Beat the Credit Crunch with the Book of Rubbish Ideas

Now there's a bold claim if ever I heard one!

How can you reduce your rubbish and save money?

If you speak to Tracey Smith, author of The Book of Rubbish Ideas, she'd sit you down and say, ‘Righty ho where do you want to start?'

Smith has been a writer and broadcaster specialising on downshifting and sustainable living since 2002 and she also founded InterNational Downshifting Week, an awareness campaign designed to help participants slow down and green up.

She's been extolling the virtues of simple, green living for some time and has always got a tip up her sleeve for a way you can lean towards the green and make some great savings.

With recent troublesome times in the world's finance sector making constant headlines, the media has shown a significant interest in ways people can tighten their belts and Tracey sees this as a fantastic time to get the nation on board with a bit of sustainable living!

‘The best way to approach a bit of money saving is by positively embracing living with less. That might sound crazy, but it holds the key to instant and long term success. For example, if you see it as denial of the things you want and now cannot afford you'll be irritated and might find it hard work. However, if you say, I'm going set a family challenge; we only have £X.00 to get us to the end of the week, let's see how inventive we can be with what we have in the cupboards and whoever comes up with the best money saving idea gets a pampering treat of a foot massage (or something along those lines..), you'll soon get everyone pulling together and working as a frugal team!'

Tracey goes on to explain her take on what downshifting is. ‘For me, it's just about slowing down your pace a gear, maybe cutting back on your time and/or finance budgets too. The more money you spend, the more time you have to be out there earning it and the less time you get to spend with the ones you love.'

That's succinct!

It's easy to see that by taking the downshifter's approach to life, you are automatically living more sustainably with a great consequence of being kinder to your environment too.

The Book of Rubbish Ideas goes room by room through the house, showing you how to reduce rubbish, cut back on the chemical products in your life, and use natural multifunctional cleaning items for your body and the house, all of which can help you beat that horrid credit crunch. In the preamble chapters before the tips, it also explores why we're facing so many problems with landfill; how our throwaway, takeaway habits are compounding the problems. Somehow, she manages to tackle this weighty issue with a light-hearted but thorough stance, leaving the reader educated but not browbeaten.

There's a website supporting the book, aptly titled www.BookOfRubbishIdeas.co.uk and it's packed with all the extra stuff she couldn't shoehorn into the pages. You can read a couple of sample chapters and try before you buy.

Our lovely Brigit Strawbridge lent her support by penning the foreword too, so the Big Green Idea gives the Book of Rubbish Ideas a wholehearted thumbs up!