I was unusually buoyant, (considering I was reading a government document), as I waded through the new 72-page PDF report -  Vancouver 2020, a Bright Green Future. This is the much-awaited guide to Vancouver City Council’s ambitious plan to be ‘a top-five global clean-tech city’, complete with a shiny new brand for our burg: ‘Vancouver [...]

[Read more →]

I was a bit uncertain about going on today’s ride, what with the local daily paper predicting widespread chaos and inciting drivers to rebel against the ‘illegal’ riders. But a sunny Friday lured me down to the Vancouver Art Gallery to sketch the scene and join the mass. This was my second such ride, and [...]

[Read more →]

Reading through Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Thomas  Friedman, I came across an interesting description of clean fuels vs. dirty fuels, by Rochelle Lefkowitz, from Pro-Media.  In a flash of brilliant simplicity she describes them as ‘Fuels from Heaven or Fuels from Hell.” The Fuels from Heaven include wind, tidal, biomass and solar power. These [...]

[Read more →]

This was one of those ideas that made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it. You have machines to sell aluminum cans of soda and plastic bottles of water, so why not offer the same convenience for recycling your empties and getting any deposit back? Turns out a Norwegian-based company called TOMRA is all [...]

[Read more →]

It seems like just yesterday we were ushering in a brave new era of environmental awareness and positive behavior change. New fair-trade organic free-range recyclable products were launching daily. Hybrid cars graced Hollywood’s red carpets. The US elected a President who can actually find Global Warming on a map. Then ‘Whoops, where’s that 50 Billion [...]

[Read more →]

The global financial meltdown has hit the green movement hard, right here in our back yard. Everything that goes into your blue box for recycling is sold to mills, usually offshore, who process it and sell it to the factories that make the cheap consumer goods we love. This works well when commodity prices and [...]

[Read more →]

I have to come clean, dear Green Briefs Readers. There is someone else – that I write for, that is. SustainableMinds.com is a Massachusetts company that integrates product design, life cycle assessment and environmental systems design into a web-based software and information suite that answers the questions: “What is sustainable design?” and “How can we [...]

[Read more →]

I was down at the Cenotaph today, at Victory Square in downtown Vancouver, explaining to the 8-year old on my shoulders why we were watching at a sea of umbrellas in the cold November rain. As my mind grappled with imagining the sheer horror of the individuals involved in the dirty, brutish life of armed [...]

[Read more →]

Well it’s all over but the handoff. A planet collectively sighs with relief, and can now laugh a little less nervously at SNL’s Sarah Palin skits. But with the economy disassembling itself, the environment has not been the stuff of big speeches in this election. So how will Obama’s ‘Change’ manifest itself for the green [...]

[Read more →]

SNCF, France’s national railway, and their parking subsidiary, Effia, have announced a great new deal for electric car drivers. When they park to take the train, they can plug in and recharge for free. This represents a level of cross-platform eco marketing we haven’t yet seen in North America, stuck as we are with Transport [...]

[Read more →]