Local eco-blogger Vanessa Farquharson spent a year going green in radical fashion, chronicling her endeavours on her blog, Green as a Thistle, and in her upcoming book, Sleeping Naked Is Green. We've asked her to provide us with tips on how to become more environmentally friendly in the most unfriendly of ways.

Hand-washing dishes make total sense, using less water and less energy, but what's this about letting them drip-dry over plants?
Well, actually, a lot of people will argue that hand-washing dishes uses more water than most modern, efficient dishwashers, but personally I think that as long as you do it right, it takes less. Aside from that debate, though — during my challenge, I was hand-washing all of my plates, cups and cutlery, and would usually let them dry on a tea towel. But then I noticed the tea towels were starting to get soggy and gross after a while. I didn't want to buy a whole dish rack, so instead I just opened the top rack of my dishwasher and let them dry in there.

Of course, when your brain is in hardcore-green-overdrive, you start to notice all the little things, and sure enough, when I saw that all the droplets of water from my recently washed dishes were falling onto the door below, I immediately wondered how I could save them. The light bulb went off: I went and grabbed a couple houseplants and stuck them underneath so they could catch whatever water was falling. I called this my "dishwatering can" (you can see what I mean here).

This idea is ingenious! I swear, if I owned a dishwasher, this is what I would use it for. Why haven't you patented it?
I know, my dad suggested I do that, but I'm just too lazy. However, there are people out there coming up with similar ideas (like this design by Jordan Bailey, or this one by Ran Shapner) — still, my design doesn't cost anything and doesn't require buying anything new (assuming you already have a dishwasher, of course, which I guess I shouldn't assume).

By this point you were using exclusively greywater (the not-quite-good-enough-to-drink, not quite-dirty-enough-to-waste water leftover from cooking, doing the dishes, etc.) to water your plants — did they take to it alright?
Yes, but I've heard reports from other people that greywater can lead to fungus or mold problems in plants. Mostly, the greywater I was using was pretty clean — I wasn't harvesting used laundry water, or saving the water I shaved my legs in, or anything gross like that — so nothing out of the ordinary happened. If anything, my major problem was that I ended up with bowls and basins of greywater everywhere that weren't getting used because I didn't have enough plants (fortunately, there was a community garden at the bottom of my apartment that I could dump these into). Still, to be honest, it's a bit of a pain saving every ounce of water possible — more realistic is to just use less of it to begin with. Turn the tap off while brushing, boil only as much water as you need for a cup of tea, and so on.

Read more of Vanessa Farquharson's Green to the Extreme tips and other ways to make yourself more environmentally friendly at www.eyeweekly.com/greenliving.