Green Buying Binge Doing Us In

Wow, I have a huge, honking new recycling bin. It seems like overkill, coming in just under the size of a Smart Car, and I really can’t tell if my household is up to the challenge of filling this baby on a regular basis.

After chucking in two weeks of recyclables, we’d barely reached the halfway mark at pickup time, a clear indication that we’ve been neglecting our role as citizens, er, I mean, consumers. Obviously, we need to start buying more.

Alas, what started all those years ago as a valiant effort to nudge residents to get with the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) has morphed into a fervent consumer campaign that has vanquished “reduce.”

It’s not just evidenced by the new supersize bin, but also by the endless variety of ways we’re encouraged to be “green” while indulging unabated our addiction to shopping.

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Harvesting The Heights

The walk through the public housing project surrounding Lawrence Heights Community Centre is mid-winter bleak.

The four-storey apartments hug the barrier wall behind which the Allen Expressway’s white-noise roar blankets the sonic landscape. Orphaned patches of grass are squeezed like afterthoughts between sidewalks, concrete and asphalt.

But it is these scattered bits of green that excite Anan Lololi, former bass player for 80s reggae group Truth and Rights and founder of AfriCan Food Basket.

What he sees under this useless vestige of British outdoor aesthetics is not only untilled plots of organic farmland but a vehicle for black youth to reconnect with their roots.

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Posted in All Blog Posts, Education, Environment, Food Security, Now Magazine, Race Relations, Youth Issues | 1 Comment »

Portlands Power Play

PORTLANDS power play
Residents walk out of consulting committee charging Energy Centre kept them in the dark
By Andrew Cash

Laundry isn’t the only thing being hung out to dry this summer in Smogtown. Take Toronto’s east-end neighbourhoods, which have always been our industrial ashtray.

In the bad old 80s, residential backyards in south Riverdale had to have their lead-laced soil removed, and the Commissioner Street incinerator was blithely burning garbage.

And while we can’t be sure that the dust on Riverdalian stereo speakers isn’t still laced with lead, locals also have to deal with the Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant to the southeast, a grand contributor to the generally crappy local air quality.

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McGuinty’s Arnie Act

McGuinty’s Arnie act
Why is it easier for a Republican to be green than a Liberal premier?
By Andrew Cash

Who says coincidences like this only happen in novels? At the very moment when enviro orgs are putting the heat on the McGuinty Libs to pass a private member’s bill modelled after one in California that’ll let us know if the Shreddies we’re buying contain carcinogens, in pops the governor of said state.

Arnold Schwarzenegger reminds us that it may be easier for a Republican bodybuilder to be green than a Liberal premier. Despite the fact that Bill 164, the Community Right To Know Act, has passed second reading and an all-party committee, don’t assume it’s passage is a slam dunk.

Spearheaded by NDP enviro critic Peter Tabuns, the bill would force companies to list cancer-causing agents on product labels. It would also create a comprehensive and user-friendly online pollution inventory so Ontarians can find out which toxins are emitted in their communities and what risks are associated with them.

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Posted in All Blog Posts, Environment, Now Magazine, Ontario, Politics | No Comments »

A Smog Alert On Earth Day

A smog alert on Earth Day?
By Andrew Cash

When Earth Day meets smog, does anybody hear? Apparently not.

Even as I order my first pint of the patio season and celebrate a glorious day, I try to ignore the evidence: itchy eyes, sore throat.

Winter is finally over, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let minor health concerns ruin the party. But the Danforth’s perpetual weekend bumper-to-bumper car rally is giving me and my two-year-old the season’s first dose of sun-baked exhaust.

So when a friend e-mails me later to let me know that at the exact hour I was one with my urban environment, smog readings in T.O. were bad enough to issue an air advisory, it makes sense. What doesn’t is that the province’s air quality watchdog took a pass on letting citizens know.

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Real Dirt On The Tar Sands

Real dirt on the tar sands
Tories are pumping a fivefold increase in production while we worry ourselves sick about leaf blowers
By Andrew Cash

It’s no wonder Stephen Harper can’t say “Kyoto” without choking. After all, thanks to the huge oil sands deposit in his Alberta backyard, we’ve got the second-largest oil reserves in the entire world, next to Saudi Arabia.

You probably already know that the sticky goo in northeastern Alberta is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. But while we’re all worrying ourselves sick about leaf blowers and incandescent bulbs, few realize the extent of the oil sands expansion being plotted. Do voters get that the Conservatives are expecting, and indeed pumping, a massive fivefold increase?

Welcome to the difference between official Harperspeak about going green and Tory tar sands machinations. And the politics are especially thick and sticky when Washington is factored in, since no matter who we elect, stopping any further development of our bituminous riches, or even slowing it down, is going to take a heroic rewiring of the Canada/U.S. power dynamic.

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