Audited! A waste and consumption inventory.

It is difficult to assess how much stuff you accumulate. A lot of it comes in the door without a second thought: Groceries, toiletries, clothes, shoes, office supplies, electronics, and cleaning products. Then there are the big ticket items, such as your car. When I look around my house, with a waste and consumption audit in mind, I am blown away by the overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by stuff. There is stuff everywhere! I’ve got stuff for every occasion! I’ve got stuff I need, stuff I want, stuff I need to get rid of, stuff I am bored with, stuff that I’m keeping just in case I need it, and stuff that I’ve forgotten I even had! So how do I even begin to do a stuff audit? It is overwhelming.

Cars: So I begin with a few simple online tools for stuff evaluation. First, let’s start with the obvious, big stuff, like my car. I drive a Smart fortwo convertible. It has a diesel engine and is a 2008 model. According to the Greener Choices website, (you can find here http://www.greenerchoices.org/products.cfm?product=greencar&pcat=autos ) the Smart fortwo Passion is the #2 ranked make and model for fuel economy. Less fuel should equal less carbon emissions, so I feel like I am off to a good start. However, this tool only assesses the Smart fortwo Passion model, so I will check another source, just to be sure. The second car assessment tool I will use is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Vehicles website (found here http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Index.do ). They have my year, make and model, but unfortunately are just assessing the gasoline engine Smart. If my car used gasoline, it would rank 7/10 for air pollution, with 10 being the best score, and a 9/10 for greenhouse gas score. It would get 33/41 for fuel economy (mpg). Since the diesel model for Smart is generally considered more fuel efficient, I am going to assume I am doing well in terms of my waste and consumption audit for my car.

Computers: Next I will move onto my computer(s). I am a bit ashamed to say that I own two laptops. In my defense, my new HP mini got a screen crack within two weeks of purchasing, but unfortunately, although it was a manufacturing defect and no fault of mine, HP refused to repair it for me unless I paid them. Since the mini only cost about $300 to purchase new, I was hard pressed to fork out over a hundred dollars to repair something that wasn’t my fault. I was also concerned about the flimsy screen cracking again after repair. I opted to use the computer with a cracked screen, until the crack got worse. When it did, I bought a Lenovo laptop, which is lovely. However, when I assessed how ‘green’ each of these laptops is, using the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics, (found here http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/Guide-to-Greener-Electronics/ ) I discovered that HP is the greenest computer manufacturer scoring a 5.9/10 on the site’s ‘green report card’. You might think that a meagre 5.9/10 couldn’t possibly be the highest score, but sadly, computer manufacturers are pretty environmentally unfriendly. My lovely Lenovo ranked a meagre 3.8/10, a failing grade, even though they scored the highest on sustainable operations. This is because Lenovo’s carbon emissions and energy consumption are high. If Lenovo could figure out ways to reduce their carbon emissions and use more sustainable energy sources, they could become a more environmentally friendly computer company. Although I now own two laptops, I am converting the HP mini into a desktop computer by hooking it up to a stationary monitor, so it is not going to the landfill.

And then there is the rest of my stuff.

Clothes: I am not a big shopper. I tend to buy at thrift shops, or occasionally new clothes, but it is infrequent. I also tend to use clothing items for many years, after which I repurpose them by sewing them into other things, or donate them to local charities. I almost never throw clothes away. Although this may not be the most ‘fashionable’ way of using clothes, I think I am doing well in this area, in terms my waste audit.

School supplies: I used to use a lot of paper for University. Between printing out class powerpoint slides, or handwriting notes, I would easily use up hundreds of sheets of paper per semester. Lately, I have been doing most of my note taking on my computer (go Lenovo!) and not printing anything out. I have stopped carrying my binder to school, in favour of my laptop. This also has drastically reduced the amount of pens, pencils and erasers that I use. In addition, I have been able to purchase most of my larger textbooks in PDF or ebook formats, so I am not contributing to waste and consumption in that way.

Groceries: This is an area that I feel I need to input a disclaimer. I don’t do the grocery shopping. My husband does. He buys mostly in bulk, large quantities, and includes a fair share of processed foods for himself. Fresh veggies and fruits are usually purchased at a local veggie market. When I shop, I bring cloth bags to use, but since we occasionally use our woodstove for heating in the winter, he likes to get groceries in paper bags to use for fire starter. In this way we don’t have any grocery bag waste.

Packaging: Of all of the packaging brought home, we recycle every item which is recyclable in the blue bin. I know that we could pay to recycle some of the other items, but having to drive them out to another location where we may or may not have to pay to recycle them is often just too inconvenient for us. I know. Not so sustainable. I had a look at the Recyclopedia tool available through the CRD ( found here http://myrecyclopedia.ca/ ) and I found I was far more inclined to reuse an item for the same or for a different purpose, than to cart it off to some facility to have it recycled. For example, I am far more likely to follow their suggestion of breaking up Styrofoam and putting it in with potting soil to aerate the soil, rather than driving it to the Hartland Landfill for recycling. I think this tool is useful, because it not only tells you where you can recycle an item, but how you could reduce your use, and reuse or repurpose that item. I am a big fan of repurposing, being an artist and crafter at heart, so this hooked me on this tool.

Composting to Reduce Waste: I am not a composter, and I feel bad every time I throw a banana peel into the garbage. I know this is an area where I fail in terms of my waste audit. So, I checked out the Greater Victoria Compost Education Center (found here http://www.compost.bc.ca/ ) to learn about some easy composting options. I am currently reviewing my options, since there are a surprising number of different ways to compost, and am leaning towards vermicomposting. Vermicomposting involves a simple plastic tub filled with red wiggler worms and newspaper. You add your vegetable kitchen scraps for the worms to eat, and end up with worm castings which make nice, rich fertilizer for your garden. Composting would also go hand in hand with using poly 3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) biodegradable plastics and packaging. Manufacturers could make their products more environmentally friendly by switching over to using biodegradable packaging materials, such as PHB plastics. These plastics, (such as sandwich bags) which would ordinarily end up in the landfill or at best in a recycling center, can be completely biodegraded by composting. My only concern about using ‘environmentally friendly’ plastics is the vast number of companies which market their plastic products as ‘containing PHB’, but in fact only contain a very small percentage of PHB - not enough to actually biodegrade. Therefore, I can reduce my waste by reading the labelling on the products claiming to contain PHB, and making sure that I am only buying products that are truly biodegradable.

Overall, we all accumulate stuff. Some stuff is worse than other stuff. By choosing how much stuff we buy, who we buy our stuff from, what kind of stuff we buy, and how we reuse and recycle our stuff, we can decrease our levels of consumption and waste. There is a trend going on right now which asks people to vote with their wallets, which I agree with to some degree; however, this is only part of the solution to the stuff-called-waste crisis. The other, equal if not more important part of the equation is learning to buy less stuff, use the stuff we do have for longer, and recycle the stuff when we are finally done with it.

Images Obtained From

http://www.smartusa.com/

http://vermiculture.ca/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=32

What makes a vital community?

What makes a vital community? Community vitality is all about whether or not a community is flourishing or merely functioning. A vital community is a community that has elements such as innovation, enthusiasm, flexibility, resiliency, adaptability, growth, and balance. People within the community feel happy, satisfied and connected to each other. Six main elements function as indicators of community vitality: accessibility, connectivity, diversity, social capital, dead space, and vital space.

Community accessibility means that people have access to nature, animals, companionship, affordable housing, culture, community, art, clean air, clean water, and healthy food among other things.

Connectivity goes hand in hand with accessibility. It is the ability of the community to facilitate connections between an individual and his or her community, nature, commerce, and food sources, to name a few. Connectivity could also apply to the structure of a city, and the connectedness between its streets, lanes, housing, public vital spaces, and services. For example, downtown Victoria may score high in terms of connectivity, as there is good connectivity between living spaces, amenities, recreational spaces, art, culture, food, and community. Whereas, a neighbourhood in Gordon Head may score low in terms of connectivity to these things, as housing is generally located in a suburban style sprawl, with many cul-de-sacs, and relatively long distances between housing and amenities, art, culture, food, and community.

Diversity is an important part of a vital community, because resiliency is directly related to diversity. Diversity applies to religions, cultural heritages, political beliefs, family sizes, and housing styles, among other things.

Social capital, as discussed in my previous post, is an incorporation of people, networks, and connectedness between individuals within a community. It includes facets such as bonding, bridging and vertical capital between individuals, organizations and governance bodies. It also includes shared sets of community norms, social networks, and nodes which facilitate the exchange of knowledge, and ideas. Studies have shown that as social capital increases, all aspects of human welfare increase, such as good healthcare, educational systems and employment.

Dead space is a negative indicator, in that the more dead space a community has, the less vital it will be. Dead spaces are places which do not encourage or support community, or the meeting of people with other people, nature, and commerce. Dead spaces often serve a single function, and are places where people do not like to be. An example is the back of a shopping mall. Often, the back of a shopping mall consists of a flat brick wall, with no windows or shop fronts. It may contain a door or receiving bay, but the public does not hang out there. It has a single function. It does not encourage the coming together of people. Nobody wants to spend time there. It is dead space.

Vital space is the polar opposite of dead space. It is space that encourages the coming together of people, nature, and commerce. It incorporates functionality with meeting places for people, and has places for people to connect with nature and reflect. Downtown Victoria has many examples of vital space. For example, the Inner Harbour Victoria functions as a dock for sail boats and other small vessels; is a scenic walking space; is a location to view wildlife, such as sea otters, harbour seals and seagulls; is within sight of several historical buildings, such as the Empress hotel, and the BC Parliament buildings; and is a popular venue for buskers, such as musicians, artists, crafters and performance artists. No matter how grey the day, there are always people milling about the Inner Harbour.

How do we measure community vitality? Measuring community vitality is not as simple as measuring one thing, but rather requires a holistic assessment of a community, incorporating all facets of the community in order to gain an overall picture. Therefore, many tools must be used to measure vitality. I have already used the walk-score calculator in a previous post, to determine how walkable my neighbourhood is. This could contribute to an assessment of community vitality, in that it shows how accessible and connected my community is, and may even help indicate the amount of vital space and dead space in my neighbourhood. Another tool I tried out was the Rate Your Community Vitality Tool, available through the Community Research Connections Sustainable Community Development website. If you want to check it out, it is available here: http://www.crcresearch.org/vitality/rate-your-community-0

This tool assesses your community’s vitality, using the six vitality indicators mentioned above, and uses your answers to rate how vital you believe your community to be. In this way it is very subjective, and the results are not quantitative. However, they are a good way to compare your community to Provincial averages, and therefore get a general idea of how well your community is doing. Although this program is in the beta testing stages, it looks to be a valuable tool when it gets all of the kinks ironed out. It uses a series of 21 questions to evaluate your view of your community’s vitality, ranked on a scale of six options from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

 When I assessed Victoria’s vitality (according to my perceptions), my community’s vitality was very high. It consistently ranked far higher than the BC regional averages, sometimes being 100X higher or more. I wonder about the accuracy of this style of tool; however, because it is based upon perception, and most of the questions are rather subjective. For example, number 19. “Many people in my community do volunteer work”, I ranked this as ‘Agree’ because I volunteer, my mother volunteers, and I have known several friends who also volunteer. If I was from a family or group of friends who never volunteered, my answer could perhaps be ‘Disagree’, because I might assume that others are like me. Because humans have the tendency to assume that others think and act in similar ways to themselves, many of these answers will be highly biased. In addition, words such as many, few, rarely, and often are all subject to different interpretations, unless they are specifically defined, which in this case they are not.

Other tools, such as the Happy Planet Index, and the Human Development Index use overall happiness, and access to services such as good healthcare and education in order to rank communities based on these aspects of community vitality.

Vitality is directly linked with sustainability. For example, a vital community has high connectivity, vital space, and accessibility. Connectivity could include the ability for people to walk, or ride a bicycle to vital spaces, and accessibility could relate to an individual to easily access the things that he or she needs. Therefore, a community based on vitality will incorporate many vital spaces: spaces which serve many functions and are attractive to people. A vital space may be a city square which includes a street front shops, restaurants, and grocers above which exist offices, studios and apartments, a park in the center square where people may rest, play, walk their dogs, and otherwise congregate. The space may also incorporate some community artwork and greenery. A space like this would be highly sustainable, as people living there would likely have smaller eco footprints, as they could work, live, shop, and play in one central location. It would be highly resilient in that it would have a high diversity of people, and if a strong community bond developed – as would be likely in this situation – social capital would be high and a shared community vision could be created.

Photo taken from http://www.toeuropewithkids.com/2010/11/smallest-one-was-madeline.html

My networks and Social Capital

Social capital is a concept that is intriguing to me. It is not only a mode of interconnectedness between an individual and his or her community, but it has broad spanning implications for the overall sustainability of a community. When social capital increases, social utility (or happiness) increases, people feel connected to their neighbours and to their society, people gain a sense of place or belonging, and they become able to build a shared vision for their community. If this concept is connected with sustainable development, you have the potential for the creation of sustainable communities.

I am fairly connected to the community that I live in. I am not involved in local government, by attending town hall meetings, or such civic events. However, I do vote in Federal and Provincial elections, I have worked for Election’s Canada on several instances, and I do on occasion, write to my MP to voice my opinions and concerns about Canadian policy. In these ways I am vertically connected to my municipal, Provincial and Federal governments. In addition, I have several friends who work in government, and so remain connected through them. So, these friendships contain both bonding and bridging capital.

In terms of connectedness to my neighbourhood, I know quite a few of my neighbours. This leads to a feeling of safety, as I know that my neighbours are looking out for me as I am for them. When issues arise in our neighbourhood, I know that I will be informed and have a say in how we deal with them. Relationships with my neighbours fall in the bonding category, as they lead to a sense of trust and security within my neighbourhood. Although I do not know my neighbours well, we have a sense of community and often members will help each other out. For example, one neighbour might mow another’s lawn, allow another to store something on their property, help another to mend their fence, or allow another to pick fruit off of their trees. These exchanges help to foster a sense of connectedness and closeness.

At university, I am connected to students, and faculty. These relationships have bonding, bridging, and vertical characteristics. By bridging the gap between the university and outside organizations, faculty facilitate the exchange of knowledge and create connectedness. This is especially true of our major project work with outside organizations within the greater Victoria community. In turn, these outside organizations may provide bridging between themselves and regional, Provincial, and Federal governments, as well as other organizations. Some of the connections between the university and outside organizations may be vertical, if the organizations are a part of the government. My cohort students have bonding characteristics - as close friendships are developed between us - but may also provide bridging between ourselves and other networks of their friends and organizations that they are involved in. The university also provides bridging between the students and outside clubs, such as Toastmasters, which is an international club containing members from a multitude of walks of life, again expanding the possibility of creating bonding and bridging relationships between these people and their networks.

I am involved in a knitting group that I helped to found in 2006. This group attracts many different types of individuals. Friendships form, which increase bonding capital. Some of the members work in government, or other outside organizations, leading to bridging capital.

My networks illustrate all of the components of social capital in that they contain shared norms, networks and nodes.

Norms: Norms are the shared standards of any community. They represent what people consider to be socially acceptable, or “normal”. My networks follow norms, as they are primarily located in Canada, so there is a shared standard of normal relating to how we interact with each other: what we consider to be polite (in speech, gestures, personal space, etc.) and what we consider to be rude. Because we share these norms, we are able to communicate with each other and understand the other’s intentions. A large portion of my network is located in Victoria, which makes connecting with each other easy. We have a shared set of norms, specific to Victoria, some of which are unique to this city. Some of these include phrases, or colloquialisms which have distinct meaning in Victoria that are meaningless or have different meaning elsewhere. Norms in Victoria also include a casual style of dress, which is appropriate for the workplace here, but may not be the case in other cities in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

Networks: In terms of my social network, I am very connected. The diagram below illustrates my social network. It does not show the complete connectedness between the members and nodes within my network, because the diagram would be too large!

Nodes: Some of the nodes present in my social capital are the organizations and groups that I am a part of, which connect me to other networks and nodes, and allow an exchange of ideas, knowledge and communication. They also provide connectedness between me and other individuals and organizations.

For example, I am a university student. At university I am in contact with professors, who not only directly exchange ideas and knowledge with me, but also work with outside organizations or have research which is separate from their teaching. Through them, I am connected to those outside organizations, and the potential to connect to those nodes exists.

I am also a member of a Toastmasters club. Through this club, I am connected to other local members: individuals from many diverse careers. They are all part of their own networks, which I may tap into and become connected to. Through Toastmasters, I am also connected to an international network of individuals who are also a part of this organization.

 My networks increase my sustainability. For example, through my university I have friends that I carpool to school with. So, my ecological footprint is decreased and my sustainability increased. Likewise, my university is providing me with an education in environmental science, so that I may make a career out of environmental sustainability. Through friends from school and the university, I am learning about various methods of becoming more sustainable, such as how to compost. I can take this information away with me and use it in my own life or share it with friends and neighbours. By maintaining an intricate network of friends, my personal resiliency is high. I know I will always have a roof over my head and food to eat, because of these connections. Likewise, these people know that I will help them if the need arises.

 Connectedness fosters personal sustainability, in that it allows people to go places together - saving on carbon emissions, in the case of my carpool - to share knowledge and experience through trusting relationships. It allows people to connect to outside organizations and policy makers which in turn allows their voices to be heard. By fostering diverse networks, I can form relationships built on trust, wherein I may be able to share my knowledge and passion for sustainability and perhaps influence their opinions and actions.

When I leave university and begin my career in the environmental sector, these connections may help me to garner support from my community for sustainability initiatives. My connections with people working in government and other community organizations may allow me to voice my opinions and have my ideas shared, perhaps with tangible change being generated. By fostering relationships with my neighbours, they may trust me enough to listen when I suggest neighbourhood initiatives, such as community gardening or shared organic composting. Overall, the creation of a sustainable community does not take only one person, it takes a community. By creating social capital networks between people and organizations within a community you begin to foster engagement between members of that community, build trusting relationships, gain co-operation and participation between members, form new norms relating to environmental sustainability, enable the exchange of knowledge, and create a shared vision for a more sustainable community.

Top Image Retrieved from http://www.canada.com/technology/Census+Victoria+population+growth+lags+western+trend/6119744/story.html

How walkable is your neighbourhood?

Olive wants to know, how walkable is your neighbourhood?

One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint, not to mention trim your waistline, is to ditch the car and walk to where you need to go. However, the farther away you live from amenities, the more likely you are to drive to them. Walkscore.com has created a site that evaluates your neighbourhood, based on its walkability to local amenities.  It includes your distance to restaurants, coffee, groceries, shopping, schools, parks, book stores, pubs, entertainment, banking, and more. It also identifies the local transit options in your area, and gives you commuting times based on walking, bicycling, driving, and bussing. Interestingly, it tells you how much to expect to pay each month on gasoline, if you do choose to drive, probably because driving almost always has the smallest commuting time and they want to discourage you from driving, despite that fact.

            My neighbourhood rated 67 out of a possible 100 (the best score), and is considered “somewhat walkable”, according to Walk Score . Closeness to groceries is 0.88 km, to a park is 0.29 km, to a coffee shop is 0.92 km and the nearest pub is 0.82 km away. I am also very close to many bus routes, so bussing is quite easy from my neighbourhood. So, what does this mean for my neighbourhood? It means that we are somewhat sustainable. We are pretty centrally located in terms of bus or car transportation, but we lack a density of amenities within a comfortable walking distance. For example, about four large blocks away from my house is a bakery. It is a lovely Italian bakery, which serves heavenly smelling loaves and an assortment of delicious baked goods, gelato, and coffee. I don't go there often. Why? Because I have to walk four large blocks and can get only brewed coffee and bread. If I decide that I need milk, too, I've got to walk about five more large blocks to get to a grocery store, and they are not along the same route from my house. Perhaps if there was a little dairy shop, a butcher shop, a veggie market, and a pub/liquor store on the same corner, I would walk there more frequently. By concentrating several necessities in one central, convenient location, our neighbourhood could lower its overall carbon footprint, as people would have a nearby 'village center' to shop in. 


    Previously, the neighbourhood grocery store was in a mini-plaza that had a video store and pizza shop beside it. When that was the case, we walked more often, because we could go have a few slices of pizza for dinner, pick up a movie, and buy dessert and a few groceries all at the same location. Since then, the grocery store has expanded. It has taken over the spaces that were once the pizza shop and video store. Now all you can get in that plaza, are groceries. I guess its not really a plaza anymore, but simply a large grocery store. It used to be a place that people could go and congregate, now it is strictly an in and out shopping facility. With that change our community has lost some of its sustainability. Now, instead of sticking near home, people go elsewhere to eat and congregate; thus, our local sustainability is reduced.

            While Walkscore.com is a useful tool to determine how walkable a neighbourhood is, it admits that it does not factor in several key elements in determining whether or not people will want to walk in their neighbourhood.  The first is street design. People need access to sidewalks, and crosswalks. They will often not want to walk in areas with high speed limits. Secondly, safety while walking, such as crime rates, street lighting, and traffic accident frequencies, play a key role in whether or not people walk or drive. Topography is also an important determinant in whether a neighbourhood is actually walkable. My neighbourhood has a grocery store less than a kilometer away, but we hardly ever walk there. Why? Because there are two hills between our house and the grocery store, which make it annoying to walk when we are carrying heavy bags of groceries. Weather is another factor which can make walking lovely, or horrible. Victoria has a high frequency of rainy days, which can make walking with groceries pretty miserable.

      One thing that Walkscore.com did not mention was the family size factor. In my opinion, this could play a fairly large role, because the larger your family size is, the less likely you are to walk to get certain amenities, such as groceries. This is because the more people you are shopping for, the heavier and bulkier your load will be, and the less likely you will walk. Walking seems to be best for short trips to pick up a few bags of things or less, or to go to some sort of social activity or entertainment, such as a pub. It is also worth noting that, as a dog owner, I am always interested in having nice places to walk and play with my dog. A good walkscore should also include the esthetic quality of the neighbourhood, which directly relates to the pleasantness of walking there, and the proximity to dog-friendly parks and trails.

     This year I will graduate from University and will also be facing a big move. I now plan to incorporate walkscore into my new home decision, as a way to reduce my overall carbon footprint.

Calculating my Ecological Footprint

     Have you ever wondered what your ecological footprint is? I know I have. I live my life in what I would consider to be a reasonably sustainable way, am a student of the environmental sciences, hope to dedicate my life to developing solutions to the global warming crisis, but have never actually assessed my footprint on the earth.

     In order to calculate my ecological footprint, I used the http://www.myfootprint.org/ calculator. The settings I chose were for Calgary (the only option for a Canadian city), detailed, and adult. My result was 5, which means that I require 5 global hectares of land to support my lifestyle. If everyone lived my lifestyle, we would need 2.8 planets to sustain us! This is absolutely appalling! I knew that living in a western nation came with a higher footprint, but I didn’t realize it was this large.

     However, there were a few things which I think skewed my result. First of all, I carpool to school every day. The transportation section did not have a way to take this into account, it merely asked how often you drove alone. The calculator is also set up for Calgary, which has one of the highest ecological footprints of any Canadian city. I think that if Victoria, or even BC were options, that my overall footprint would be decreased. In addition, the calculator does not let you choose zero on several things, like how much you spend on natural gas per month. The lowest amount is $35.00, but I don’t use any natural gas, so it gets included in my footprint, even though I don’t use any. It also does this for the amount spent per month on non-food consumables, such as clothing, books, and technology. Since I very rarely buy these things, the calculator adds to my footprint the manufacturing of things that I am not consuming. Another factor to consider is that my city is located on an island. Most of our food is transported from the mainland, so it adds an extra negative ecological impact to most of our food.  The calculator is also set for a national level services footprint. This means that if certain provinces or cities are bad environmental offenders in the services area, every Canadian is stuck with a higher services footprint, and thus a higher overall footprint. The Canadian average is 5.8 global hectares per person, and the Calgary average is 8.6! In comparison to these averages, I am having a smaller global impact than many Canadians; however, if large polluters such as Alberta and Saskatchewan were not included in the Canadian average footprint, I wonder how much lower mine would be from the national average.

So what are the implications of my global footprint? Well first of all, we don’t have 2.8 planets to live on, so my lifestyle is obviously not even close to sustainable! This is especially disturbing when you take into account that I live more sustainably than many Canadians. For instance, I recycle everything I can, I drive a Smart car, I carpool to school, I eat meat only a few times a week, and try to buy all of my fruit and vegetable produce locally. I live in a smallish house with four other people. I am in a province that produces primarily hydroelectric power, so a large portion of my electricity is from a renewable energy source. I take short showers and only wash laundry once a week. All of these things could be considered fairly sustainable, but yet I still need 5 hectares of land!

The frustrating part of this exercise was that I tried testing out the differences between my current lifestyle and a drastically different lifestyle, and the results were pretty similar. Right now I live in a freestanding house with three other people, collectively the household uses a fair amount of electricity. I share a Smart car with my husband and eat an omnivorous diet. If I became a vegetarian, lived in an apartment building, drastically reduced my electricity consumption, and got rid of my car, I would reduce my footprint to 4.1 global hectares. That is still high enough to need 2.3 planets to sustain a world full of people living like me.

This demonstrates the complex nature of the global warming crisis. It is one thing to convince people to reduce their overall consumption, to get them to bike more, carpool more, recycle and use energy efficient appliances, but is this actually enough to create a sustainable world? The answer, it seems, is no. Unfortunately, I don't know what the solution is to this problem. Perhaps, by changing the way that we generate energy (through renewable sources), by changing the way the we obtain our food (locally and minimally processed), by changing the way that we travel (electric cars or other green technology, bicycling, and walking) we can change our overall global impact more effectively.

            As a final note, I tried footprint calculators from other sources, such as the WWF’s Eco Guru  and got similar results. For example, the amount of planets we would need if everyone had my lifestyle was 2.4 for the Eco Guru calculator.

            

What is sustainable development?

     Sustainable development is a concept that is used to refer to a plethora of ideas, depending upon who is using the term. According to the Brundtland definition, sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of today’s generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Brundtland’s definition is in agreement with the first nation’s concept of 7^th Generation, which is an ethos referring to the mode in which the current generation should govern their resources in order to leave a natural world which is  in as good, if not better than the current condition. Although opinions vary on which elements should be included in the sustainable development model, I agree with those that believe it is built on a triad foundation: society, economy and ecology. If one area is lacking, the overall goal of sustainable development will fail.

      To sustain means to maintain the same level, be it quality of life, economic stability, or the health of the natural environment.To develop is either to grow or improve the social, economic and environmental landscape. This means to build a society based upon the values and cultural practices that individual communities believe in, to create and improve upon a strong economy based on the use of renewable resources and  which provides for the basic needs of the individual and maximizes personal utility, and to not only minimize harm and degradation to the natural environment, but to improve it via reclamation and remediation. Sustainable development is a very exciting phrase. To me, it is the concept of uniting the forward progress of society, economy and environment towards a future which promises a cleaner, healthier environment, a strong economy based on resources which are renewable, and a thriving society where human culture, ethics and the natural world are in synchronization. Imagine Victoria, my city, moving towards a more sustainable way of life. 

     Recently, I received a letter from the Capital Regional District which asked me to cast my vote on which sort of garbage/recycling/compost system I would like to have in my neighbourhood. Three different options were outlined: basically the same with small changes in pickup frequencies or locations. The exciting part was that recycling and composting of kitchen scraps were as integral to this new system as garbage collection. The size and amount of garbage allowed per household will be decreased, and people will have to pay more to produce more garbage. There are no extra costs associated with increased recycling and composting as far as I can tell. The “green bin” for composting is set to become as ubiquitous in Victoria as the “blue bins” which are seen neatly lining the streets on “recycling day”.

      On the surface, it seems like a small step. A raindrop in the bucket of creating a more sustainable future, but that raindrop is like a drop of catalyst into solution. It will react and perpetuate and eventually it will change the way that people think about “waste”, about what is right and wrong. Like a good social marketing campaign, it will create a new norm, a norm that says that less waste is better, that just because you might be done with something doesn’t mean it has ceased to be useful, and most of all a norm that subtly changes the buy, consume, throw away, buy more way of life that has become so common. Little changes like this inspire others to find ways to reduce waste further. I would be thrilled to see local businesses and manufacturers working together in a sort of industrial symbiosis where the waste from one business was the input for another, and so on like an industrial biofilm mimic. An exciting project that embodies this sort of recycling is the Hartland Landfill Gas-to-electricity plant. The plant, located at the Hartland landfill, uses the methane emitted from decomposing garbage to generate electricity. Using garbage from the surrounding community, it generates enough to power 1,600 homes (CRD http://www.crd.bc.ca/waste/hartland/lfgelectricity.htm). Imagine, rotting garbage being used to heat homes! It is a perfect example of the usefulness of waste, or as I like to think of it the “waste is gold” mentality: a phrase coined by my biology professor, Edward Ishiguro. What Ed was trying to get at is the fact that most of what we throw away is still useful, if only we could imagine a use for it. Thus, our ability to reduce waste is limited only by our ability to innovate (So, it is pretty much unlimited!).

     Another example of sustainable development in Victoria is Solar Colwood. Solar Colwood is a community associated organization working to promote solar power in its municipality. They are doing this by creating awareness, educating the public and funding homeowner grants for solar technology. They have a vision of a community with a smaller carbon footprint and they are moving forward with it, promoting “green” industry, becoming a leader in sustainability and inspiring other communities along the way. http://www.solarcolwood.ca/solar-colwood.php

     These are just a few of the many ways that Victorian’s are working towards the goal of sustainable development. My hope is that this “green revolution” will continue to build momentum, that community-based sustainability projects will continue to grow and shape the Victoria culture, that individuals will gain pride and a sense of identity and belonging within this greener community, and that local green industry will thrive as people choose to buy locally and with an environmental conscience. I wish for Victoria to become a model to the rest of Canada, a model for a new norm where sustainable development is simply a way of life.