sasha on the street

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus since the seasonal holidays and then getting pretty sick (get your wisdom teeth out before they make you sick!). Lots has been happening in and around the engineering, sustainable development and renewable energy front. My plan this week is to take a look at the things that I’ve missed over the last few weeks

Here is what you can expect to see:

1. Pedestrian Deaths: Recently in Toronto there has been a spike in pedestrian-auto collisions, many resulting in fatalities. I’d like to explore some causes, some of the rational behind them and offer some suggestions as to how we can mitigate future fatalities.

2. Micro-loans: It should pave the way for brighter futures for those in Developing Nations, especially women. Micro-loans are designed to give people that first start they need to get a business rolling. In many of these countries women face many social injustices, micro-loans allow these women to try and overcome these barriers.

3. McGuinty’s Green Energy Plan: A lot of controversy has risen over the source of product for the renewable energy source. With much of it from Samsung and built off-shore Ontarian’s are criticizing McGuinty’s actions.

4. Environmental Assessment: In my last semester of my masters of engineering I am taking a class on environmental assessment. I will try and post weekly commentary on what is new and interesting

5. Book Review: I’ve read quite a bit over the last few weeks and on my new Kindle (thanks to @phryl).  While you may not be so intersted in my opinion of the twilight series I have read some more enlightening and engaging material. The next one I am hoping to read is Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty.

These will be out shortly, check back for updates.

Last night while watching the news I was drawn in by a story about the Burlington Elementary school district. It was a walk to school program, encouraging parents and children to walk to school instead of driving.

Like many of the surrounding suburbs of Toronto, Burlington has larger homes on bigger properties and streets that seem to go no where. In addition to that parents of the Burlington area were worried about student safety (and who wouldn’t these days with two pedestrian deaths in the Toronto area yesterday). Each day more kids get a drive to school than walk.

The program in Burlington encourages teachers and student volunteers to ‘pick up’ students much like a bus would, but instead of a bus they all walk together. It is active transportation at its best. Plus it means more time for students to socialize with their friends.

There are so many benefits to students walking to school:

• It stimulates their bodies making them more alert and attentive at school
• It stimulates their metabolism; increasing their metabolic rates and food processing abilities
• It gets the ‘social bug’ out – instead of socializing in the classroom students socialize on the way to school
• It encourages life long lessons in exercise

Ontario is encouraging students to walk to school, as both a green community initiative and as an active transportation initiative. There are no 40 communities participating in the Active and Safe Routes to School Program, all the way from Windsor to Ottawa and up and over to Kenora.

How did your kids get to school today? Change up your routines and encourage your children to be more active.

Usually so hard to keep. People talk about being more active, being a better parent/spouse/friend. Eating better. Living Cleaner. But so often people set lofty goals, which are too hard to keep. Setting realistic, simple goals is the path to reaching those bigger, more challenging goals.

Here are my green New Years Resolutions:

Be less wasteful: We are all guilty of it. That tomato sauce that goes moldy so we throw out the container instead of cleaning it and either reusing or recycling it. Throwing out food, especially wasted fruits and vegetables. I am going to try to consume more left overs for lunch and use more of the lettuce that is delivered to me week

Consume Locally: organic or not organic I think overall the environmental impact is smaller if I consume things that are produced locally. Root vegetables and squashes are delicious in Ontario through the winter and preserve well. I may have to satisfy my strawberry addiction (but isn’t it better to consume things from California, than say China or the middle east?)

Eat more ancient Grains: Not only do they keep you feeling satiated longer but there are lots of health benefits to ancient grains. In December I discovered Quinoa and all the great things you can make with it, today I ventured into Steel Cut Oatmeal.

Use My Car Less: I’m pretty good with this one already but I believe in always trying to be better. I’ll continue to walk to the grocery store and use transit, my bicycle and my legs where ever I can.

What are your green resolutions this year?

Blue Moutain, Ontario’s Premier Snow Resort, is getting a little greener. Located about 160km north-west of Toronto, just outside of Collingwood is some of the best skiing in Ontario.

Blue Moutain Resort is unique in that it has a department solely dedicated to preserving the environment. With a dedicated staff their goal is to

“to be recognized as a leader among four-season resort destinations in Canada for our exceptional commitment to the environment in which we live, work and play and for continually striving to achieve resort-wide sustainability.”

How are they doing this?

• Providing reusable dishes and cutlery in lodges, which elimates 11,400 polystyrene containers!
• Diverting organic waste from landfills to the industrial composting program – in 2007 500 tonnes were diverted
• Extensive recycling program – in 2007 300 tonnes of materials were diverted from landfills.
• The Co-Generation Project – a combined heat and power system that recovers thermal energy to heat water at the Blue Mountain Inn
• Replaced old light bulbs with new compact fluorescents or LEDs – reducing consumption by 1,130,000 kWh annually

Blue Mountain employs several other conversational and innovative environmental initiatives. As a member of the Sustainable Slopes Initiative of the National Ski Areas Association. As well they are contributors to the environmental corner of the Ontario Snow Resort Associate.

Skiing is a passion of mine, I believe it promotes a healthy lifestyle, brings people together and promotes an awareness of our environment. Skiing or riding promotes the third cog, the social element, in the triple bottom line perspective. I think the best snow resorts are the ones that can provide meaningful employment to the community and help to preserve our environment.

This morning I had the opportunity to attend the breakfast forum on Ontario’s Waste Diversion act hosted by the Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.

My quick summary can be found at one of my favourite engineering news websites, Renew Canada.

As I wait for the weather to turn colder and Toronto to go from a murky grey to a glistening white, I got thinking more about what I could do to ‘green’ my holidays.

Thanks to @Greenopolis yesterday for posting a great list on their to 10 things you can do to be more green this year. Here were Greenopolis’ suggestions:

1. Re-think Re-gifting: have two of something now? Don’t really need the gift? Just be sensitive to whom you re-gift.
2. Buy Less: It’s the though that counts! Buy something meaningful, something useful. Even better make a gift for someone. My favourite gift to give is a mason jar filled with all the dry ingredients for cookies. Add a message around it about how much butter, egg, etc to add as well as baking instructions.
3. Shop Together: The carpooling part saves on emissions but it’s so much more fun to shop with friends too
4. Go the ‘Secret Santa’ Route: Instead of buying each family member a gift, put a maximum on gift amounts and have family members draw names from a hat. (if that’s not possible put one person in charge and have them email each person who their buying for)
5. Keep it Local: go to local craft shows and marketplaces (I plan to go to the St. Lawrence Market this weekend for some unique gifts)
6. Give it to others: donate old toys, books and clothes to charity. Or contact your local shelter about donating to their holiday feast. The Fred Victor Centre in Toronto opens it’s doors to those in need thru the holidays. You can purchase ‘units of turkey’ to help out those in need
7. Lower your impact: Change all your lights to LEDs (if you haven’t already done so). And turn out all the holiday lights as you go to bed (OK maybe leave them on for the 24th, Santa needs to know how to find your tree and stockings!)
8. Choose a live tree: Surprisingly real trees are more sustainable than plastic ones,, most of the research believes that you’ll keep your plastic tree forever, but most people throw theirs away once it’s tattered. Better yet buy a potted tree, it will last you for years.
9. Make your own cards: Choose eco friendly paper, buy seed-cards that can be planted in the spring or send an e-card.
10. Green your gift wrap: old news papers and brown bags make great wrapping paper. One of my friends actually puts her stuff in boxes/bins for everyone and covers them with a sheet with each child’s name on a card.

There are so many more things that we can do to make it a ‘greener’ holiday. Here are some that I think we can also do:

1. Green you food: Try and get local, organic turkey and vegetables. Many butchers will order in exactly what you’re looking for. And with all the great markets out there you’re bound to find many organic vegetables. If you can’t go local, organic try and go local before you go organic, it’s usually a smaller footprint (The best local butcher shops in Toronto can be found here)
2. Ask for things you need: Sure new frivolous things are great, but what do you really need this year?
3. Gingerbread Decorations: Not only can you make whatever type of decoration you want, in whatever colours you want, they are also delicious!
4. Think Minimalist: Isn’t that the style these days? You’ll see just how great your house can look with very few decorations
5. Practice the 3R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, compost as much as you can and stick to your daily green habits

We will open doors for you. Say ‘Good Morning,’ ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye.’ We smile at you on the street for no other reason than to pass off a positive attitude. We are country known for our world-peace keeping efforts. People immigrate here for a chance at a better life…
Canada has been known as one of the best countries to live in, for the opportunities, for the freedoms, for our diverse culture, but will this still be true in the future?

According to the 2009 Quality of Life Index that includes 194 countries Canada ranks 19th. The ranking is based on weighted factors that includes cost of living, leisure and culture, the economy, the environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, risk & safety and climate. A full list of all the countries can be found here, including how they categories are weighted and calculated.

As for where we will be in 2010? It’s unknown right now but it will likely be falling even further behind. It’s no secret that Canada is starting to lag, we are becoming known as the country of polite polluters.

Canada the only country that agreed to the Kyoto Protocol backs away from the ratification

The Kyoto Protocol asked for all nations involved to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage below 1990 levels by 2012. Canada agreed to cut emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, formally ratified the Kyoto Accord at the end of 2002 and in 2006 the Canadian government announced it was abandoning the Kyoto targets. Even wore Canada is currently 26% above 1990 emission levels.

Why are we backing away from the Kyoto protocol? Why can’t we meet our environmental targets? According to George Monbiot it is because of all the potential economic benefits of exploiting the oil of the Alberta Tar Sands. But as Monbiot explains it’s not really oil and that’s why it might be so environmentally destructive. In his article The Urgent Threat to World Peace is … Canada, Manbiot sums up the tar sands …

“It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals… To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailing ponds, some of which are so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface(10). Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers… Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes”

Read more »

Triple Bottom Line Accounting. The notion is that you account for the economic profits, the environmental impact, and the social costs and benefits; People, Planet, Profit.

This was borne out of the idea that we need to do a better job at protecting our natural environments; simply exploiting them for economic gain was going to mean the earth’s eventual ruin. John Elkington coined the phrase in 1992 in his book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business.

We can weigh the economic profits against the environmental and societal costs and truly capture the costs and benefits of the things we do

Lately I have been doing a lot of research around triple bottom line accounting. I’ve noticed that recently we have done a much better job at capturing the environmental costs and benefits and incorporating this into the total cost of new projects.

What about the third pillar? The costs to society? What is there is a benefit to society?

While working on a paper this really struck a chord with me. I was looking at the life cycle cost of a lift at a snow resort when it consumes electricity from the conventional grid compared to when it consumes wind-generated energy. I had focused much of my analysis around the environmental benefits of using wind-generated electricity, the environmental costs of conventional energy and the economic cost to install a turbine and use conventional energy. But I hadn’t thought about the social cost of installing a wind turbine at a ski resort of the social benefits of a snow resort.

With limited time to complete my paper I had to concede and look at the societal costs qualitatively, while evaluating the economic and environmental costs qualitatively. But it really got me thinking about how we neglect these ‘societal’ costs sometimes. Moving forward my personal goal is to think more about the societal costs when I evaluate something, which I think overall we can all do a little more of.

After all to be truly sustainable there must be balance between all three.

What affects the choices we make with our daily meals? Why is it that some of us are more inclined to pack our lunch than to buy our lunch?

Last night someone really got me thinking about the things we eat and what influences our eating choices. My friend was telling me that he has a secret obsession with KFC (not that he eats it frequently now) and he thinks it stems from the fact that it was the closest place to walk for lunch while he was in high school. And he’s probably right, his decision for lunch everyday was likely based on proximity, after all, we are a society of convenience.

I pack my lunch most days and can’t help but wonder if it is influenced by the fact that there was nothing really close by to my high school? I really didn’t like the cafeteria food so I was forced to pack a lunch, a practice I still continue to this day.

Fast food is more convenient, easily accessible and usually steps from most high schools. If we are to try and teach this current generation of teenagers about better eating habits should there be a radius in place that prevents un-healthy restaurants from opening near a school?

Schools are traditionally part of neighbourhoods so not permitting fast-food chains to open near a school is unjustly unfair to the remainder of the community. As parents, as teachers as mentors it is our job to influence the teenagers around us, to teach them that it is ‘cool’ to eat healthy, and even to pack a lunch. So what can we do to help our teenage generation think more about the choices they make for lunch

1. Apples: crunchy, crisp and full of energy (according to my bf they provide you with more energy than the jolt from a cup of coffee). With all these teenagers addicted to coffee from all the Tim Horton’s Commercial’s and the stigma of not carrying a Starbucks cup, it’s time to help shift that mentality. Most people like the taste of apples, they are sweet and refreshing. It’s not just about teenagers seeing you with an apple but seeing you eat one.
2. Salad: It is becoming part of the fast food chain and more importantly salad is becoming trendy. Both the Lettuce Eatery and Freshii are two of Toronto’s healthy fast food alternatives. Load them up with protein and you can get a pretty balanced meal out a salad. Salad is one of my favourite things and I typically pack one to accompany my lunch each day.
3. Water: If I were to hazard a guess I would estimate that about 90% of the population is dehydrated. An average person should consume 2 litres of water a day. Caffeinated drinks as a diuretic robbing our bodies of the necessary water it needs. Juice is an okay substitute, but the calories from a lot of juice add up quickly.
4. Sandwiches: I’ll admit they can get really boring when you eat them day-in and day-out but you can have a really balanced meal all in one bite. Protein, carbs, vegetable servings, the more creative you are with your sandwich the better it tastes and the better it is for you.
5. Smoothies: OK, maybe not a lunch thing but if you walk around with a smoothie in a clear glass you get peoples attention. Smoothies are typically a vibrant colour and are very appealing to the eye. Because smoothies are just fruits and vegetables they come filled with nutrients and not much fat, if any. Much like the common cold, smoothies are contagious. Just by walking around with one you’ll inspire others to make one every day.

My friends always ask how I have time to make my lunch and to make such a healthy lunch. It is a matter of proper planning, buying the right things and making enough leftovers. On average I think I spend two to five minutes a day making my lunch. Just the right amount of time from when I put the kettle on in the morning until it boils.

Wind. Solar. Geothermal. Hydroelectric. These all are forms of renewable energy that should be part of our future electricity mix. Currently there are incentives in place to help residents invest in personal renewable energy, but what about commercial incentives

To date the government has offered no incentives to commercial businesses to invest in individual renewable energy.

I’ve spent the week doing a lot of research on renewable energy, specifically wind energy. I was amazed at the responses I was getting from business owners, particularly those in ideal wind zones.

The initial set up cost is so high that it is complete barrier to entry in the renewable energy sector.

But wait didn’t we hear from the government through the media that a large portion was to come from individual, renewable energy investment?

It got me thinking about the whole triple bottom line approach to things; evaluating something from an economic, environmental and social perspective. Yes the government wants to improve our energy grid and reduce green house emissions, but it cannot be at the economic expense of businesses.

It can cost upwards of $4million for a single wind turbine

That’s a lot of money. And businesses these days just don’t have that kind of money to invest. Most are fearful that this economic downturn is not quite over yet; I’m on the fence with that one.

Here are some suggestions for getting these programs going:

1. Government should offer NO interest loans to companies to invest in renewable energy.
2. There should be co-sharing of the long-term costs – the government still comes out ahead, this way they don’t have to invest in all of it.
3. More R&D is needed to figure out how to lower the cost of production – although as more people the demand the technologies, economies of scale will prevail and costs will naturally decrease
4. Charge people the ‘real’ cost for electricity. This one is a little controversial, but there is some evidence that we are not paying enough for our electricity. Renewables become much more economically attractive if the price of electricity doubles or even triples.

Renewables are part of the future, lets just make them part of the near future.