My Stuff and Other Sources and Consumption

http://worshipdrummerblog.blogspot.com/

This weeks sustainability lecture focused on stuff and how much unnecessary stuff we are consuming today.  The world does not realize how much stuff we have in our lives that we hardly even use.  This is mainly the case in places like North America where there is more space for the population to store their stuff.  Just for clarification, when I use the word stuff I mean everything from cars to clothing. 



http://www.motifake.com/index.php?front=22688

In Annie Leonard's video, "The Story of Stuff" she talks about how we are in a vicious cycle.  This cycle that she is explaining is about: how we go to work, come home tired and watch television, listen to the television that we are not cool enough, then we go shopping so we can keep up with the rest of the population, then since we are out of money we go back to work and the cycle begins.  The first time I saw this video I laughed at her take on our lifecycle, now I realize how true what she was saying really is.  Personally, I don't feel as if this is the case for myself since I have been taught from a young age to save my money for when it is needed.  But I have a close friend who works at a job where he makes a large sum of money each year, but comes home tired and hating his job at the end of every day, but keeps going back because the money is good and it feeds his obsession with materialism and expensive clothing.  This friend has more clothing than my two sisters and I put together, and we are all teenage girls.  I think that his habit is quite unnecessary, but for some reason he feels as if he can justify it.  I guess everyone is different in what they value, but I would much rather save my money for something like a trip instead of a pair of $400 jeans.  But that's just me.  I think that the real problem that is forcing us to buy more stuff is the media and the amount of power they seem to have when it comes to talking people into buying a new item.  It is very much like the "keeping up with the Jones's" saying where you need to have something just to impress others.  Its a little ridiculous if you ask me.  If everyone planned to jump off a bridge would you?  

In the past, products were made to be much more durable with a longer wear time.  This applies to to cars especially.  In the 40s and 50s, cars were built to be much more durable and they were made with heavier materials that could withstand a number of forces.  The bumpers of old cars tended to be made of hard metals and today they tend to be made of plastic or soft metal that dents easily on impact.  There are pros and cons to how cars are currently built as compared to how they used to be built.  Today cars are much safer and contain such things as crumple zones to reduce the impact of collisions, where as old cars did not contain such features.  The problem today is that cars don't always last as long if they get into accidents, but i guess passenger safety is more important than that.  Cars are just one of the many examples of things that have become less durable, but another example is computers.  "The Story of Stuff" also mentioned how computer hard drives need to be replaced every few years, and all that really needs to be replaced is a tiny little piece.  Instead the computer companies require the public to buy a whole new hard drive and send the other one to the dump.  This results is a large amount of plastic and metal waste products that need to be properly disposed of. 

http://www.gogreeninstages.com/productline.php/Compostable-Accessories

There are a number of negative ways that products are being produced, such that the population needs to continue to buy more and more, but there are also positive ways to produce products.  One of the best ways to produce stuff is to make it so that it is biodegradable or compostable (Ling, C. Lecture Notes, Story of Stuff, 2011).  By producing products that can be converted back into soil for gardening we are reducing the amount of waste that needs to be dealt with.  This would be very useful in a place such as Vancouver Island since the Hartland Landfill will be full approximately 25 years from now.  By turning waste products into soil this would mean that the Landfill will have a longer period of time before it fills up.  There are a number of different things that can be made so that they are compostable and some examples are: coffee cups, plastic bags, and cutlery.    

In the last 20 years people consumption and shopping habits have noticeably changed.  When I was a kid my parents bought us a few toys to play with but for the most part we played outdoors and came up with our own ideas to have fun.  When I was 12 years old, my sisters and I got a Nintendo64 for Christmas and that was a HUGE deal for us, since we had never had anything like a video game before.  This did not stop my parents from making us play outside though, we were only allowed to play video games for 1/2 hour each day.  Now if we move about 15 years later the playing and activity habits of kids have changed.  For example, I know a couple that has two sons that have 3 different video game consoles.  I think this is very unnecessary, since you can't even play with all three of them at once.  These boys hardly ever play outside, and hardly ever leave the television.  Not only is this bad in terms of consumption and waste materials, but it is also bad for the health of the children since they are not getting much physical activity.  This is not only due to the parents being willing to buy their kids too many toys, but it is also a result of marketing to children.  An example of media aimed at children can be seen in the clip below:  

There are a number of things that can be done to decrease the amount of stuff that moves in and out of our lives.  This would include such things as buying compostable items, not watching as much television and being brainwashed my ads, and not buying things that we don't need.  Who really needs 3 different sports cars? Or 20 different pairs of shoes?  I guess it is something that we should all think about...

How is Sustainable Development in Practice?

There are many examples of sustainable development in today`s society.  Some of theses examples are small scale while others are large scale practices.  Sustainable development practices are also dependent on their location and the values of the people living in the said location. 

The construction of sustainable development project or community is very reliant on its relative location.  A prime example of this would be the use of solar panels, whether they are photovoltaic panels for electricity, or solar thermal panels for hot water heating.  A solar development will only benefit the society if there are lots of hours of sunshine each year.  The same would be true for wind power, it would only be beneficial if it was built in an area that receives lots of wind.  An example of a wind powered community that is in practice today is Rock Port, Missouri.  This town is powered 100% by wind power and this is due to the presence of four wind turbines that are found on the towns farmland.  Rock Port uses approximately 13million kwh/year.  This means that they will be selling power back to the grid, which to me is a strong sign of a positive example of sustainable development.  (Science Daily, 2008)    

As mentioned above, another factor that contributes to sustainable development is the values of a population.  Some individuals value the environment and sustainability more than others do, and this can result in the formation of sustainable development.  An example of a population that values the environment is the First Nations people, specifically the T'Sou-ke Nations people who were addressed in an earlier blog.  These individuals place a strong value on the environment and this makes them more willing to input or retrofit their homes and communities with sustainable systems.  

http://uaecommunity.blogspot.com/2009/02/pod-cars-over-abu-dhabi.html

Some examples of sustainable development can be small scale or large scale.  Large scale examples of sustainable development would be such things as housing projects like Solar Colwood, or else Zero Carbon Cities.  The concept of a Zero Carbon City is fascinating to me, since it is something I had never heard of until now.  An example of a Zero Carbon City is the City of Masdar near Saudi Arabia.  This city has undergone a number of development plans that are all pointing towards clean energy.  The city strives to be car-free and they have made it easy for pedestrians to travel around.  Personally, the most interesting thing that I have found about this community is its use of pod cars, that are simply electric taxi's.    

There are also a ton of examples of small scale examples of sustainable development that are currently being practiced.  These examples can include such things as commitments to the environment by large companies.  Most travel companies such as cruise ships, airplanes, and trains have some form of an environmental agreement that states how they will minimize their impacts on the planet.  If you were to check out the Air Canada's "Commitment to the Environment" you would find such things as their compliance to environmental standards as well as ways on how they are minimizing their environmental risks.  The image below is a simplified version of how Air Canada meets their environmental standards and how they can find ways to improve their environmental impacts.              


http://www.aircanada.com/en/about/environment/

It may not seem as if we are living in a sustainable society, but we must remember that sustainable development takes time.  There are lots of examples of small scale practices that are currently being used as well as a number of large scale processes.  So from this point on all we can do is improve our society and implement even more sustainable developments.

The Sustainable City

http://urbanreplanner.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/bicycle-commuting-europe-miles-ahead/

When I think of cities I think of places like New York or Los Angeles.  But when I think about sustainable cities, these are not the places that come to mind.  To me a sustainable city is a place where it is easy to get around without a car, a place with recycling programs, or a place where people are encouraged to make green choices such as biking to work.  There are a number of different plans that can be implemented to form a sustainable city and these plans can be formed from both large and small ideas.



http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Edmonton,_Alberta/



Before I moved to Victoria I had lived for 20 years in Edmonton, which tends to have a bad reputation when being addressed as a sustainable city.  When comparing Edmonton to cities that are built with a higher population density in mind, it does not seem to be very sustainable.  This is because Edmonton was built as a fairly spread out city, where most of the population owns a car.  But in order to fully consider whether or not a city is sustainable, every societal aspect must be addressed. Edmonton has a world renowned recycling and waste program, and this makes them sustainable when it comes to issues of waste management.  But considering the amount of driving that the population must do in order to get from point A to point B, Edmonton seems to fail  on the sustainability scale.  While working towards my Chemical Technology Diploma I attended the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology which was approximately 15km from my house.  There were two methods of transportation in which I could use to get to school; my car or the bus.  I took the bus for the first semester of my first year and it was so inefficient in terms of time (2-3 hours each way) that I had to drive for my next 3 semesters.  If Edmonton were to develop a better public transit system, more people would take advantage of buses instead of driving.  Sustainability experts may suggest that Edmonton needs to make the city more walkable, but this would be useless considering that the temperature in the winter can drop to -40C and no one wants to walk outside in those conditions.  I think that in order for Edmonton to become a more sustainable city they need to input a better and more efficient transit system.  In the picture to the right you can see the very small high density part of Edmonton, followed by a large area of suburban housing.       

Chris Ling, Lecture Notes, 2011

There are several cities in Europe that are very sustainable cities, which is mainly due to the high density building codes that were used.  Cities such as Barcelona were built in the past when there were no motor vehicles present in society.  This resulted in the cities being built so that it was easy to get around by walking or biking.  In these cities, the population is usually physically healthier because they tend to get more exercise due to everything being in walking distance (Ling, Lecture Notes, 2011).  By having cities that are spread out, such as Edmonton, there are many negative health issues that can result.  More people tend to drive everywhere (especially in the winter), which means they are not getting enough physical activity.  This leads to high obesity rates in large spread out cities such as Houston, Texas.  Places like Hong Kong or Copenhagen are much more densely populated and the people their tend to get around by walking, biking, or public transit.  This can be seen on the graph to the left.     

There are several sustainable cities that can be found around the world.  These cities are more often than not built with high density populations and ease of pedestrian transport in mind.  Several negative impacts can result due to sprawling suburban areas and these include such things as obesity and loss of social contact.  I think that if spread out cities were to look towards European cities and their concepts of New Urbanism then the cities across the world would become much more sustainable than they presently are.    My favorite Canadian artist, Danny Michel, wrote the song "Feather, Fur, and Fin" and although it does not directly deal with sustainable cities I find it relates to the blog topic.  This song is giving the message of how all of the building developments are taking over the habitats of animals and fish.  By building densely populated cities this destruction will still occur, but not to the same extent as it would if we were to continue to develop suburbs and take up more land than necessary.  I hope you like the song!

    

Powering the Sustainable Society

What do we need to consider when powering a sustainable community?  Some of the things to think about are: where the energy coming from, what it is being used for, and how is it being distributed (Ling, Lecture Notes, Feb. 11, 2011).  There are a number of different energy sources being used presently and these consist of: crude oil, coal, natural gas, biofuels, and nuclear power.  Not all of these sources are methods of clean energy, but there are several examples that are becoming more popular in today’s modern society.  Clean powering methods such as solar power, geothermal heating, or even wind power are becoming more common.  Energy sources can be classified into renewable and non renewable energy sources.  Sadly the bulk of the energy that is used globally consists of non renewable energy.  There has been an increase in the amount of renewable energy, but it still does not compare to the amount of non renewable energy that is being used.  This can be seen in the graph below. 

Image Source: Ling, Lecture Notes, 2011



Image Source: http://www.brandweek.com
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Since the bulk of produced energy gets used in industrial areas, this is reasoning for why clean energy is not being used as regularly as non renewable energy.  The use of heating methods such as natural gas or oil is mainly due to the relative simplicity of their heating or electricity methods.  Large scale industrial processes such as refineries or factories require large amounts of energy that would be difficult to provide by use of solar panels or wind turbines.  This is not to say it is not possible to provide energy to large scale processes, but clean energy were to be provided it would need to be done as a large scale project.  Large scale solar or wind power construction and implementation is extremely expensive, and when it comes down to it most companies would not be willing to spend the money when they could produce energy by less expensive means.  An example of one factory that is powered with clean energy is the Sun Chips factory that is powered with solar energy.  Not only did the implementation of solar energy save the company money in terms of energy costs, but it also increased the chip sales by 17.6%. 

I personally think that in order for a society to be sustainable it should be powered by sustainable or renewable energy.  This means that communities should be powered by wind, sun, and water.  The reliance on natural renewable resources would be a very positive move for countries to make if they want to provide a positive living environment for the current population as well as populations to come.  I think that in order for society to begin to accept and implement methods of clean energy they must first become more knowledgeable of it.  This could be done if the solar companies and wind companies were able to provide information about the pros and cons of their products, as well as if they had real values to present to potential customers about the pay back of the methods.   This could be done with trial projects, such as the T’Sou-ke Nations solar project that was mentioned in an earlier blog.  This community acts as a role model for other potential solar communities and it provides a starting point and lots of guidelines for the implementation of a solar community. 

http://www.news957.com/news/local/article/4
1352--home-retrofit-grant-unceremoniously-nixed

On a Residential scale there are also ways to save energy and make society more sustainable and these are things that we can do by ourselves.  Homes can be retrofitted to make the household more energy efficient.  This would involve things like: re-insulating homes, using energy efficient light bulbs, sealing cracks that produce drafts, or even upgrading to a more efficient furnace (Ling, Personal Communication, 2011).  We can also decrease the number of appliances in our homes and this will reduce our energy usage, and overtime make the household sustainable. 

 Overall, there are a number of different ways of powering a sustainable society.  These ways include simple solutions such as reducing the amount of power being used in household by removing unnecessary appliances.  Another example would be to retrofit your home with solar or wind power or else something as simple as making simple fixes to a home.  By considering all of the different methods of power and where it is going to it becomes possible to power a sustainable society.     

http://swapyourcans.com/gpage4.html

Sustainable Communities

There are a number of communities throughout the world that are practicing sustainable methods. One of the most well known communities on Vancouver Island is the community of Dockside Green.  This community was specially designed with sustainability in mind.  This building project was completed with green building techniques, as well as sustainable community design plans. 

Source: http://docksidegreen.com/sustainability/overview/overview.html

Image from:
http://www.turtleisland.org/discussion/viewtopic.php?p=9493#p9493

Another example of a community that has implemented sustainable products into their daily lives would be the T'Sou-ke Nations community.  A few years back this community retrofitted 25 of their homes with solar thermal heating systems to save power costs in the long run.  Now the T'Sou-ke Nations people are generating more power than they actually use.  I think that this is amazing, and such a good role model community for other communities on the Island.  The community took solar panels to the next level and found an artist that was capable of making them look aesthetically pleasing.  Since the installation of the solar thermal heating, the energy consumption of the T'Sou-ke Nations has decreased by 30 percent!  

I recently travelled out to the T'Sou-ke Nations community too see their solar project, and I was blown away by how amazing it was.  The implementation of photovoltaic cells and solar hot water heating has made such a huge impact on the community and it seems to have drawn the people closer together.  While we were there we met one of the members of the community who had put a solar hot water heater into his home, and he also learned how to properly install them into other homes.  This individual was so proud of his solar heating system and could not wait to tell us about it.  You could see he had a passion for sustainable power initiatives and this made me want to learn more and more about solar water heating and photovoltaic cells.  I found the community to be very inspirational, and just from touring the community I think that the T'Sou-ke Nations Solar Project is and will continue to be a great model of a sustainable community in BC as well as Canada. 





Image Source
: http://colwood.ca/siteengine/activepage.asp

Recently the City of Colwood was given a $3.8 million grant from the federal government to retrofit 1000 homes within 3 years with solar water heaters.  This is a major project with a large goal, but once it is completed this will be one of the biggest solar communities in North America, and will also be a great role model for the rest of the country.  As part of my major project with RRU I will be researching the benefits and costs as well as conducting a Lifecycle Assessment of the installation of solar water heating, and I am looking forward to determining these said costs so that I can educate my friends and family on the benefit of solar heating.  This retrofitting project is going to make Colwood one of the most sustainable communities in the world! 


I moved to Victoria from Alberta this summer, and since moving here I have noticed some major differences in the way society and community function.  It is strange that for two neighboring provinces the goals and views are so different between the two.  British Columbia seems to focus on keeping the environment a beautiful place, and creating sustainable practices to take over the existing practices.  Alberta on the other hand seems to have a bit of a bad reputation in B.C.  Although Alberta is known as an oil province they are still making attempts at sustainable practices.  It seems as if Alberta communities are a step behind the sustainable practices that the communities in BC are accomplishing, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Once the sustainable communities in B.C. become nationally recognized, such as the City of Colwood, then Albertan communities will most likely start moving towards more sustainable practices.  One of my personal goals for when I move back to the prairies is to educate my parents on the benefits of solar water heaters, and get them to consider installing one in their home.  There are so many ideas for making the world a better and cleaner place, and these ideas and practices need to start small scale in our own homes.