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 ...
Mmmmmmm…. Garbage….
In 1995, a young diver named Chad Pregracke decided to clean up the Mississippi River – armed with just one boat and a boatload of nerve. His organization, Living Lands and Waters, has since grown into a national crusade, with thousands of volunteers picking up millions of pounds of garbage ...
Detroit’s big-dick auto show cars now have much less sway.
Like steroid-pumping weightlifters at an academic dinner party, the traditional auto show muscle car stars are looking more than a little out of place. At least that’s the report from the 2009 Canadian International Auto Show. This is the kind of event where auto makers roll out their flashiest new ...
The ultimate recession-proof claim: “Our products actually won’t poison you!”
One by one, news stories are surfacing that are waking consumers up to the fragility of the globalized manufacturing chain. In China, melamine-tainted milk was responsible for six babies dying and some 300,000 cases of kidney infection. In Canada, the federal government recently placed on its list of toxic substances ...
Recession killing your high-end products? Try marketing your junk.
I was wandering blissfully through my local supermarket when a magazine caught my eye. ‘Junk Beautiful’ it proudly proclaimed. And with its clean, well-styled photography, and a decent design, this magazine/DVD bundle actually does fair justice to its title. What’s more, it has lessons for any company that is facing ...
Where does green turn in a downturn?
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 ...
Make sense of your Eco Certifications.
These days, many corporate web sites are fairly bursting with well-intentioned fair trade, certified organic, sustainable supply-chain certification symbols. Looks great, but what does it all mean? Last week I got an e-catalogue from local clothing company Eco Apparel that answered that question. Eco Apparel is a Vancouver-based clothing manufacturer ...
A font that saves toner?
You copy on both sides of the paper. You don’t print your e-mails. You pour reclaimed rainwater water through old coffee grounds. BUT YOU CAN STILL DO MORE!! Yes, until you consider how many grains of toner you waste on each and every letter you print, you are not worthy. ...
Take your statistics out and shoot them.
We’ve all seen the stats. Millions of tonnes of CO2 here, billions of plastic bottles there. Pretty soon it’s all just a sea of number soup. Until you see the work of Seattle photographer Chris Jordan. The image above, for instance, looks like a forest of conduits or ductwork – ...
Merry Whatever and a Happy New Thing.
As winter hits our idyllic Vancouver wonderland, reminding us of what most of Canada faces for 3-4 months of the year, I can’t help but notice that the snow does, for a short time, make us nicer people. We greet neighbours we would otherwise ignore, smiling at the communal inconvenience, ...