By
Granville Online
| Image:
Flickr / futurestreet |
Published: May 07, 2009
EP!C: The Vancouver Sun Sustainable Living Expo
Vancouver Convention Centre, May 8–10
Vancouver’s annual sustainable living expo offers plenty of green inspiration and valuable education through speakers, workshops, cooking stages and exhibitors’ booths—plus, plenty of deals you can’t get anywhere else on a variety of eco-products. Learn more about the show here.
By
Christopher Pollon
| Image:
Peter Holst |
Published: February 26, 2008
Imagine a future where kilometre-wide solar arrays orbit the planet, beaming the sun’s energy to transmission stations on Earth.
In October 2007 the U.S. Pentagon’s National Security Space Office announced it was interested in exploring just such a concept. While the Pentagon’s interest is related to supporting global military operations remotely, the development of solar space technology could change the way the world uses energy.
There is just one problem: even if future studies and funding are forthcoming, the launch of the first satellite could be as far away as 2030, or more realistically, 2050. Finding abundant, non-polluting energy by tapping into space-based solar panels is just one of many promising ideas popularized by the mass media each year.
There are ubiquitous and glowing stories about fuel cells, wind farms, geothermal energy and solar technology. But more often than not, the technologies in question are decades away from practical implementation.
So what alternatives are available right now to homeowners seeking to wean themselves from the communal power grid? British Columbians enjoy some of the lowest energy prices on the continent, and as a result, the financial incentive is practically non-existent. That said, real incentives do exist. We currently rely on importing some of our energy from polluting sources, and the province’s goal of energy self-sufficiency by 2016 depends on small hydro projects, whose effect on the environment is subject to debate, and includes coal and natural gas as fuel sources.
A few local energy pioneers make it clear that the answer involves experimenting with new ways to produce heat and electricity at home, and more importantly, making our homes less reliant on power of any kind in the first place.
A visit to the semi-rural Highlands area, just north of Victoria, provides an early glimpse of what alternative energy might look like one day in Vancouver. The nearly completed home of Gordon and Ann Baird sits on three acres. Within a cob structure of their own design, the Bairds are experimenting with future energy alternatives that are so novel that the couple have struggled to get local electrical and plumbing inspectors to recognize them as legal.
The floor is earthen, and the walls are made from an insulating mixture of straw, clay and sand. The family’s grey water is recycled, all rainwater is collected, and the composting toilet literally digests its own waste. Handling 85 per cent of the work themselves, the Bairds expect their home to cost $258,000 (including labour) by the time it is completed in May this year.
Yet these features are secondary to the combination of solar and wind energy technologies that have been incorporated into the design. For at least eight months a year, solar energy will power their appliances and heat their house and water. Twelve solar photovoltaic panels on their roof feed into an inverter, at which point a small battery bank ties in to the BC Hydro electrical grid.
The solar panel feeds the batteries until they are full, after which point the excess solar energy is fed to BC Hydro, which will buy any power the Bairds do not use as part of Hydro’s Net Metering program. During cloudy winter months, the couple will be able to draw on the BC hydro grid as they need to.
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By Adriana Barton
| Image: Jupiter |
Published: December 01, 2007
Is it just me, or are brand names for eco-this and enviro-that becoming as tiresome as sardining one’s self into a SkyTrain car at rush hour?
Catchy trademarks are sprouting up in the most unlikely places. We now have Eco Options at Home Depot, a Green Flight program at Uniglobe Travel and EcoDensity at city hall. What’s next – EarthFriendly space shuttles?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for protecting what’s left of the ozone layer. But when marketing campaigns for everything from dry-cleaning to luxury sedans start making verdant promises, I suspect we’re being lulled into a false sense of environmental virtue. Behind many of the ads filled with lush forests and sparkling waterfalls, it’s capitalism as usual.
It’s easy to be taken in by green marketing. A case in point: Method cleaning products seduced me with its sculptural packaging and claims of “naturally derived” and biodegradable ingredients. I went for the cucumber-scented dish soap (among the smells most sexually arousing to women, according to a Chicago aroma expert). I even ignored the liquid’s peculiar colour – an electric green reminiscent of propylene glycol – until I noticed the small print: “CAUTION” and “Do not get on skin.”
Am I supposed to wear plastic gloves (made with toxic phthalates) whenever I wash the pots and pans?
After scouring Method’s website, I discovered the dish soap contains sodium lauryl sulphate, a known skin irritant, as well as artificial colours and synthetic fragrances (many of which are hormone disruptors). But technically they’re still “naturally derived” – as are all chemicals formulated from raw ingredients from the earth.
Method now has a campaign called Detox Your Home, and its green marketing is paying off: lately, I’ve spotted Method even in the homes of the most avid environmentalists, and the company enjoyed a 140-per-cent increase in sales last year.
To be fair, Method products are probably more benign than many. But why support this San Francisco company when Canadian- made products such as Nature Clean are free of known toxins?
The point is, there are many shades of green, and distinguishing between deep evergreen and pale avocado isn’t easy. You have to read up on a product’s ingredients or raw materials, and figure out which are considered safe and sustainable. As new research comes to light, health and environmental standards are changing all the time.
Then there is the product’s life cycle to consider, meaning its total environmental impact. A flat-screen TV with a nifty bamboo case, for example, may seem more sustainable than your basic cathode-ray tube encased in plastic. But not if you count the energy required to manufacture a brand-new TV to replace a perfectly functional one, especially since the old one may consume less power than the plasma screen.
I don’t mean to imply that all green products are suspect. Some companies are making valiant efforts to source low-impact materials and manufacture them in more sustainable ways. In Vancouver, plenty of local clothiers are fashioning soy, hemp and organic cotton fabrics into stylish togs that are made and sold exclusively in North America. Sure, the organic cottons aren’t grown here, but there’s only so far a clothing maker can go.
But even “sustainable” products have their limitations. The problem with many green marketing campaigns is the message that if we buy certain products – the more, the better – we’re doing our bit to save the planet.
The reality is that consuming less is the most sustainable route. Investing in three pairs of leather shoes from Italy, for example, has got to be better than splurging on 10 pairs.
In the end, we can either assume that an eco-branded product is more sustainable than the average, if only marginally – or we can figure out whether the green in the marketing is as much of a fairytale as the Emerald City of Oz.
These days, I’m giving everything I buy – and buy into – a closer look.
Adriana Barton is a reporter at the Globe and Mail and has written for magazines including Utne, enRoute and BCBusiness.
