Love in the time of tofu

To paraphrase the actor George Burns, do you long for a time when the air was clean and the sex was dirty? We discover a growing culture of environmentalists who are making love, not waste

So last year I'm watching David Letterman interview a browned-off conservationist about a Texas-sized island of rubbish whirling around on the North Pacific - and the thought of the planet's last wild frontier as a giant rubbish dump horrifies me so much I decide it's no longer good enough to pray the homeless will cart off my dirty, separated trash.

From that point on, I resolve that any waste in my home that could possibly be reincarnated as something else, would be.

So I take to scrubbing every iota of food-contaminated paper, plastic, glass and metal before I fling it, and soon my kitchen looks like a miniature recyclable universe: dismantled pieces of packaging all stacked on top of each other like pagodas threatening to topple at any moment.

And, because I'm the only sovereign lording over this rapidly expanding domain of debris, it goes swimmingly for about a year - until "Mr 80%" rocks up in my kitchen a couple of weeks ago.

"Mr 80%" is the guy Dr Phil assured me I should be taking more seriously in his bible for irredeemable singletons - Love Smart: Find the One You Want, Fix the One You Got (Jonathan Ball, R146).

"If the guy has 80% of what you want and the potential to grow the extra 20%, you need to bag that boy up because he is good to go," Dr Phil proselytises.

So, there I am, looking at Mr 80% standing in my kitchen, scoring 100% for trying to look amorous between two swaying towers of I&J fish-cake boxes - until he declares that his half-empty can of Coke is flat and hurls it into the wrong bin, little torrents of cinnamon-coloured foam whooshing all over six weeks' worth of lovingly scrubbed paper recyclables.

A little uncharitably, perhaps, I point out to him that he is an "evolutionary neophyte" - but by then he had transformed into Mr 20%, anyway, with one foot already 80% out of the door.

Hello. My name is Tiara and I'm an eco-sexual.

I didn't actually realise there was a term for posy-sniffers like me until I found it on the Net a few days after The Incident, and discovered there is a whole culture of eco-sexuals ripening across the planet - people who love the natural world so much it determines their choice of romantic partner.

Okay, I can hear you saying, "What's next?" and, yes, you can take it too far. Watch me run 100 miles, for instance, when I meet Mr 150% - the uber eco-sexual who asks that I soap up in his dirty bath water, serves romantic dinners under the deathly pallor of energy-saving lights and, when he's feeling sexy, insists I dress up like a nut-munching, barefoot serf.

But when you start asking questions about where all the vinyl bed sheets and vaginal speculums of the world end up, you realise this whole eco-sexuality thing may just have it going on.

Now an enterprising American environmentalist, Stefanie Iris Weiss, has written a book about chemical-free ways of achieving chemistry - Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make your Love Life Sustainable. Think of it as Anaïs Nin redefining her cucumber patch, as it were.

"Green sex doesn't have to be clean, vanilla sex; it can be as kinky as you please," Weiss writes in the book, out on Amazon now. "But if you want it to be good sex (in all senses of the word), then it's time to make your love life truly sustainable."

Condoms are often flushed down the toilet after use, "where they soon make their way into the sewers and then the water system or ocean". Or, as it was revealed when I went for a sunset stroll of an evening, deposited on Kommetjie beach. Weiss's solution? Biodegradable love gloves.

Eco-Sex thrums with other natural boudoir basics: organic aphrodisiacs, socially conscious love offerings (blood diamonds are not a girl's best friend), what to wear (until your clothes come off), carbon-neutral romantic getaways and hand-cranked playthings free of phthalates - plasticisers that have been linked to shrivelling sperm counts.

Cannot bear the thought of sharing your off-the-grid lifestyle with a lover who would rather go on a date in a Hummer - now, thankfully, a critically endangered beast itself - than a bicycle made for two? Go hunt and gather for Mr or Miss Earth on green dating sites like www.planetearthsingles.com; or indulge your more primitive instincts by visiting the "only adult site" for "titillating tofu eaters" and "hot herbivores", www.vegporn.com.

You may even want to consider a licentious alternative to birth control pills, which, Weiss says, wreak havoc on life in the oceans - "not to mention your body's own ecosystem".

"Tantric sex is one of the most amazing natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals, and it's more than just fun - it's enlightening," she writes. "And there are also plenty of stimulating herbs available that will make a huge, ahem, impact."

Of course, the best thing an eco-sexual can do for this overpopulated planet is not to have any sex at all.

But let's not go there.