SAVE THE PLANET 750 Everyday Ways You Can Help Clean Up the Earth <i> by Diane MacEachern (Dell: $9.95; 210 pp.) </i>

In celebration of Earth Day (which is today, in case the Book Review happens to be the reader’s first exposure to the media in the past week), publishers are releasing a flotilla of books (see also Just Released in Paper, Page 8) that offer practical advice for cleaning up our acts, our homes, our communities, our cities, our planet. But don’t lament the felling of trees for the sake of this competition; these books are far less redundant than the garden variety of copycat publishing. While the actual advice proffered may overlap, the tone varies considerably, and, happily for the ecological movement, there seems to be an approach to suit every possible environmental offender, a description from which none of us are exempt.

Diane MacEachern’s “Save Our Planet” is a bouncy, energetic compilation of ideas designed to be implemented easily in any family. The short-entry style of presentation is combined with lots of graphics--charts, boxes, lists--so that there are absolutely no pages merely gray with text. This approach won’t tax even the shortest attention span. Far from talking down to her audience, however, the author writes with great directness, simplicity and economy, as if to say that some issues are too important to clutter up with either technical jargon or cutesy PR talk.

MacEachern’s introductory chapter, “The Planet in Peril,” is an excellent concise introduction to the major threats to the environment. (The author has served the Earth Day 1990 team as national communications consultant and formerly worked with Sierra Club in the same capacity.) The 750 ideas for cleaning up the planet are divided into areas where the plans can be put into practice: in the home, in the garden, at school, at the office, at the supermarket, on vacation. The text is punctuated with inserted tips under such labels as “Bright Ideas”; the book is not without humor, either, witness the corresponding category, “Not Such a Bright Idea.”