Month: July 2009

Independent Grocers go Local

- Adam Clare

In Ontario a handful of grocery stores stopped being part of a franchise so they can support local grown food from farmers in their communities. It’s great to see the grocers taking such a bold move and that their customers support them in the decision.

For his part, Peter Knipfel says he’s discovering more about what’s growing locally. At his store, he says grape tomato sales have tripled since the switch to a local producer.
“We are now a group of nine stores that probably have a little bit of buying power to buy larger quantities of local tomatoes, larger quantities of cucumbers from, say, some of the Mennonite farmers that are producing it at Elmira market, for example,” he says.

Mary Copp has shopped at Kropf’s store in Elora for 30 years. She says she noticed the changes immediately. “I think it’s great because we look for local, and you can get it here. You can’t get it at [chain-store rival] Zehrs … well, sometimes you can, but not as much.”

Shopper Linda Tompkins of Chesley agrees, “I don’t want food from some place else when we’ve got food right here. Support our farmers.”

Still, Warriner predicts that while that more consumers are asking for local produce, they will always be the minority. The University of Guelph professor says like organic produce, local will always be a niche market because mass production generally leads to cheaper prices.

Co-op members concede some of their wares are more expensive than those of the competition, but add that on average they are competitive. “We’re not saying we’re the cheapest but we’re certainly not the most expensive either,” says Knipfel.

Kropf adds that the ability to offer locally produced food is ultimately about quality first, price second.

Thanks go to Dan Harrison for the scoop!

Greening the Empire State Building [video]

- Adam Clare

I really enjoy how this video from the American propaganda department really stresses the importance of efficiency as the key element to make buildings green. We can build green all we want, but it is vital that we take existing buildings and increase their efficiency – just like the Sears Tower.

Via Worldchanging

Urban Farming for Fun and Profit

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

In the urban centre of Toronto, Sarah Nixon makes a living by growing flowers in other people’s yards and then selling the plants. She is part of a growing trend among sustainable urbanities who are farming in the city.

Nixon’s farm isn’t out near Milton or Orillia. It’s on Indian Rd. and Marion St. – just a few blocks from Roncesvalles in the city’s west end. She grows flowers in back and front yards around Parkdale and then sells them for weddings, office receptions and, perhaps this season, to one Ossington Ave. florist.

What do the landowners get in return?

“They get a free flower garden without lifting a finger,” says Nixon with a smile.

Nixon is part of the new wave of farming, called SPIN – small plot intensive farming – which is growing in cities across North America. Riding on the crest of the local food wave, SPIN is cashing in on a new eager market.

There are some surprising benefits to growing crops in the city, says the movement’s leader, Wally Satzewich.

You can’t turn a tractor in a tiny backyard, so there are fewer expensive start-up investments, for one. Then, there’s the city’s asphalt, which absorbs the sun’s heat and makes us all sweat more on hot summer nights. But, for farmers, it means a longer growing season in the spring and fall. And there is the garden hose.

“All I have to do is turn on the water faucet in the house and there is irrigation,” says Satzewich, who moved from his 20-acre farm outside Saskatoon into the city 10 years ago. “If I had to go back to getting my tractor to a river bank and getting the pump going … When you’ve learned the hard way out in the country you really appreciate the benefits of the city.”

Let Your Mind Wander

- Adam Clare

I’ll keep this short so your mind doesn’t wander away: studies show it’s good to let your mind wander.

The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain’s activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future.

The fact that both of these important brain networks become active together suggests that mind wandering is not useless mental static. Instead, Schooler proposes, mind wandering allows us to work through some important thinking. Our brains process information to reach goals, but some of those goals are immediate while others are distant. Somehow we have evolved a way to switch between handling the here and now and contemplating long-term objectives. It may be no coincidence that most of the thoughts that people have during mind wandering have to do with the future.

Via Boing

CO2 Turned into Fuel by Solar Powered Device

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

A device that can transform CO2 in fuel can prove to be revolutionary. The very idea of using the sun’s rays to get rid of CO2 is great in itself – making that same process create a type of diesel fuel is even better. In theory, waste from inefficient gas cars can be used to make cheaper fuel for more efficient diesel cars, which would drive demand for more diesel cars from cheaper fuel.

The researchers housed a 2-centimetre-square section of material bristling with the tubes inside a metal chamber with a quartz window. They then pumped in a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour and placed it in sunlight for three hours.

The energy provided by the sunlight transformed the carbon dioxide and water vapour into methane and related organic compounds, such as ethane and propane, at rates as high as 160 microlitres an hour per gram of nanotubes. This is 20 times higher than published results achieved using any previous method, but still too low to be immediately practical.

If the reaction is halted early the device produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas, which can be converted into diesel.

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