Whether you’re cleaning, commuting, or working, audiobooks are a great way to combine reading with another activity! Audiobooks are an easy way to avoid a trip to the bookstore and can be more environmentally friendly than continuously buying and having new books shipped to your home. Check out this list of our favorite 10 favorite sustainability-focused audiobooks!
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. Source: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide by Jen Gale
If you want to save the planet, but your to-do list is already pretty long and remembering your re-usable coffee cup feels like a Herculean task, then this is the book for you. Covering every aspect of our lives from the stuff we buy and the food we eat, to how we travel, work, and celebrate. This book provides stacks of practical, down to earth ideas to slot into your daily life, alongside a gentle kick up the butt to put your newfound knowledge into action. Source: The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make Small Changes That Make a Big Difference
On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein
An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal. Source: On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren
The Story of More is [an] impassioned open letter to humanity as we stand at the crossroads of survival and extinction…At once an explainer on the mechanisms of warming and a capsule history of human development, The Story of More illuminates the link between our consumption habits and our endangered earth. It is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. Source: The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
Out of The Wreckage: A New Politics in the Age of Crisis by George Monbiot
A toxic ideology rules the world - of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better world. Urgent, and passionate, Out of the Wreckage provides the hope and clarity required to change the world. Source: Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics in the Age of Crisis
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today. Source: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it – it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap – or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era. Source: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes
In Garbology, Edward Humes investigates trash—what’s in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it; and how some families, communities, and even nations are finding a way back from waste to discover a new kind of prosperity. Along the way , he introduces a collection of garbage denizens unlike anyone you’ve ever met: the trash-tracking detectives of MIT, the bulldozer-driving sanitation workers building Los Angeles’ Garbage Mountain landfill, the artists residing in San Francisco’s dump, and the family whose annual trash output fills not a dumpster or a trash can, but a single mason jar.
Garbology reveals not just what we throw away, but who we are and where our society is headed. Waste is the one environmental and economic harm that ordinary working Americans have the power to change—and prosper in the process. Source: Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash
Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garbage Sale by Adam Minter
Secondhand offers hopeful answers and hard truths. A history of the stuff we've used and a contemplation of why we keep buying more, it also reveals the marketing practices, design failures, and racial prejudices that push used items into landfills instead of new homes. Secondhand shows us that it doesn't have to be this way, and what really needs to change to build a sustainable future free of excess stuff. Source: Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and condo towers an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl? Source: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Do you have any recommendations for us? Let us know in the comments below!
