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Hot, Flat, and Thistled
This is me
About this blog
Welcome to Green as a Thistle. My name is Vanessa, I'm a journalist at the National Post, based in Toronto.
When I saw the documentary An Inconven— no, just kidding. Now that organic is the new bl— OK, no, seriously now. In short, this blog began somewhere between guilt and earnestness, between dissing Stéphane Dion's dog (named Kyoto) and finding myself amongst a group of eco-hipsters drinking hemp beer at an anti-styrofoam party.
I decided to take on a bit of a challenge: Spend each day, for an entire calendar year, doing one thing that betters the environment. The idea was that everything I did, I kept doing (so if I switched brands, it was a permanent switch; if I turned down my thermostat, I kept it down), so that by day 365, I'd be living as green a lifestyle as it gets.
It was a gruelling year, but in the end, it proved that being an environmentalist doesn't necessarily mean being a smug hippie, nor does it have to mean compromising aesthetic values or good wine. You can read more about what I learned in my book, Sleeping Naked is Green, or just keep reading this here blog. Now, I'm mostly writing about whatever the heck pops into my head (isn't that a novel concept for a blog?).