by JULIET WATERS

It does seem to be a little easier to entertain the environmentally concerned life in the spring. You’re not weighing the cons of extra electricity vs. constantly cold toes. Or stuck inside with your flush-controlled toilet. So do we really need yet one more gorgeous celebrity type telling us about the latest in animal friendly lipstick? In fact, with the recent arrival of Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore on MTV doing their Charlie’s Angels version of saving the planet from environmental disaster (Central American road trip! Awesome!), it’s possible that spokesbabe tree-hugging actually turns many people off a greener lifestyle.

It was with this ever-so-slightly-cynical attitude that I approached Tanya Ha’s recently Canadianized version of Greeniology: How to Live Well, Be Green and Make a Difference. Ha is the campaign development manager for the environmental group Planet Ark. This is an “unashamedly populist organization” from Australia, which explains blurbs from Olivia Newton John and Kylie Minogue, who promises that putting any of “Ha’s inspiring advice into practice will make you that little bit more green and gorgeous!”

An ex-model and “science graduate,” Ha has become kind of the Nigella Lawson of green living. However, unlike Lawson, whose great gift to the world is convincing women they can eat bacon and still snag one of the richest guys in London, Ha is here to make the sacrifices, the extra work and often extra money involved in being green, a little more bearable.

Just when you’re feeling great about using less hydro, Ha reminds us that: “In the summer months, household water use can increase by 50 per cent or more.” Thus a certain amount of being green seems to involve being grey, as in re-using water. For this reason it probably isn’t hurting the environmentalist movement to have an attractive tipster advising us on mundane tasks like “rinse the food residue out of cans, jars, bottles and drink cartons using old dishwashing water. Then put them into your recycling bin” or to remind us that air fresheners are “theoretically, but not always, nicer than our natural human gases.”

To her credit, Ha has produced a comprehensive primer that may not have anything new to say to the hardcore greenster, but for the average citizen grappling with daily decisions that range from choosing vegetables to choosing mattresses, it’s actually quite useful, and, frankly sane. In general it’s not preachy and there are lots of tables weighing pros and cons of various green friendly choices so that readers can base decisions on what’s reasonable for what kind of life they’re living. Also “Canadian edition” does actually mean more than an introduction by Severn Cullis-Suzuki. It’s a fairly good directory for Canadian services ranging from natural pet products to recycling computers.

My user-friendly test for these kinds of guides is usually the diaper debate. Cloth is a great ideal, but I have little patience for anyone who tries to guilt trip a parent into much more than the normal amount of slave labour. Ha deals with this issue thoroughly, realistically and even has this good tip for those who go with disposable “Flush the poop before throwing away the diaper. This keeps the excrement out of landfill and rescues the greenhouse gases produced as it decomposes.” She also gets points for being 99 per cent exclamation mark free. Unfortunately she then loses them for cute cartoon sidebar icons: ponytail Ha for tips, and the pageboy Ha for interesting trivia. The layout has the generic optimism of an Archie comic—which I’m pretty sure was never printed on recycled paper. And even if she’s not preachy, there is an appalling lack of irony in statements like the one about how it took “a rather gorgeous looking rock star named Sting to make us understand that human activities haven’t been the best thing for all creatures great and small.” Which just goes to prove that being green will just never be easy.

GREENIOLOGY BY TANYA HA, PENGUIN, PB, 306PP, $29