MAYBE it's the dreary spring weather, but I find myself in need of a boost. The brain has absorbed all it can about micro-renewables, organic farming and recycling, leaving more primitive desires: I need chocolate and celebrity gossip and I need them now.
A tray of Green & Black's minis takes care of the sugar craving, but while flicking through exclusive shots of Kerry Katona's afterbirth and lurid tales of Amy Winehouse's midnight trips to her local corner shop, I realise that you can't escape destiny. Our home-grown celebs might be otherwise engaged, but over in Hollywood, the stars are outdoing themselves trying to prove who's the greenest of them all.
Scientologists should be worried, as the new eco-religion seems to be attracting converts all along Beverly Hills Boulevard. It's no longer good enough simply to turn up to a red-carpet event in a Toyota Prius. Take Sean Penn, who's just got back from a trip on a biodiesel bus (he obviously doesn't realise that biodiesel is plummeting on the barometer of eco-cool). His 'Dirty Hands Caravan' was a sort of feelgood A-Team, stopping to build houses for the homeless, clean up parks and do whatever it took to make the world a better place.
Elsewhere, Harrison Ford has had his chest waxed to highlight awareness of deforestation. Come again? I think it's a metaphor. While Ford daubs on the calamine lotion, A-listers such as Elton John, Johnny Depp and Lindsay Lohan have signed up in the campaign to 'free Lolita', a 40-year-old killer whale whose Miami Seaquarium pool can't quite match the vastness of the ocean.
Ever eager to raise their rugrats the right way, Hollywood's moms and dads have contributed essays to a book called Healthy Child, Healthy World. Here's Meryl Streep: "Why is the truth like organic food? Because it's a little harder to find, and a little more expensive than the alternative, but as demand for it grows, the price you have to pay for it comes down."
Not nearly as much fun as the news that Bon Jovi plan to carbon-offset their next tour. "Do you really want to know why I'm doing all this goodwill?" says Jon Bon Jovi. "It's because I feel guilty about the huge hole in the ozone layer my haircuts created. It's my responsibility to right the wrongs of the '80s."
The environmental website http:// grist.org produces an alternative to the usual rich lists. Its most recent publication was a guide to Hollywood's 15 greenest actors. Those basking in the limelight include Natalie Portman (the face of a low-energy lightbulb company, designer of vegan shoes and staunch supporter of gorillas in Rwanda), Leonardo DiCaprio (who has his own foundation supporting environmental causes), Robert Redford (who has launched a weekly three-hour slot of eco-programming on his Sundance TV channel) and Pierce Brosnan (proud recipient of the Best Dressed Environmentalist award).
This is all heart-warming, but much juicier are the revelations about the stars who stick to their private-jet-flying ways. The Carbon Trust says David Beckham has the world's biggest carbon footprint, thanks to his 15 gas-guzzling cars and endless flights around the world for football.
After uncovering all this celebrity eco tittle-tattle, I feel rejuvenated. Even more so when I discover that a new eco-reality TV series, Battleground Earth, is in production, pitting rapper Ludacris against rocker Tommy Lee in a series of environmental challenges. Being green has never been so satisfyingly superficial.
BE GREENER• Join Kim Wilde in the fight to save 'endangered vegetables'. Dig Your Dinner wants us to grow heirloom varieties such as King of the Ridge cucumber to reverse the trend that has seen 98% of vegetable varieties vanish since 1908 (
www.seedsofchange.co.uk).
• Take part in the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers' Spring into Action campaign (
www.btcv.org.uk). Events run until June 8, with the endorsement of celebrities such as Chris Collins, the Blue Peter gardener.
HEALTHY PLANETCAMPING is the only holiday for the eco-conscious. Minimal carbon footprint, all that fresh, unpolluted air and no blot on the landscape. All you need now is a tent, and to improve your kudos in the festival field, nab one of these stylish numbers from Millets. Designed by Celia Birtwell, it will sleep up to four people and, unlike a cheap flight to the Costas, you can use it again and again. (Celia Birtwell teepee, £99.99, Millets,
www.millets.co.uk)
GLOBAL VILLAGE
A new lease of lifeBEING green, like other good causes, starts at home, and there's no better place to start than your bin. Chances are, were you to poke around the debris, you'd find a mountain of plastic packaging, our chief recycling bug-bear. 'Almost Mrs Average' leads the way at
www.therubbishdiet.co.uk, with her running commentary of wheelie bin 'weigh-ins'.
Reusing items is key in the quest, as other bloggers share their tips. Among the suggestions at
www.blogs.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving you'll find: "Don't chuck yoghurt pots. Just use a hot nail to melt drainage holes, and use them to grow small plants."
With a bit of creativity, the possibilities are endless, as eco-conscious band Recoup, posting at
http://blog.greenfinder.co.uk, testify, describing their new CD cover: "We chose crisp packets because they are hard to recycle, the perfect shape for a CD, durable and when turned inside are all uniform silver in colour."
Tetrapak cartons get a new lease of life as a purse at
http://en.espritcabane.com/recycling-crafts. But if you'd rather leave Blue Peter to the kids, donate items for arts projects at www.childrensscrapstore.co.uk.
With all this reuse potential, a poster at
www.foe.co.uk/forum has a radical suggestion: "Rather than reducing packaging, maybe what we need to do is have more of it, but the sort of packaging that can be cleaned, collected and reused. This approach used to work just fine in the old days."
The full article contains 1022 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
