Lunapads Blog

We love the irreverent tone of National Post columnist and Green as a Thistle blogger Vanessa Farquharson’s new debut memoir, Sleeping Naked is Green: How an eco-cynic unplugged her fridge, sold her car, and found love in 366 days.  She is a major Lunapads and DivaCup proponent, and has a particularly humorous story to tell about Lunapads, excerpted below:

september 29, day 213
Eat ice cream in a cone rather than a plastic cup. I thought that writing about Jake Gyllenhaal was the best way to get
more hits on my blog — man, was I wrong. Turns out, there’s another subject that’s guaranteed to get twice as many hits as Jake, and that
subject is menstruation. It’s totally bizarre — I mean it’s not as though
the only people procrastinating in the blogosphere are women, let
alone women who are very in touch with their bodies and like talking
about how in touch with their bodies they are. Or is it?
Either way, I realized this at some point yesterday, when my post
about using Lunapads reusable cloth pantyliners got upward of forty
comments, many of which revolved around topics like how to
clean them in the sink or a bucket, whether to subsequently empty
the bloody water into one’s potted plants, and so on, going into
enough detail to spoil my homemade lunch.
A funny back story to the Lunapads, though: I’d already bought
my own but the company who makes them found my blog and
decided to send me a bunch for free. They asked for my address,
so I decided to use the one at the National Post. The day they arrived,
I wasn’t in the office, but my editor was. Ben ended up making
dinner plans that night with Kelly, one of the reporters who
used to work with us, who was in Toronto for a brief visit to see his
old friends. Ben decided to bring him some sort of welcome-back
present and went rummaging through the Arts & Life swag pile.
It was slim pickings, so in desperation he started poking around
my desk, searching for any packages of mail that looked like they
might be full of promotional goodies. He grabbed the envelope full
of Lunapads, took it to the French bistro, and watched in mild horror
as Kelly opened it at the table over his duck confit.
Politely declining the gift, Kelly gave it back to Ben, who eventually
gave it back to me, and I decided, in turn, to give it away on
my blog as a prize to the person who could provide me with an
original green change. I was past the halfway mark of my challenge
now and running low on ideas, and after all, I didn’t see any way in
which bribing others to do my creative work for me could be considered
environmentally unfriendly.
Instead of turning it into an official contest, however, I just said
at the end of my post that whoever could give me a good idea for
another green change would win a whole bunch of Lunapads as
well as a pair of organic cotton underwear, size medium.
The first to respond was a guy, which I thought was a little odd.
It was someone named Mark (not the Mark I knew — I checked
the e-mail address), and for a green idea, he wrote the following:
“How about asking your male guests to pee in the bathroom sink?
Saves a lot of water and offers a certain pleasurably guilty frisson
besides, especially if you have lots of little soaps and tiny towels in
the vicinity. If we’re going to weather this post-oil decline with any
grace at all, we’re all going to have to get more comfortable with
bodily fluids anyway.”
The next comment was from Meghan, who said: “If guests start
peeing in your sink, I am never coming over again.”
Seriously. That’s the grossest idea I’ve heard yet. Peeing in the
shower, maybe, but in the sink? I know urine is sterile but I don’t
exactly want it splattering onto my mirror and toothbrush.
My sister, Emma, was the next to leave a comment, but she
seemed less interested in helping me out with a green change than
simply expressing her disgust at my decision to switch to reusable
pads. “Am I even related to you?” she said.
Then there were a slew of comments suggesting things I’d already
done, which didn’t help me at all, as well as some completely
outlandish ideas like the one from a woman named Liberty, who
said I should consider milling my own grains.
But near the very bottom was a shining green light from
reader Laura W, who wrote: “This isn’t as hardcore as the other
suggestions”— I was liking it already —“but all summer, I’ve been
ordering ice cream in a cone to avoid the dish and spoon.”
It was simple. It was cute. It took the prize. In fact, I hadn’t
realized until now just how ingenious the concept of ice cream
in a cone is. If only there were more edible food receptacles in
this world. The sandwich is probably the best and most versatile
example, of course, along with maybe soup in a bread bowl, but
I’m convinced this is only the tip of the iceberg. Surely there must
be more avenues to explore here, like, coffee in a muffin, wine in a
cheese-glass, or most plausibly, milk in a cookie-cup.
I e-mailed Laura to thank her and shipped off her Lunapads.
Only then did it occur to me how odd a transaction this was: you
send me a green idea, I send you some menstrual pads.