Flashes from Vancouver's Green Scene

Vote Green

Adriane Carr, the Green Party of Canada’s deputy leader, made an appearance at last month’s Frogfile Office Essentials Green Business Expo. The Greens are running Adriane in the federal election (Vancouver Centre riding) Oct. 14. If you support better transit (and oppose the Gateway highway expansion project), affordable housing for the poor, and caps on carbon emissions for industry, vote for Adriane. Meanwhile, Frogfile, Canada’s only green office supply company, reported a 400 per cent increase in sales over the last year. Who says green isn’t hot? votecarr.ca , frogfile.com

We’re glad you agree that Andrea Reimer, our September cover profile, would make a great Vancouver city counsellor. Andrea handily won a slot on the Vision Vancouver slate for the Nov. 15 municipal election. As one reader points out, she brings what’s desperately needed to city hall. See page 5 for Readers’ Letters. andreareimer.ca

Finally, there’s something worthwhile to watch on the boob tube, er, internet. Sustainability Television (STV), an environmental media portal designed in Vancouver, launches sustainabilitytelevision.com this month. STV broadcasts video and print stories about green products and ecological ideas, turning sustainability theory into reality. Got something to contribute? Send your videos, images, and stories to info@sustainabilitytelevision.com.

Fifty low-income families in the Lower Mainland are eating local, healthy food thanks to the B.C. Farmers’ Markets Nutrition and Coupon Project. Now in its second year, the project distributes coupons to low-income families to redeem at farmers’ markets across Metro Vancouver and teaches them the skills needed to prepare healthy meals. The province has provided $750,000 to the B.C. Association of Farmers’ Markets to expand the Nutrition and Coupon Project. bcfarmersmarket.org

The habitat of the mountain caribou is threatened by snowmobiling, says ForestEthics, a non-profit environmental group. Apparently the caribou, a species that’s already endangered courtesy of industrial logging, doesn’t like the noise of Ski-Doos and is being driven out of its habitat. To prevent these critters from being forcibly evicted from their forest homes, write a letter to the B.C. government and voice your concern. Find the details at forestethics.org .

A green-energy guru from Hawaii has taken her show on the road, beginning in Vancouver. Laurel White, a Maui health coach and devoted greenie, is driving her “EcoVan” (a truck made of recycled boat parts and fitted with a hydrogen booster) across North America to educate people on clean/renewable energy solutions. Check Laurel’s progress, or make a donation to the project, at ecovan.org .

We’ve written before about Metro Vancouver’s push to wean us off bottled water, but last month they launched the campaign in earnest. Metro Van is asking us to make a pledge to drink tap water instead of buying single-use bottles of H2O. Metro Vancouver tests our water—rainwater collected in three protected and restricted-access mountain watersheds— more than 25,000 times a year. What’s more, the $600 million Seymour-Capilano water filtration plant (slated to open in 2009), which will purify water from both the Seymour and Capilano reservoirs, will use ultraviolet light to disinfect water and eliminate potential pathogens and bacteria. metrovancouver.org/region/tapwater

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