New West Film Fest 2015!

November 5th 6th and 7th 2015! 

Green Drinks Tomorrow night! June 10th 2014

New West Shoreline Clean up September 23rd

Come out to this annual event and help with the shoreline clean up and invasive plant pull!
For more info check out the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean up website here! 

On the fifth Day of Christmas, waste free wrapping.

For Christmas this year we are making holiday gift bags and wrapping paper from cloth.

We have some left over from last year and we are making more. These bags are reusable and fun! You can buy material on sale in the off season and save it up for this. You can also use non holiday themed prints to make everyday gift bags for birthdays and other gift giving occasions.

We also reuse our old cards every few years. We will save our Christmas cards and cut them out and reuse them to make new cards to send to friends and family.

Another green wrapping idea is to use newsprint and stamp or decorate the paper yourself. This way you can personalize the gifts and don't have the plastic and paper waste from the traditional wrapping paper packaging.

When you plan ahead these idea's are really simple and people love to get gifts you have made yourself and can reuse! It's easy being green and not creating waste.

On the second day of Christmas; we put up our lights; LED!

Yes we have made the switch over to all LED lights for our house and tree this year. Most people are now aware that LED lights use only 10 % of the electricity of incandescent bulbs, they will last many more years and do not get as hot, so they are safer too.

Since 2007 The Home Depot has offered a light exchange as part of their Eco Options Initiative

They offer to responsibly recycle old holiday bulbs and discount LED lights up to 50% to encourage people to make the switch.

Their results are encouraging;

• close to 600,000 light strings collected
• more then 8000 MWh of energy saved
• more then 2,227 tonnes of green house gas emissions prevented(equal to the annual energy consumption of 789 houses)

Lights are so much a part of the holidays. Maybe it is because of the lack of sunlight and the cold colorful Christmas lights always make long winter nights more cheerful and bright.

How green it is - Treehugger ?

Today when I visited TreeHugger.com , the mother of all Enviro-blogs , I was shocked saddened, disappointed by the adds that dominated the front page.

The top three advertisements I saw were for an airline, a car company and a petroleum company. Should we expect more from our Eco brothers and sisters over at TreeHugger? As a business person I understand the purpose of business is to make money after all. The purpose of environmental blogs or websites is to inform and inspire better (environmentally sustainable ) living, or so I thought.

Their name surely implies the hippy, happy, Eco- friendly life style. We are all "tree huggers, in a way, we want to lesson our impact and be more accountable. Or do we? Do we really just want a convenient way to continue doing all the consuming, driving, flying, texting, eating, and living that we, in the developed nations, demand and expect.

The answer is clear. Yes we do want to do all this and more. We do want to make a difference, to be better, to be greener.

So what if TreeHugger is making money from advertisers that perpetuate the destruction of the planet? They are, after all, still shining a light on the evil that dominates our green little planet. They offer us vast amounts of information and alternatives, all the while taking money from the multinational corporations that threatens our very existence.

Should we be discouraged by this act of treason? Is this just the cost of doing business in the 21st century? You can talk the talk but when it comes to walking the walk, some still prefer to drive.

New Westminster Environmental Partners AGM

One small change - February

As we enter another month in the One Small Change Challenge I have to admit it was a little difficult to find something to change. No, I am not "Mother Earth" incarnated, but my family and I are very aware of how our actions affect the environment. I decided to ask my husband and son what they thought we should do for the next three months of challenges. They had some great ideas! Let me start with last months change and then go on.

In January we started to compost our vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, and yard waste. I found there are some more things we can compost as well, dryer lint is one, and pencil sharpenings are another! It has been a very easy transition and we can actually skip a week of garbage pick up almost undetected!
On to February.. For this month and from now on we are going to reduce and hopefully eliminate our use of "single use items" these include coffee and drink cups, disposable cutlery, condiment packages, take out containers, disposable napkins and tissues. This may seem like a lot, but really we already use cloth for most things around the house so we are just going to be sure to bring them along with us when we go out, especially to eat.
I wrote a post on my website here about many of the options available to use in place Styrofoam take away boxes. We just need to be diligent and remember to bring a container when we go out, in case we have left overs or want to get something to go! This idea has been on my mind for a long time and as you can see from the top picture, the amount of garbage created everyday in an average food court is unbelievable. I think these things should have an environmental tax on them, and restaurants should be given incentives to provide compost-able or recycled materials in there take away items, but that is a post for another day!

For now we are going to be more aware of the garbage we create both inside our house and when we are out. We decided that if it is necessary to buy and use some single use items we must bring it home and compost it or reuse it!

One not so small change, but a challenge to be sure!