1. Left-wing, left-handed, and green

Hello;

My name is Shawna and I created this blog as a way to help me keep track of my journey to become more green and to share my experience with others. I am a university student in Canada's capital city and find it hard to be extremely green in such a big urban center. I grew up in a small town and miss that lifestyle very much. I want to do so much more to help the environment. Thrown into this blog will also be rants in general about green-related issues, links to other green blogs and websites, feminist opinions, etc.

Currently, I do some green things. For example, I am huge on recycling, hence the "recycling police" blog title, and try to always bring canvass reuseable shopping bags when I go to a store. I shower in cold water [wierd, I know, but I find it refreshing], wash my dishes by hand, only do laundry when I have a full load, take public transit or ride my bike instead of driving, and other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

I am also a frequent patron of the Garden Spot [known colloquially as G-Spot], a vegan food center on campus. The way it works is you go there, bringing your own Tupperware and utensils or purchasing some from them for a toonie, and they give you delicious vegan food. The center is pay-what-you-can and I find it a good way to get affordable, healthy meals. Yesterday I was starving after my morning classes at university and I went to the G-Spot and paid them $2.76 in change that I found in my piggybank and they gave me a heaping portion of fresh fruit [bananas, strawberries, melon], rice, chickpeas, pasta, and vegan bread.

Now, this amazed me because, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am pretty anti-vegetable. I mean, I like carrots and cucumbers with ranch dressing to dip and I love corn on the cob and peas and every once in a while a fresh garden salad but I am known as the wierd girl who goes to Subway and orders a chicken sandwich with absolutely no vegetables on it. Accustomed to picking vegetables out of my meals, I was surprised when I paused one day between scarfing down the meal from the G-Spot only to discover that there were vegetables in it! Much to my surprise, I had indeed eaten vegetables. And they were tasty! I decided any place that could get me to eat vegetables was worth going back to. And I have been ever since.

I have considered becoming vegetarian or vegan. My boyfriend and sister and a few of my relatives are already vegetarians. I just love chicken too much. I could do without other meats - I never liked anything that came from a pig, not even bacon, and only eat beef in small amounts such as in spaghetti sauce - but chicken I would sorely miss just because it tastes so damn good. Here, I ask any vegetarians or vegans reading this to please post suggestions if you know of any meat alternatives that taste as good as chicken. I find boca burgers and vegetable-based meat-flavoured products to be alright, but if there was something that tasted truly like chicken I would eat that instead and fully convert.

I look forward to posting more, so keep checking back. :)