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For the full range of our purchases — from bicycles to baths, holidays to heating, pets to pasta, wine to wind turbines — Shades of Green sets out the sliding environmental scale from hardcore deep green to planet-trashing pale.

Only a few hardcore hemp-wearing hippies want to go “all the way” on the green scale. And yet there is a strong groundswell of interest in all things green as fears about the food chain, climate change, plummeting bio-diversity and the sustainability of our current lifestyles take hold. So if you want to change the world without completely changing your life what do you do? Buy Shades of Green — an easy-to-use, A-Z reference with a difference. Each entry has a short introduction coded with as many “shades of green” as are appropriate.

Punchy, wry and humourous, this informative and sometimes surprising and subversive book pokes gentle fun at both the people in suits and the people in sandals. It informs and amuses, laying out the facts and practicalities of everything from carrots to cars while avoiding the po-faced apocalyptic preachiness of many “green” books. This is essential and often surprising reading — because being green has never been black and white.