What Hope for the Future?

I have hope for the future because I am dedicated to working on achieving sustainable communities, through teaching people how to become more self-reliant, and educating them on where and how their food and other products are produced.

I also have hope for the future because it seems that the ideas of sustainability are spreading. I believe this is because we have people out there who are relaying the message in a much better way than what was done in the past (i.e. “save our trees”). People like William McDonough show us the flaws in our thinking without making it personal. This makes it easier for people to listen, because they don’t feel as if they are being personally attacked. Also, people like William not only tell us what we should be doing, but show us as well. He leads by example as he has already created many sustainable products. This helps get the message across because then you are listening to how to achieve goals instead of wondering if the goal can even be accomplished.

When it comes to the environment, people have to realise it’s not just about the environment. Sustainability is connected to social and economic aspects as well. And when these three intermingle harmoniously, only then will true sustainability be accomplished. The best designs I have shown throughout this blogging process involved ideas that are intelligently designed to consider each aspect, not just one or two of them.

I’m excited to change my life with the attitudes and ideas I have learned in this class. Some of the ideas were complimentary to things I’ve considered previously in my life but was not certain whether I was right in my thinking and some completely blew me away. I feel that the sky is the limit for what any one person can achieve when they are backed by education and critical thinking. This class has added a little bit more to each of those aspects in my life.

I can’t wait to show all of the videos to my friends and family back home!

How is Sustainable Development in Practice?

There are actually quite a few examples of sustainable development in practice. Earthships (sustainable homes made from recycled products that can treat wastewater), the Kootenay Grain Community Supported Agriculture, and the 100 Mile Diet are a few examples.

I’m going to review the 100 Mile Diet. The 100 Mile Diet was created by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, a couple from Kitsilano in Vancouver. The idea for the diet came to them when they were hosting a dinner party at their cabin, but were running low on food. For the meal, they decided to find local items around their cabin such as cherries, apples, mushrooms, dandelion leaves and trout. After this experiment, they decided to try a similar diet in the city for one year. They knew that it might be a challenge from what they had learned at their cabin, so they decided to use a radius of 100 miles for where they were allowed to collect food from. This distance allowed them to be fairly sustainable, and still provided them with enough resources. The concept for the diet is based on eating only local food within 100 miles, including the ingredients of the food. For example, grain used to make bread should be produced within 100 miles. Therefore, foods such as sugar, coffee, and rice must be eliminated from a person’s diet. There were a few exceptions to their rules, including eating meals prepared by other people (i.e. friends or business lunches) and meals eaten during travel. (Wikipedia, 2010)

http://100milediet.org/get-started/map

I first saw this idea on Oprah when she featured Alisa and J.B.’s reality show, “The 100 Mile Challenge”. The people featured on the show were required to participate. At first, there were many who cheated and who questioned the sustainability of the diet, as they had to drive quite far to retrieve food for their meals. However, at the end if the diet, the people started to enjoy the drive to go and get their food. There was even one couple who made real pasta and cheese along with a boxed version of macaroni and cheese. They got their children to try both, and in the end, no one wanted to eat the boxed pasta so they gave it to the dogs and the family decided to stay on the diet with maybe a few less rules.

There are sources that state this diet could not work in our society on Vancouver Island. This is because of the restricted land area and number of people that inhabit the island. There would simply not be enough room to grow all of the crops we would need to feed ourselves and our livestock (i.e. salmon, chickens, cattle, etc.) with the amount of meat and fish they consumed in their diet. Also, it is unsustainable to produce fruits and vegetables from conventional farming practices as this requires a lot of fertilizer and fossil fuel. (http://www.earthsave.ca/files/2007_0708.pdf)

However, this isn’t to say that this diet cannot be made to be fairly sustainable. It just has to be done the right way, which means consuming less meat and fish, and obtaining produce from home gardening practices. Also, the amount of fossil fuels that are used to obtain the food from other sources should be minimized.
I'm almost certain my parents participated in this diet without knowing. Both of my parents grew up on farms where they produced their own grain, meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables and their trips to the grocery store were limited because they didn't have the resources or money to travel to get food. They were self-reliant. I also would venture to guess that they ate less food than we do now.
Therefore, if the diet was done with all participants producing their own food, much the same as how my parents used to live, it would be closer to achieving sustainability.

Check out the 100 Mile Diet and find your 100 miles.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100-Mile_Diet

Canada Earthsaver http://www.earthsave.ca/files/2007_0708.pdf

My Stuff and Other Sources of Consumption

Watch this video and tell me if you feel guilty or not? I did. It made me feel dumb for thinking that as soon as something wasn’t up to my “standards” (and I’m starting to realize where I got these standards from in the first place), I throw it away. Sometimes, if I felt as though I should do something good, I donated it or recycled it if I knew how to recycle it. Otherwise, it went right into the trash.

One thing that really struck me in the video is that things aren’t made as well as they used to be. I’ve noticed this with my cell phones. The first phone I ever bought, I had for three years, and it was still in good working condition when I decided to get a new one. I only got rid of it because flip phones had come on the market and I wanted one of those. I noticed after a few years of having my second phone that I needed to replace it because it wasn’t lasting. This didn’t make sense because I paid more for my second phone than my first phone, and my first phone was still in working condition. However, it makes sense when I consider the market. If I were a business owner, I would soon realize that if I made a product extremely well, I would only ever see each customer once. This is not good for business. So if I were a scheming business owner, I would sabotage the integrity of my product so that I could guarantee I would see a customer again and again, should they continue to buy from me. How awful. I don’t really see any way this can be changed, which makes me feel defeated. The only thing I can do is really consider what I am buying and where I am buying my products.

After watching this video, I really started to consider the things that I buy and the packaging they come in. For example, I needed a yoga mat, but only for a weekend, so I decided to borrow it from someone who I knew wouldn’t be using it. This saves resources and now I don’t have a yoga mat sitting in my closet that I probably won’t use again.

I also started to consider the places that I support. When I give my money to someone, it’s easy to forget that I’m supporting them and the choices they made about the resources, manufacture, and distribution of their product. Now I prefer to go to local stores that I won’t find in every other city in North America.

There was one more thing that got me thinking. What am I eating, and from where? I cringed at the thought that I had recently ate at McDonald’s because it dawned on me that the cook behind the counter wasn’t making fresh recipes from scratch that had been in her family for generations. Too often to we take what is available at our fingertips without considering where the product came from exactly and how it got to our hands.

I am now considering learning how to sew, knit, can and preserve food, and garden. I’m lucky that these skills are still in my family and can be passed down to me. I’m not sure why I don’t have these skills because I don’t think they are very difficult to master. Something tells me that it was “uncool” to sew when I could go to a store and buy an overpriced pair of jeans for $150.

To achieve a level of sustainability, our society must deeply consider changing our habits to reduce our consumption of stuff. This includes re-using and reducing, then recycling. We must also learn skills to make ourselves sustainable, so that if one day we are left without products that are available at or fingertips, we will be able to survive. I know I can do it!

Powering the Sustainable Society

According to National Resources Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency (OEE), the most common energy source for residential homes in 2008 was electricity. The information taken from Table 1: Secondary Energy Use and GHG Emissions by Energy Source did not clarify the method by which the electricity was generated; however, hydropower, coal, and nuclear are common ways in which electricity is produced in Canada, so these are the possible sources. I created a pie chart to portray the different types of energy sources and the relative amounts we use of each. The website stated 5 main end-uses for this energy: space heating, water heating, appliances, lighting, and space cooling. (Retrieved March 9, 2011 from http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/statistics/neud/dpa/tablestrends2/res_ca_1_e_4.cfm?attr=0)

If we look at this data with a critical eye, it suggests that humans require energy for a lot of things, and we have developed more than five ways to generate energy. We are not the only beings on the planet that have figured out how to create energy though. For instance, plants generate energy from sunlight and carbon dioxide. There is a major difference in the ways in which humans generate energy compared to plants. In general, plants do not give off by-products that are detrimental to their surrounding environment, nor do they use a source of energy that can be depleted source of energy. Also, plants have back-up systems in case their energy source is not available. If our power went out, do most of us have an alternative? Most humans though, generate energy in a way that has an effect environment. I’m being polite when I say “effect”, because it is really a negative impact. Coal and wood release particulate matter into the environment, nuclear produces radioactive tailings, and oil and natural gas release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

There is a debate about what we should use to replace these fairly dirty energy resources. Should it be solar? No, because the sun doesn’t always shine or it doesn’t shine strong enough in some areas. What about wind? No, the wind doesn’t always blow so that isn’t reliable. There is always geothermal. That can get quite expensive... Tidal power? Again, not dependable, it’s only useful sometimes.

I think these are all poor excuses. There is always a solution to a problem if you think critically and spend enough time on it. One thought that I always consider when listening to the debate about the next best supplier of energy is: “what about more than one option?” Who says that we can only use solar or only wind? The sun doesn’t just shine when the wind isn’t blowing; both sunlight and wind can occur at the same time. However, if it is too expensive to change to more than one of these technologies right away, then there is the option of using solar (or wind, etc.) and using current systems as a backup (i.e. nuclear or hydropower).

There is a First Nations community near Vitoria that recently became a solar community. I’d like to reiterate that this community is solar – on Vancouver Island. The community depends on solar power, and when that isn’t enough, they use hydropower from the provincial supplier. I was out there for a visit, and on the day I was there the solar panels were actually making power and selling it back to the grid. The community was making money off of their solar panels. Apparently this happens time and again so it wasn’t a coincidence. This proves that there can be myths about clean, green energy. The man who gave us the tour had one main message: despite of all the obstacles we think exist, this energy source was so easy to implement when considering all of the benefits of solar power. He didn’t understand why more people don’t do the same. I have to agree.

The Sustainable City

How could someone possibly make something as large as a city sustainable? Think about it: a sustainable city must unify social, environmental and economic aspects, all the while remaining viable - and it must work for everyone. Not every person in the community will have the same desires, so if you want people to live there, you must meet the needs of as many people as possible. However, most people don’t think about the design of a city in their everyday lives, especially if it is designed well. People tend to spend more time complaining about things than complimenting things or realizing how easy something makes their lives. So to have a city that is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable will come without protest. On the other hand, it may be difficult to try and implement a sustainable system in an already existing city.



http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org

I think of a sustainable city as somewhere that provides a nice area to live in, is close to school or work, and is near a grocery store. And to be a little selfish, I think it should also provide places for entertainment. However, entertainment does not have to be dinner and a movie, it can, more importantly, be walking and biking trails, places to swim, and places to have a picnic or get-together. In my opinion, this is the key to sustainable communities – dividing the city into smaller communities so that none of the patrons must travel far on a daily basis. I go everywhere on my bike, even for groceries, and it’s not as hard as I would have thought. I actually like it because I get exercise without even trying. Then, if there are times when I feel like getting out, I can go downtown. This makes going downtown a treat (not a burden because I commute there everyday in traffic jams).

There are many ways in which we can develop sustainable communities. I, myself, would get confused as to the planning aspects and remembering all of the things that should be incorporated. Jamie Lerner and William McDonough didn’t get confused though. They are taking the right approach towards developing sustainable cities. Watch these two TED talks about the concepts these men have developed for communities and you’ll understand what I mean. 



http://www.ted.com/talks/browse

Jamie Lerner
William McDonough

There are so many innovative, intelligent, and most importantly, achievable ideas for sustainable communities. Who wouldn’t want to live in cities like that? It’s a wonder why we are having a difficult time implementing it into our own lives when the ideas are already laid out for us. Maybe because we have complicated the idea of sustainable communities – stating what needs to be done and coming up with ways to do it, but never quite putting anything into action. I think we should all be more like Jamie and William, and remember that actions speak louder than words.