A Better Way to Ride
July 2010
By Angus Macdonell
There are approximately 1.1 million residents in the City of Calgary. There are also approximately 834,000 registered vehicles in the city. That’s a ratio of almost one car per person. As anyone who travels Calgary by car is well aware, there are days when it seems like every single one of those vehicles are on the road.
A United Nations report released last month ranked Calgary the fifth highest producer of carbon emissions among fifty major cities worldwide, ahead of both New York City and Mexico City. Toronto and Vancouver had carbon outputs less than a third of our beloved Cowtown, a sobering reminder of Calgary’s reliance
on coal-fired electrical generation, but also the preference of most
Calgarians for using their cars virtually every time they need to go
somewhere.
The Business of Food
January 2010
Film Review: Food, Inc.
By Chandra McDonald
Food, Inc., by filmmaker Robert Kenner, is a film that should be on every conscious consumer’s must-watch list. In a society where many people think that milk originates in the grocery store, Kenner reveals what’s behind the curtain between the consumer and the producer, showing us the truth about where our food comes from.
With the possible exception of water, nothing is more basic or more universal than the need for food. So, have you ever wondered why it’s cheaper to buy junk food – which is processed and packaged and shipped thousands of miles – than it is to buy fresh vegetables and fruit that are wholesome
and natural? Kenner provides a detailed answer.
Transforming Guilt Into Responsibility
August 2009
By Margaret Chandler
Confession: I am an eco sinner. I don’t always take the bus, and I am a pathetic cyclist. I sometimes dine high on the food chain. I am a fickle composter. I used to joke that after I ate my organic seven-grain porridge in the morning, the rest of the day was a relentless downhill tumble. After all, it’s vexedly difficult to realize one’s best intentions when none of the dominant infrastructures be they public transport, food procurement, or housing are designed with sustainability in mind.
My sins are unique to my circumstances, but I’m sure you can make up your own list with alarming ease. After all, we can feel guilty about virtually anything if we care to indulge because
everything we do has an environmental chain reaction. To make
matters worse, we can even quantify our failings through online
calculators that will gladly tell us how extravagantly wasteful our
lifestyles truly are. Original sin pales in comparison.
From Ocean to Table: Smart Seafood Choices
August 2009
By Margaret Chandler
Three times daily we have the opportunity to put our environmental convictions into action through our food choices. What an opportunity to revitalize that worn cliché “Put your money where your mouth is”! The choices we make around seafood are particularly important to the health of our oceans and ultimately the health of our planet.
Three key environmental issues determine whether a fish is a good eco catch or not: overfishing, which is removing too many fish and not leaving enough; bycatch, which is removing animals that were not intended to be part of the catch; and habitat degradation, which is fishing or producing seafood in ways that
affect the quality of water, reefs and ocean habitats.
Red, White and Green All Over
June 2009
By Natasha Evdokimoff
A couple of years ago, my husband and I were on a hedonistic, self-guided tour of the Napa Valley wine region. It was late August, sweltering, and the vines were all heavily laden with fruit that was nearly ripe for the picking.
The more we roamed around, the more impressed I became by the number of wineries that follow organic practices. I’ll never forget the words of one vineyard manager at a picturesque organic property we visited, as he leisurely guided us between rows of lovingly tended vines.
“One hundred years ago,” he said, with a hint of a wry grin, “this
wasn’t called organic farming – it was just called farming.”
The Bottled Water Marketing Marvel
April 2009
By Margaret Chandler
In the last two articles, I discussed the health of our watersheds and the environmental, energy, and waste costs associated with bottled water. There remains one last question to ask. How the heck did bottled water become so culturally entrenched and such an icon of the times?
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Bottled water is a major industry, growing from a virtually unheard product just a few decades ago to an industry with $50 billion globally in sales. The reasons we have become so enchanted with bottled water are really quite basic. Let’s call them the Factor Five:
The Real Price of Bottled Water
January 2009
By Margaret Chandler
In the first of this series, I wrote about water withdrawals and their impact on local watersheds, water pricing and some of the recent successes of the anti-bottled-water activists. In this article, I will discuss the energy, waste, and health considerations.
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Water is the best of all things. Pindar, circa 500 BC
Two and half thousand years later and not much has changed. We can still concur with an ancient Greek’s pithy observation. But when it comes to bottling the “best of all things” into single-serve plastic containers, aphorisms fail us. Instead, we are left with a host of questions that need answering. How much energy goes into the bottling of water? What happens to those billions of water bottles that we discard every year? Does this energy and waste footprint pay off for us in any health benefits?
Resolutions versus Intentions
January 2009
By Stephanie Jackman
“A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other.” – Anonymous
Making positive change sustainable is a subject of great importance to me. Of course, it’s critical to the sustainability movement and my work with REAP, but it’s also a battle that many of us fight in our personal lives.
There is no time when this is more true than at the start of a new year.
