think green living is hard? It's not. Author, teacher and environmental journalist Sarah Lozanova shines a solar-powered light on hundreds of environmentally friendly ways to reduce carbon footprints and save money in the process...in this must-have, thought-provoking handbook. Don't worry, Birkenstocks are not required, just an open mind to the bigger picture of how to make Earth-dwelling a better experience for everyone."
– Shelf Awareness ,

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"Packed with accessible information and ideas, The Humane Home would be a terrific graduation or housewarming present, but it’s also an appealing resource for anyone interested in scaling down their personal carbon footprint, wherever they call home."
– Foreword Reviews,

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"This short, compact book would be useful to anyone building or renovating a home and wanting a general overview of how to do it with minimal impact. It contains seven chapters that cover topics like energy efficiency, water conservation, passive solar heat, building materials, air quality, choosing where to live, and even borrowing money from local credit unions to finance home purchases, as this 'creates a symbiotic relationship between lender, borrower, and the larger community.'"
– Treehugger,

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"This new book, from sustainability consultant and journalist Sarah Lozanova, will get you seriously jazzed to give your abode and daily routine an audit and find simple, satisfying, and affordable ways to optimize your surroundings. It’s a pretty, relaxing-to-read little tome, chock-full of easy DIY endeavors. Think: starting an herb garden, making nontoxic cleaning solvents, and embracing hacks to help slash your utility bills. On a more macro level, The Humane Home will subtly reshape how you think of your living space, and re-envision it as an empowering refuge and place of potential."
– Sierra Magazine,

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"In [The Humane Home], you’ll learn more about making your day-to-day life seriously Green, including heating and cooling your home, becoming zero-waste, and some easy-to-do gardening projects that are Earth-friendly."
– Yankton Daily Press Dakotan,

"

From the Publisher