The challenge: To spend each day, for an entire year, making one change to greenify my life. As someone who values modern conveniences and pretty shoes, I hope this shows that being eco-friendly doesn't necessarily require massive change, compromise or hard-core activism-- it can be simple and inspiring. I began this project on March 1, 2007.
I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP
All right, kids, we've got just over three weeks left of this challenge, so it's time to start getting a little crazy. Time to do stuff no sane person could ever be expected to keep up for a year; time to make some changes that are over-the-top impractical and outrageous, because I'll never have to do this again! I think I'll call this the "You've Gotta Be Kidding Me" series.
The first instalment? No more makeup.
For the boys, and some of the more confident girls out there, this is totally no biggie. But try to understand that I've been wearing eye shadow, eyeliner, concealer and blush almost every single day since I was 15. It's not as though I wear tons of makeup, but there's no way I leave the house without it.
Fortunately, I'm working from home this entire month, and by home I mean a friend's cottage up in Creemore, Ont., so basically no
one will see me except the guy who comes to plow the driveway and the cleaning lady.
The green reason behind this? Well, to use less product, of course. I realize this negates some previous changes, like buying all-natural eye-shadow, lip stick and bronzer, but at this point in the game, I'm hoping you can forgive the occasional bit of redundancy.
RAIN, RAIN, DON'T GO AWAY
TerraCycle is a very cool company -- not only do they re-use milk jugs and pop bottles to package their Worm Poop plant food, they also turn old wine barrels into compost bins and rainwater collecting systems.
Now that I'm in a house with a garden, front yard and two decks, I'll definitely need more than just leftover pasta water to keep all my greenery hydrated. So I'm getting a rain barrel and rigging it up to the bottom of my drain pipe. I'm not sure where I'm going to find some extra cinder blocks to prop it up, but I do think I have some of that quarter-inch mesh wire leftover from when I constructed my compost bin (Um, OK, also, I think it's safe to say that I never in my life thought I'd have extra quarter-inch mesh wire lying around the house seriously, what have I become??).
vfarquharson@nationalpost.com
