Category: Direct Action

You Can Help a Bike Sharing Program Come to Toronto

Readers of this site know that bicycles are great and that we like bike sharing programs, well, now it’s Toronto’s turn to get on the Bixi bandwagon. We’ve looked at Bixi before when they opened in Montreal.

The city of Toronto will approve Bixi to open next year in Toronto IF they an get 1,000 members before this November. If you are free tonight you can sign up for a Bixi membership at the Bixi Bash.

Here’s info on Bixi from the Toronto Star

“It’s pretty inexpensive, even if you’re just going to use it once a week,” said Daniel Egan, the city’s manager of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. “There are a number of milestones we need to achieve by the end of November in order to launch this for next year. And one of those is to sign up 1,000 members. It’s really to protect the city and the (BIXI) company from financial risk — to know there’s a demand for this.”

The city will also need to secure $600,000 in corporate sponsors and locate appropriate docking sites. Both are well underway, says Egan.

“Quite frankly I think our biggest challenge will be the demand for more bikes once this program launches,” said Egan.

The ruggedly designed bikes are adjustable and designed to fit all body types. The wheels generate electricity to power the fixed-on lights.

Keep reading at the Star.

Plastiki Completes its Voyage

We looked at the Plastiki before when it set sail and now, a few months later the ship has completed its voyage.

The boat, carrying six crew, travelled through a waste-strewn area of the north Pacific and made stops in the Line Islands, Western Samoa and the French territory of New Caledonia before leaving for Australia.

The Plastiki’s bottles are lashed to pontoons and held together with recyclable plastic and glue made from cashew nut husks and sugarcane, while its sails are also made from recycled plastic.

The crew relied on renewable energy including solar panels, wind and propeller turbines and bicycle-powered electricity generators, and used water recycled from urine.

They were able to keep in touch with supporters via satellite through a website, blogs, and use of social-networking sites such as Twitter.

Keep reading about the Plastiki’s adventure

Green Ways to Stay Cool in Summer Heat

The summertime can get insanely hot and it’s very tempting to turn the air conditioning on full blast – don’t. Air conditioning is notoriously bad for the environment due to the ridiculous amount of energy they consume to cool a building.

There are many other ways to stay cool over the summer that require a heck of a lot less energy.

1. Close your windows
It may seem counter-intuitive, but opening the windows will often make your home warmer, not cooler. Open your windows at night if the air outside is cooler than inside, and close them — along with blinds and shades — before the sun hits your house in the morning. This will allow cool night air to circulate, and prevent a good deal of the sun’s heat from infiltrating your living space.

You may also put houseplants — particularly larger potted trees — in front of sunny windows to absorb some of the sun’s energy. Use this method, and on all but the summer’s hottest days, you can get away without using the air conditioning at all!

2. Use fans strategically
Ceiling fans and those set right in front of you are there to keep you cool, not cool the room. But a fan in your face can help you feel dramatically cooler, even if the room temperature hardly budges. You should be able to set your air conditioner higher, at about 78 degrees, but feel much cooler by using a fan.

Enhance its effect by wetting your skin with a spray bottle, and get a near-instant cooling effect by wetting your wrists and letting the fan blow air across them.

Fans can help cool your home, particularly when used to blow cooler air indoors, usually at night. You can maximize the effect by creating a wind tunnel of sorts, with a fan blowing cool air in on one end of the house, and another blowing out on the opposite side of the house.

3. Adjust the thermostat
If you have central air controlled by a thermostat, program it to save energy by increasing the heat significantly during the day when the house is empty, and give up a couple degrees at night, too — especially on the hottest days.

You may be surprised to find that the contrast between outdoor and indoor temperatures matters as much as the absolute temperature inside your home.

Keep reading at Yahoo Green.

Foodprint Toronto

On July 31st in Toronto a one day conference thing is happening and it’s all about food and you. The even is Foodprint Toronto and it’s all about all your relationship to food in your life – from what you eat to where the food is grown.

This looks like it’ll be lots of fun so if you’re in Toronto and you eat food, you should go!

Foodprint Toronto is the second in a series of international conversations about food and the city. The first, held in New York City earlier this year, was a packed-out success, with a stellar line-up of speakers jumping to their feet to share their opinions on topics as diverse as food deserts and food printing, as well as tell fascinating stories about the role of protein in the city’s farmers’ markets and oysters in the city’s history. (You can still download videos of the event for free on iTunes U.)

Read a whole lot more at Edible Geography.

Faces of the G20

Readers of this site should be aware that the G20 came to Toronto and caused a bunch of noise. Some sad news came out of that in terms of how the police acted (the largest mass arrests in Canada’s history). As a direct reaction to the abuse that occurred that weekend some people have turned to the net.

The Faces of the G20 is a place for people who have been affected by police brutality during the G20 to share their stories.

It is always good to see communities protect one another in the face of oppression. These people are looking to educate others while changing the system so that what happened to them cannot happen to others:

We are a small group of citizens affected by the G20 weekend in a variety of ways. We want to get our stories out, and to build a knowledge base as to what exactly happened before, during and after the weekend of July 26th, 2010.

Thanks to Dave!