Zero Waste Books and Movies Donated by CVSan to Castro Valley Library
It has been said that sharing education, such as a good book or movie, is what can change the world. In 2015, Castro Valley Sanitary District (CVSan) donated a supply of zero waste books and movies to the Castro Valley Library. We hope the community will enjoy these resources available at the Castro Valley Library, which cover a range of topics:
The books and movies were donated in honor of CVSan’s Path to Zero Waste and were funded by a grant from the Altamont Settlement Agreement Educational Advisory Board. We hope you enjoy these titles available at the Castro Valley Library.
The following books were donated to the Castro Valley Library by CVSan. Titles and descriptions are from the library web page:
American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom: In a book based on real-life experience at a local grocery store, a fast-food chain and a food-recovery group--as well as interviews with Brian Wansink, Alice Waters and Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen--the author explains the history, culture and mindset of waste and explores how it can be prevented through eco-friendly and sustainable food.
The Adventures of the Aluminum Can by Allison Inches: Peek into this diary of an aluminum can as it goes on a journey from the manufacturing line to the store shelf to a little girl's home to a garbage can and finally to a recycling plant, where it emerges into its new life...as a baseball bat!
The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair by Todd Downs: An updated edition of a popular resource with nearly 500 photos and illustrations includes troubleshooting sections to quickly identify common problems, websites and phone numbers of bicycle-parts manufacturers and much more.
Bottlemania by Elizabeth Royte: Only now, with the bottled water industry trading in billions of dollars, have we begun to question the environmental and social fall out of what we're drinking.
Cradle to Cradle by Mcdonough and Braungart: A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacturing and environmentalism. "Reduce, reuse, recycle," urge environmentalists--in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. As this book argues, however, this approach perpetuates a one-way "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world, they ask. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new. Elaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, the authors make an exciting and viable case for change.
Don't Throw That Away: A Lift-flap Book About Recycling and Reusing by Laura Bergen: In this small, lift-the-flap board book in the Little Green Books series, a pig-tailed girl, clad in a red superhero-like cape, invites kids to reuse things rather than discard them. Each spread features an object and a suggestion for its reuse, which is revealed with a lift of a flap: "Do you see that old jar? Don't throw that away! You can turn it into . . . a new vase!" Other suggestions include turning plastic jugs into bird feeders, used cans into instruments, parents' old clothes into costumes, and a box into a toy car. The book itself is made of "100% recycled material," and the cheerful color illustrations appear muted against the matte, brown-bag-colored backgrounds of the pages. Though the title mentions recycling, the focus here is really on repurposing, although the suggestions don't provide specific how-to's. Nonetheless, kids will likely understand the simple related message, revealed in a playful, interactive format, and they may also find some creative inspiration from the narrator's ideas.
The Earth Book by Todd Parr: In Parr's signature chunky style, smiley-faced kids share what they love about the planet and what they do to protect it. "I turn off the faucet while I brush my teeth," says a purple boy in a hot pink bathroom. On another spread, two figures stand in a sunny garden with neatly planted rows of produce: "I love watching things grow and I want there to be enough food for everyone." The earnest message springs off the page.
Easy Fixes for Everyday Things by Reader's Digest: over 1,000 simple repairs to household equipment, including cell phones, tablets and media players, computers, pipes and plumbing, power and lighting, home security, vacuums and floor cleaners, ovens and stoves, garden tools, bikes and more!
The Eco-Nomical Baby Guide by Joy Hatch: Focusing on the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra and writing in a humorous but straightforward style, these resourceful mothers dish about everything from eco-friendly diapers to daycare, making green living with babies accessible to everyone and even those on the slenderest of budgets. Hatch and Kelley’s agenda as they offer tips on shopping for new and used green goods, blending homemade organic baby food, and limiting the piles of baby gear that threaten to overtake the living room.
Eco-Transformations by Bambi Lane-Njamfa: This book offers over 300 pages about transforming your wardrobe and lifestyle. It provides instructions on how to take scraps of clothing from your wardrobe to create new apparel, handbags, accessories and other useful items. The workbook includes fashion photography and diagrams that demonstrate how to cut garments along their seams, cuffs and collars and how to reassemble the pieces into useful items such as integral piecework skirts, dresses and handbags. A chapter is included on how to make repairs to damaged clothing by using embroidery or beading to cover holes, stains and tears in lieu of using unsightly patches. Other clothing repair chapters focus on the particular properties of specific fabrics such as cotton, wool, silk and synthetics.
Fostering Sustainable Behavior by Doug McKenzie-Mohr etal: To attain a sustainable future, we must change many of our everyday actions. This completely revised and updated edition of Fostering Sustainable Behavior shows how community-based social marketing is key to overcoming barriers and resistance and creating new social norms.
Garbage In, Garbage Out by Vivian Thomson: Your garbage is going to places you’d never imagine. What used to be sent to the local dump now may move hundreds of miles by truck and barge to its final resting place. Virtually all forms of pollution migrate, subjected to natural forces such as wind and water currents. The movement of garbage, however, is under human control. Its patterns of migration reveal much about power sharing among state, local, and national institutions, about the Constitution’s protection of trash transport as a commercial activity, and about competing notions of social fairness. In Garbage In, Garbage Out, Vivian Thomson looks at Virginia’s status as the second-largest importer of trash in the United States and uses it as a touchstone for exploring the many controversies around trash generation and disposal.
Garbology by Edward Humes: This narrative science book about trash digs through our epic piles of trash to reveal not just what we throw away, but who we are and where our society is headed. The real secret at the heart of this book may well be the potential for a happy ending buried in our landfill. Waste is the one environmental and economic harm that ordinary working Americans have the power to change and prosper in the process.
Green Guide for Families by Catherine Zandonella: Offers information on how to make environmentally sound decisions about food, health, clothing, toys, and activities, with information on topics ranging from lead-painted toys to the potential side effects of plastic bottles.
High-Tech Trash by Elizabeth Grossman: "The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients. High-Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high-tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills.
Histories of the Dustheap by Foote and Mazzolini: An examination of how garbage reveals the relationships between the global and the local, the economic and the ecological, and the historical and the contemporary. Garbage, considered both materially and culturally, elicits mixed responses. Our responsibility toward the objects we love and then discard is entangled with our responsibility toward the systems that make those objects. Histories of the Dustheap uses garbage, waste, and refuse to investigate the relationships between various systems—the local and the global, the economic and the ecological, the historical and the contemporary—and shows how this most democratic reality produces identities, social relations, and policies.
How to Help the Earth: By the Lorax with Tish Rabe: The star of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss makes his Step into Reading debut in this rhymed reader that offers kids easy suggestions for going green! After explaining how the trash in a wastebasket ultimately ends up in a landfill or incinerator, the Lorax suggests realistic ways children can reduce waste, such as by carrying a lunch box, donating old clothes and toys, sharing magazines with friends, recycling cans and bottles, and using rechargeable batteries. He also explains how they can save energy around the home by turning off lights, taking shorter showers, donning sweaters to stay warm, and much, much more. All in all, this is a great introduction to helping the Earth and helping kids step into reading!
I Can Save the Earth: One Little Green Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle by Allison Inches: Max is a little monster who likes to litter and never, ever recycles. Then the electricity goes out and he sees how exciting and beautiful the Earth is-- and that it will need his help to stay that way.
I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas by Anna Getty: This holiday season, Anna Getty, environmental advocate, writer, television personality, chef, mother, and organic living expert helps families reduce their carbon footprint and save money without sacrificing style or tradition. Anna advises how to best choose a tree (real or fake?), mitigate the negative effects of necessary travel, recycle post-holiday, and more. She shares favorite holiday recipes for organic appetizers and homemade craft ideas such as pinecone wreaths and recycled sweater pillows. With inspiring photographs, extensive resources, and advice from the "Lazy Environmentalist" Josh Dorfman, Seventh Generation's Jeffrey Hollender, and other leading eco-experts, families might just find that these tips help them stay green all year long the perfect New Year's resolution!
Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter: Tracing the export of America's trash, a veteran journalist with access to and insight on the waste industry reveals the huge profits that China and other rising nations earn from our trash, causing the decline of our economy and the ascent of the developing world.
Let's Celebrate Earth Day by Barbara DeRubertis: Focusing more on solutions than problems, this book celebrates the Earth heroes who created this important April holiday and explores the ways we can make our planet a safer and healthier place to live.
One Plastic Bag by Paul Miranda: A rainbow of colors and an array of textures—crinkled plastic, knitted fabric, photos of leaves cut into the shape of trees—patchwork together to compose this amazing story of Isatou Ceesay and her project of crocheting recycled purses from plastic bags littering the Gambia. The story is both absorbing and inspiring, telling a captivating story as it educates and shows that one person can make a world of difference, even one plastic bag at a time.
Plastic Free by Beth Terry: The creator of the blog My Plastic-Free Life provides personal anecdotes, stats about the environmental and health problems related to plastic and personal solutions, handy lists and charts and tips on how to limit one's plastic footprint and get involved in community action.
Recycling Reconsidered by Samantha MacBride: One of today's great challenges is the reuse, recycling, and management of materials. This is especially true as the world moves along the path toward sustainability. MacBride (Columbia Univ.; waste governance professional) presents the history of recycling and materials management, along with commentary and discussions of policy, regulations, and governance. The author focuses on the US but includes good practices from other parts of the world to illustrate alternatives that have merit. Significant progress has been made in municipal materials management, with recycling and reuse through retail outlets for secondhand products. However, industries need to make a greater effort to enhance reuse and recycling of their materials. The author recommends the implementation of systematic solutions through governance and national policies. The book includes numerous citations and references and excellent appendices with quantitative information. All citizens need to take action to change policies and implement better management practices for dealing with solid waste.
The Red Bicycle by Jude Isabella: Blending fiction and nonfiction, Isabella (Chitchat) chronicles a bicycle's long journey as it transforms lives across continents. A North American boy named Leo diligently saves up his money to buy a bike he calls Big Red. After Leo outgrows Big Red, he donates it to an organization that sends needed bicycles abroad. Via truck and freighter, Big Red makes its way to Burkina Faso and a girl named Alisetta, who uses it to aid her family's sorghum business. When Big Red is damaged in an accident, Alisetta, lacking funds for repairs, donates it to a man who refurbishes it as an ambulance. Rendered in a muted palette, Shin's rough-textured illustrations capture the joy in the faces of each new caretaker of Big Red. Endnotes provide information about the story's West African setting and explain how readers can get involved in bicycle-donation efforts. A vibrant introduction to the ripple effects that repurposing tools and objects can have, particularly for readers growing up in a society prone to disposability.
Revolution in a Bottle by Tom Szaky: While a freshman at Princeton, Tom Szaky co- founded a company that recycles garbage into worm poop, liquefies it, then packages it in used soda bottles, creating TerraCycle Plant Food. Five years later, this all-natural, highly effective fertilizer is available in every Home Depot, Target, WalMart, and more than 3000 other locations. It's a thrilling entrepreneurial success story-and just the beginning of what makes Revolution in a Bottle fascinating. Szaky argues for a new approach to business, an "ecocapitalism" based on a "triple bottom line." Every business, he says, should aspire to be good for people, good for the environment, and (last but definitely not least) good for profits. He shows how the first two goals can help the third.
Selling Eggs by Tom Noll: In Noll's second installment of his environmentally minded children's book series, a young boy gets his start as a chicken and egg farmer. As in the previous book, Noll begins by introducing readers to the concept of recycling to reduce waste and ultimately preserve the planet. To that end, he very clearly lays out a dictionary definition of recycling and the different ways that readers can participate in the process. A little more explanation for young readers about how recycling helps the planet would have been useful, and it could make for a good discussion topic for an adult caregiver and child. Noll reintroduces L.T. as an industrious, thoughtful boy who's always giving new life and purpose to discarded objects. Here, the author presents a positive role model for children that will be easy for them to emulate.
Sewing School: 21 Sewing Projects Kids Will Love to Make by Andria Lisle: After learning the basics (threading a needle, knots, simple stitches), beginners can easily dive into the initial projects—a needle holder and pincushion. A ratings system guides intermediate sewers to items that require more skill, like doll clothing and skirts, with plenty of tasks in between that build confidence and experience. Almost everything is hand sewn, with any machine use acknowledged in the "Note for Grown-Ups" sections that identify the steps requiring adult help. The authors have a fun and encouraging writing style, offering tips to personalize projects and breezily stressing that results do not have to be perfect.
Social Marketing to Protect the Environment: What Works by Doug McKenzie-Mohr etal: Behavior change is central to the pursuit of sustainability. This book details how to use community-based social marketing to motivate environmental protection behaviors as diverse as water and energy efficiency, alternative transportation, and watershed protection. With case studies of innovative programs from around the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Jordan, the authors present a clear process for motivating social change for both residential and commercial audiences. The case studies plainly illustrate realistic conservation applications for both work and home and show how community-based social marketing can be harnessed to foster more sustainable communities.
The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin: In this debut children's book, a girl and her mother chart their own course in spring planting and reap the benefits. The girl narrator is clearly disappointed when, unlike her neighbors who prepare flower gardens, she and her mother plant Chinese vegetables that, her mother insists, are "better than flowers." While the other backyards yield colorful blooms, her garden becomes crowded with "ugly vegetables," lumpy, bumpy and "icky yellow." But when the girl's mother uses them to make a soup, its "magical aroma" attracts neighbors to their door carrying bouquets of flowers from their gardens. Though the pacing of the text is a bit uneven, the mother's confidence in the garden's success and Lin's message of community togetherness buoy up the narrative. A charming, childlike quality infuses the artwork; boldly hued gouache pictures feature skies and lawns as patterned as the girl's kitchen wallpaper and curtains. For ambitious young gardeners and would-be chefs, an illustrated glossary of the vegetables and their Chinese characters along with a soup recipe conclude the volume.
The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability, Designing for Abundance by Mcdonough and Braungart: The Upcycle is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, the most consequential ecological manifesto of our time. Now, drawing on the lessons gained from ten years of putting the cradle-to-cradle concept into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people, William McDonough and Michael Braungart envision the next step in the solution to our ecological crisis. We don't just reuse resources with greater effectiveness, we actually improve them as we use them. For McDonough and Braungart, the questions of resource scarcity and sustainability are questions of design. They envision beneficial designs of products, buildings, and business practices - and they show us these ideas being put to use around the world as everyday objects like chairs, cars, and factories are being reinvented not just to sustain life on the planet but to grow it. It is an eye-opening, inspiring tour of the next industrial revolution as it unfolds in front of us.
Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart: In "Waste," Stuart points out that farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets, and consumers in North America and Europe discard between 30 and 50 percent of their food supplies--enough to feed all the world's hungry three times over. Traveling from China to New York, from Pakistan to Japan, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy--but also inspiring innovations--in the global food crisis.
What's Mine is Yours by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers: An idea-fueled book that explores the rise of new economic models based on shared resources and collective consumption--and the first articulation of a major socioeconomic phenomenon.
Whole Green Catalog: 1,000 Best Things for You and the Earth: by Michael Robbins: A consumer's reference to green living counsels readers on how to identify truly eco-friendly products and includes reviews and advice for everything from home furnishings and appliances to toys and clothing.
Why Should I Recycle? By Jen Green and Mike Gordon: Uses color illustrations and simple text to explore the importance and benefits of recycling bottles, cans, plastic, clothes, and paper. It includes notes for parents and teachers that have suggestions for reading the book with children and suggestions for follow-up activities.
Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson: While the concept of producing less or no waste is great, how can individual consumers achieve this goal? Johnson's first book takes the reader by the hand and explains her approach to achieving a zero-waste household. Organized by general topic, tips and guides help readers make their way through the five Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. Recipes for goods including homemade condiments and cleaning supplies are included, along with a list of resources.
The Zero Waste Solution by Paul Connett: This is both a handbook for and for the history of the zero waste movement worldwide. Connett (retired, environmental chemistry, St. Lawrence Univ.) became involved in the movement in 1985 when an incinerator—and its poisonous dioxin emissions—was slated for construction near his community. He has been a major player ever since. This text has three parts: an overview of zero waste's history, philosophy, and practical steps; examples of initiatives worldwide; and essays by prominent activists. Connett castigates burn-and-bury (i.e., incinerators and landfills) as wasteful, expensive, and deleterious to health and presents factual backup. To "reduce, reuse, recycle", he adds "redesign" to limit the flood of disposable goods. Connett advocates that businesses take responsibility for disposal of goods not easily recycled. San Francisco's zero waste prominence is no surprise, but Italy's is eye-opening. The author offers plenty of paths to zero waste, from donkeys providing recycling transport in Italian hill towns to econometric analysis in Seattle.
Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance by Leonard Zinn: the world’s best-selling guide to bicycle repair and maintenance. From basic repairs like how to fix a flat tire to advanced overhauls of drivetrains and brakes, Zinn’s clearly illustrated guide makes every bicycle repair and maintenance job easy for everyone. Zinn’s friendly step-by-step guide explains the tools you’ll need and how to know you’ve done the job right. The two-color interior is easy to read—even in a dimly-lit garage or workshop. Hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations and exploded parts diagrams show just the right level of detail to lead you through every bicycle repair task.
Movies
Bag-It! By Susan Beraza and Jeb Barrier: Try going a day without plastic. In this touching and often flat-out-funny film, we follow "everyman" Jeb Berrier as he embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world. What starts as a film about plastic bags evolves into a wholesale investigation into plastic and its effect on our waterways, oceans and even our own bodies. We see how our crazy-for-plastic world has finally caught up with us and what we can do about it. Today. Right now.
Dive! Living Off America's Waste by Jeremy Seifert and Timothy Jones: Inspired by curiosity about society's careless habit of sending food straight to landfills, the multi -award-winning documentary Dive! follows filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and friends as they dumpster dive in the back alleys and gated garbage receptacles of Los Angeles' supermarkets. In the process, they salvage thousands of dollars worth of good, edible food, resulting in an eye-opening documentary that is equal parts entertainment, guerilla journalism, and call to action.
Trashed by Candida Brady and Jeremy Irons: Looks at the risks to the food chain, environment, and health in various parts of the world through pollution of air, land, and water by the production and accumulation of solid waste.
The Document Center provides easy access to public documents. Click on one of the categories below to see related documents or use the search function.
(510) 537-0757
