Every Wednesday, we review a selection of new and upcoming books addressing a specific aspect of environmentalism. Today, we're recommending books about how to clean your home in planet-friendly ways.

The Naturally Clean Home: 150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning (by Karyn Siegel-Maier, $11, Storey Publishing, Dec. 2008): This superlative guide to cleaning without chemicals or toxins, written almost in cookbook format, presents many herb- and essential-oil-based "recipes" by which to create naturally derived cleaning substances.

Green Cleaning for Dummies (by Elizabeth B. Goldsmith and Betsy Sheldon, $17, Wiley, Nov. 2008): Co-written by a Fulbright scholar who's also a consumer-science professor along with a veteran lifestyle journalist, this guide presents straightforward ways to clean green, room by room.

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice That Will Inspire You to Clean Like the Dickens (by Thelma A. Meyer, $20, Hachette Book Group, Mar. 2009): This smartly designed book is an engaging guide to keeping "a clean and happy home." Mrs. Meyer is the inspiration for her daughter's green cleaning-products line, Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day.

Green, Greener, Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-Smart Choices a Part of Your Life (by Lori Bongiorno, $15, Penguin Group, Mar. 2008): Though this isn't, as the aforementioned books are, strictly about cleaning (there are chapters about food, apparel, and transportation, for example), it does include a useful 22-page section devoted to cleaning. In it, the author points out that "Cleaning is supposed to make our homes healthy, but in our frenzy to banish dirt, dust, mold, and germs, we may be doing more harm than good."