sustainable

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.”

Footprint Science

- Adam Clare

There’s already a lot of websites out there that help you asses your carbon footprint and that’s good, but now there are sites taking the footprint science to the next level. The Global Footprint Network is looking into the details behind making and living with a small footprint.

How can we all live well and live within the means of one planet?

This is the research question of the 21st century. If we are serious about sustainable development, there is no way around this question. If we do not design ways to live within the means of one planet, sustainability will remain elusive.

Institutionalizing the Ecological Footprint at the national level requires that statistical offices, policy advisors, academia, and businesses trust the methodology and data underlying the Footprint, which is comprised of 150 National Footprint Accounts.

National Footprint Accounts measure the ecological resource use and resource capacity of nations over time. Based on approximately 5,400 data points per country per year, the Accounts calculate the Footprints of 150 nations from 1961 to the present. These accounts provide the core data that is needed for all Ecological Footprint analysis worldwide.

Creating a Bike-Friendly Sustainable Society in the USA

- Adam Clare

The New York Times has an article about a Oregon congressman who has been promoting bicycling and sustainable living for 20 years. The article goes into his hard work and how what he has been promoting has become really popular.

But Mr. Blumenauer’s goals are larger than putting Americans on two wheels. He seeks to create what he calls a more sustainable society, including wiser use of energy, farming that improves the land rather than degrades it, an end to taxpayer subsidies for unwise development — and a transportation infrastructure that looks beyond the car.

For him, the global financial collapse is “perhaps the best opportunity we will ever see” to build environmental sustainability into the nation’s infrastructure, with urban streetcar systems, bike and pedestrian paths, more efficient energy transmission and conversion of the federal government’s 600,000-vehicle fleet to use alternate fuels.

“These are things that three years ago were unimaginable,” he said. “And if they were imaginable, we could not afford them. Well, now when all the experts agree that we will be lucky if we stabilize the economy in a couple of years, when there is great concern about the consequences of the collapse of the domestic auto producers, gee, these are things that are actually reasonable and affordable.”

Six Recommendations for Sustainable Food in 2009

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

People are becoming more aware about how to live a sustainable life, and now we know of at least six ways to make our food more sustainable. The suggestions range from the everyday to the larger issues to support the sustainable food movement.

5. Continue to support local gardening / farming efforts. We need to keep our focus on urban gardening and small-scale farming. It has been said before, but the answers to our global food problems are not more genetic modification and massive globalization, but rather a return to small and simple. We need to bring more people into direct contact with food production, because with contact comes understanding.

6. Cement the relationship between Eco, Green and Healthy. It is undeniable that what is good for our personal health is good for the planet, and vice versa. With the dawn of the new year, we need to cement this relationship with both words and action. I believe that this is one of the ways that the sustainable food movement can reach a larger audience, and allow those participating on the fringes of the movement to go deeper into eco-eating through concerns about health. This is already one of the largest reasons people give when they choose to buy organic milk, for example, but it can be so much more than that. We need to expand the dialogue to include nutritionists, doctors, and other health practitioners as we move forward.

Coconut Husks as Car Parts

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Coconuts have a very hard shell that can be used in many different ways, a new suggestion by a team of researchers says that the really good part of the shell is the coconut’s husk which can be turned into car parts.

The approach has potential because coconuts are an abundant, renewable resource in all countries near the equator, including the Philippines, Indonesia and India. The husks are burned or thrown away, generating garbage. This is the first time that coconut fibers have been used to make these automotive products, said Walter Bradley, an engineering professor who is leading the project.

In Ghana, as one of Bradley’s students told him, the discarded husks pile up in mounds, creating a health hazard because they collect water where malaria-causing mosquitoes can breed.

“We are trying to turn trash into cash to help poor coconut farmers,” Bradley said, adding that the long-term goal is to increase demand for coconuts to millions of pounds, and thereby raise their market price.

Currently, there are about 11 million coconut farmers in the world making an average annual income of $500, he said.

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