Last week, Jo spoke at the virtual ‘launch party’ for this book, immediately got online afterwards and bought some copies as Christmas gifts. We suggest you might like to do the same (and do buy them through Your Planet Needs You’s own website: the authors will sign and dedicate the books, you’ll receive a set of beautiful bee postcards with your order – and Jeff Bezos doesn’t get a cut.

It was a book she was given at the age of 13 – A Shopper’s Guide to Saving the Planet – which set her on her own green path. In truth, there wasn’t much a 13-year-old schoolgirl in Bromley could do to save the planet back then, though she did get her mum to dive a lot of gin bottles to the bottle bank, and took a bit of direct action in the form of putting bricks in the loo cisterns at school to save water. Rather than the gold star she’d hoped for, she ended up being sent to the headmistress’s office accused of vandalism… But when the whole green agenda bubbled up again at the end of the 1980s, Jo was ready.

Come 2020, though, there’s so much that we can all do to tread more lightly on Mother Earth. Your Planet Needs You doesn’t just tell you the WHY, but the how we can all make so many small steps, all of which add up to reducing impact. Recycling, upcycling, buying natural and organic, our food choices, noise pollution, ethical living… It’s all here.

The principal author is Bernadette Vallely, who has a great track record running the Women’s Environmental Network (Jo was at the actual, real-life launch of her first book for Virago, The Young Person’s Guide to Saving the Planet, 30 years ago). But cleverly, Bernadette has recruited young helpers in the form of 10-year-old eco warrior and fervent litter-picker Bethan Stewart James – a Greta Thunberg-in-the-making – and Amy Charuy-Hughes, founder of Greener Together with Amy, a website which focuses on stylish slow living and zero waste options.

Over the past seven months, since COVID reared its ugly head, the media has gone distressingly quiet on climate change, on modern slavery, pollution and rainforest devastation. It’s as if those things aren’t happening any more – but they are, and the need to act is more urgent than ever, even if those challenges have been completely overshadowed by just one story: the global ‘pandemic’.

We can all do our bit, though, by reading – and acting – on this.

Published by Virago at £12.99 plus postage – buy here

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