Urban farms struggle to provide low-cost food

The SOLEfood Farm in East Vancouver is part of a larger project to provide locally grown food in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood. However, it is finding it hard to grow produce at a cost that is affordable to the people in the area.
The farm is only able to offer only six jobs to Downtown Eastside residents, [...]

Reusable bags might not be as green as they seem

Jenny Hughes has a problem with reusable shopping bags.
Hughes owns Me & You, a company that makes high quality, reusable bags in Vancouver. Her organic cotton totes hit the market at the right time: In 2004, plastic shopping bags had just become a hot-button environmental issue. She said that Me & You could barely keep [...]

‘Street trees’ make wood chips, not money

The high winds of the Easter weekend brought trees crashing down in Vancouver’s parks and across roadways.
In addition to appreciating the wrath of Mother Nature, you may have become more aware of our city’s trees.
This week Rod MacNeill takes a look a Vancouver’s urban forest. Listen to his report below.
[Audio clip: view full post to [...]

Stanley Park strives to balance ecology and tourism

Tourism Vancouver is expecting more visitors this year, one reason being the recent international exposure from the Olympic games. Though this is good news for the local economy, this influx in tourism comes with an unexpected price for the city’s natural beauty.
Jes Abeita, Rebecca Cheung and Ursula Diaz produced this report.

Backyard bees bring greener gardens

By Katie Dangerfield, Jenna Owsianik, and Lara Howsam
In the past Nao Sims’ backyard plum tree yielded only six plums, but last fall the tree produced six one-gallon pails of plums.
The abundance of fruit is just one of many benefits Sims has noticed since she started keeping two beehives in her backyard last June.
“At the moment [...]

Cowichan Bay digs slow living

The small town of Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island has made a big impression for its efforts to promote local and sustainable food production. It is the first Cittaslow, or Slow City, in North America.
Robyn Smith, Vivian Luk and Yvonne Robertson look at how one town has found an alternative to fast-paced living, and what [...]

Norway taps salt water as green energy source

In 1974 a researcher at the University of Connecticut submitted a paper to the journal Science. He claimed that large amounts of energy could be extracted from the natural mixing of fresh water and salty sea water that occurs at river mouths around the world.
The author, Richard Norman, was surprised when the manuscript was positively [...]

Researchers aim to clean up toxic Athabasca water

Northern Alberta is home to some of the fastest-growing bodies of water in the world. Every day roughly two billion litres of water – enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools – are added to these lakes, which are already over 11.5 trillion litres in volume.
The largest one, located near Mildred Lake just north of [...]

UBC seeks to tap rain as renewable resource

Curtis Ballard rushed to fasten plywood between parking curbs as rain cascaded down Wesbrook Mall. The water runoff streamed toward TRIUMF, the laboratory for particle and nuclear physics at UBC.
“The water outside eventually rose to our knees,” said Ballard, TRIUMF’s operations manager, who worked with personnel from the lab and the physical plant to clear [...]

Vancouver Sikh activists go green

By Lara Howsam
Vancouver Sikhs have a long history as activists.
Rallies and events have been held at the Ross Street Temple in South Vancouver for years. Violence against women, gangs, refugee and immigration issues and political rallies are regular events.
“We have to wake the people up,” said Kashmir Dhaliwal, who is active at the temple.
Until now [...]

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