Emily Jubenvill
Meet the (second) greenest person on the planet...
Who’s the greenest Canuck? Is it veteran eco-crusader David Suzuki? Or Green Party leader Elizabeth May? Or perhaps we’ve got some Canadian version of Leonardo DiCaprio, with the cash for all-organic hemp attire, a home tricked out with solar panels and a car converted to run on non-GMO French fry grease.
Actually, according to the website www.3rdWhale.com, the greenest Canadian—and the second greenest person in the entire world—is a pretty average gal living in a highrise in Vancouver’s West End.
She's a die-hard enviromentalist, he can't get enough bacon-wrapped scallops—the two go head-to-head about all things sustainable living.
It would be hard to pick Emily Jubenvill out of a crowd as a world-class eco-champ; she could be any fresh-faced twenty-two year old. Nor did Jubervill do anything extraordinary to take the title; she won simply by doing the easy-on-the-earth stuff we’re all supposed to do, like biking everywhere, recycling, and eating minimal meat. In the process, however, this unassuming woman of very modest means demolished all the standard excuses for wimping out environmentally.
Think you don’t have room to compost? In Jubenvill’s balcony-less apartment, worms munch food scraps in a bin under the kitchen sink. Think you can’t afford to eat local and organic? Jubenvill manages by growing a lot of her own food. Several spectacular monster-sized tomato and pepper plants, started from seed and now hung with ripe red fruit, have usurped houseplants in her sunny living room, and Jubenvill also tends a plot in a nearby community garden and participates community-supported agriculture, trading her labour for regional veggies.
Learn about the PodMob, Emily’s critical mass-type event for sushi lovers.
Think you don’t have the time to green up? Jubenvill does this all while juggling full-time work, volunteering and running her own business.
Not that Jubenvill is interested in adding to anyone’s green guilt. But she is thrilled to get the message out, that, as she puts is, “normal people can do great things for the environment and still lead normal lives.”
Point made, Canadian goddess of green.