Not Your Typical Treehugger

Wel­come to the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger cam­paign. Ve­g­ans come from all stages of life and from a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions and so­cial groups

We are doc­tors, fire­fight­ers, pro­fes­sors, pow­er­lifters, nurs­es, en­gi­neers, par­ents, mar­tial artists, teach­ers, bank­ers, body­builders, lawy­ers, ve­t­eri­narians, so­cial work­ers, com­put­er sci­en­tists, min­ers and more.

Yet we have no­ticed over the years that many peo­ple car­ry around a tired old set of an­ti ve­g­an prej­u­dices, just wait­ing to un­load them on the first un­sus­pect­ing ve­g­an they come across. You’ll of­ten hear th­ese peo­ple mind­less­ly char­ac­terise ve­g­ans as pale, weak, wast­ing away, tree hug­ging let­tuce munch­ing hip­pies, most­ly with­out ev­er hav­ing met an ac­tu­al ve­g­an!

Some faces from the Not your typ­i­cal tree­hug­ger cam­paign

The aim of the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger cam­paign is to in­tro­duce you to re­al ve­g­ans in the com­mu­ni­ty, from all walks of life, and in the pro­cess take a sledge­ham­mer to un­in­formed and in­cor­rect prej­u­dices about what it is to be ve­g­an.

In June 2010 we launched the cam­paign with this pro­file of ve­g­an body­builder Joel Kirk­ilis. Ev­ery week for the next year we will post a new pro­file to the Not Your Typ­i­cal Tree­hug­ger web­site. The pro­files will fea­ture in­for­ma­tion about how and why peo­ple have gone ve­g­an, favou­rite foods and recipes, re­ac­tions of fam­i­ly and friends, and sto­ries about how go­ing ve­g­an has changed lives for the bet­ter. The cam­paign is glob­al and if you know any­one who would like to be fea­tured as part of this new and exc­it­ing cam­paign, or would like to be pro­filed your­self, please let us know.