Although the green movement has been gaining momentum only recently, environmentalist Christopher Gavigan, 33, has been devoted to helping improve the health of families through eco-friendly and organic initiatives. Gavigan is the CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World, an organization committed to creating an greener and safer environment for children, and the author of Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home, out in bookstores on April 17. He talked to Men's Vogue about the book, organic cotton, children, and being a new father.

MV: How did you get involved with the green movement?

CG: I did my undergrad in environmental science and I grew up on the east coast, in New York and Connecticut. And as soon as I came out west, it's kind of the classic collegiate kid heads west story: you're able to see the mountains and are awed by their magnificence and their grandeur. For me, the west coast embraced ideas of open space and clean healthy living — an awareness of health and the environment. And in doing my undergrad in environmental science and geography at UC Santa Barbara, I came into an understanding of health and wellness and how they were interplayed into the health and wellness of the environment. I did a lot of graduate work in and around psychology and counseling psychology because I wanted to work with families and school administrations to come up with the best solutions for kids who are struggling [to be] healthy.

MV: Did you grow up being this environmentally aware?

CG: I grew up in a classic Irish Catholic family with four boys and with a mom who was an incredible homemaker and who did her best from driving her kids to soccer practice to guitar lessons. But there wasn't a big emphasis on health. But I did grow up in an area where we had five acres of woods and an idyllic Connecticut stream in front of our house. I used to spend hours down there.

MV: How did the book come about?

CG: The idea for the book came when I first joined Healthy Child. I was amazed by how many resources this organization had — from high quality scientific content and work with credible experts and doctors to relationships with notable parents who helped deliver the message and very robust and dynamic content online to DVDs and other resource manuals and guides. And I felt all this needed to be packaged into one easy-to-read, very accessible [book] with great tone and wittiness and excitement. I am a new parent and I realize parents don't have a lot of time and have so much on their plate. So if it was going to be a good book, it needed to be accessible, fresh, and easy to read with an interesting format and great innovative design. And that was all something I felt I could do.

MV: Is the book only for parents?