Click here to download The Greener Alternatives Book.

It was a privilege for Lil and I to edit this free ebook.

What is the book actually about?

The cover really says it all.

168 ways Fairy Wren Cottage instagram followers are making a smaller ecological footprint in their own homes and gardens that positively impacts the wider community and environment.

Why is the book  free?

Why didn’t you get people to buy the book and donate the money to a charity associated with the bushfire and wildlife appeals? Good questions!

To keep the momentum going and also keeping this ebook in the forefront of readers and contributors minds we needed there to be a quick turn around from my suggestion of making the ebook, then putting the call out asking followers to contribute ideas, Lil and I editing the ebook and all that encompasses to then publish the ebook.

Asking for a donation for the book would have slowed down the publication of the book,  adding a whole other layer of book keeping, plus more time invested in researching into the legalities of offering a product with an exchange of financial payment that was then being donated to charity. I am not a lawyer.

Knowing that people were already making financial donations to the charity of their choice, I decided that by making the book free made it accessible to everyone, hopefully having a wider reach.  This ebook is made due to  contributions from the community for the community.

Also a big believer in paying it forward, sharing what others have generously shared with me, it felt like a good fit. And besides I feel that the benefits of this book out weigh any form of monetary value. Generosity, care, compassion, contribution, you can’t put a price on that.

What is in it for me?

There is no financial gain and I was very deliberate in making sure of that. I made sure that the landing page where you download The Greener Alternatives Book from isn’t connected to my subscriber list, therefor I didn’t grow my subscriber list in the process of making this free ebook. (And if you are on my subscriber list I am very grateful that you are , there is the option to unsubscribe at any time, I don’t take it personally if you do and I don’t watch who comes and goes on the list).

The making of the ebook.

To give you an idea, the book took 10 days from asking for contributions on instagram on  a Friday night to hitting the publish button. It would have been sooner but I had some computer glitches having  to delete text and photos several times then reenter that same text and those same photos to get the layout correct. Working 10 days  straight  creating the ebook I mostly worked 12 hour days and only on the book. Would I do it all again during my own holiday time? Absolutely!

Michael, Lil and I all felt very strongly about making this ebook. You already know that Lil helped me edit the book, plus she dealt with all the technical issues. Michael kept the household running, made all our meals, cups of tea, fed the animals, listened to me read and reread the ebook as I edited it. A different family holiday to what we all had planned! We are grateful that we are a team, have such strong values for the safety and care of the environment that inspired us and motivated us to make this ebook a priority to create and share, and then in turn the collective ripple effect it has of households across the world  making greener alternatives that has such a huge effect on the environment.

 

We all do the best we can on any given day, when we know better we do better.

I can’t fight fires, and my injury limits me in many ways. Creating this ebook with the help of  the Fairy Wren Cottage Instagram community, and Michael and Lil  is my way of being able to contribute my time and energy into doing something that will hopefully slow climate change, therefor impact on the environment in a positive way.

This is one way I have been looking at it. A hypothetical story. Say a reader is motivated to save water in different ways after reading the different ideas about water saving in our book, because of that their lawn or garden is greener not tinder dry due to the drought, because of that greener lawn a spark from her husband’s welder doesn’t hit the ground  and cause a spot fire that with a gust of wind that fire jumps the fence into the paddock and escalates. Reading that water wise tip might just save a fire truck going out to an incident. A fire truck filled with a team of dedicated  men and women who are someone’s mum or  dad, sister or  brother, aunty or  uncle or  child. That water wise tip on that hypothetical day also saved wildlife and habitat.  Isn’t that thought alone worth writing and reading this book!

I’ll share some more about The Greener Alternatives Book soon.

Click on the link here to read it.

Sending Light and Love,

Jude x