Monday, June 18, 2012

Grasscycling.


Grasscycling.

The moment when I am working at a public education booth and talk about the benefits of leaving lawn trimmings right on the lawn, and letting them act as a nutrient rich mulch. I get looks from people as if I’m asking them to give up their first-born child. “Me? Leave my grass clippings on the lawn? Are you serious?” “Do you know how ugly that looks?” “NO, I could NEVER do that”.

Some people in Calgary are very hesitant to do anything that might make their pristine lawns look unsightly. Little do they know that if they maintain their lawn on a regular basis, and include grass-cycling in their lawn care regime, they can cut down on watering, improve the quality and health of their grass, and most importantly keep that grass out of the landfill! It’s easy, cut your lawn regularly; cutting no more than a third of the grass blade at a time and let it fall down into your lawn.

My coworker and I spent time in a Calgary community once a week in the morning on their garbage collection day and counted bags of grass for a month. The record was thirty-three bags of grass in the back alley behind one home. Thirty-three. In one week. We gathered quantitative data for a consecutive four-week period. The next step is to divide the community into four quadrants. One quadrant will receive door hangers about the benefits of grass-cycling in a polycentric type approach. Think about your yard and think about all of the yards in Calgary, and the impact of all the grass in our landfills. Another quadrant will receive a visit from a member of the education team as we door knock to deliver the benefits of grass-cycling in person. The third quadrant receives a door hangar about the benefits to them as residents and homeowners should they choose to grass cycle. The last quadrant will receive no visit, nor a door hangar.  

It will be extremely interesting to visit this community after the campaign is over and see the results!

For more on grass-cycling: I challenge you to try it at least once this summer!

Home Improvement


Last December I bought my first home. She is old. Built in 1914, needed a renovation job that took almost a year before it was ready for me to move into.

One of my favorite parts of the renovation process was the chance to make my home energy efficient. After tearing the lathe and plaster off the walls, it was apparent that my place would be very cold during the winter months as there was zero insulation in the walls! When the house was built almost a hundred years ago, some common types of insulation included horsehair and straw. My walls had nothing. Insulation definitely had to make an appearance. The house is now a cozy place to be, especially with some of the cold winter weather and the crazy winds Calgary can get.

The next step was to replace some of the single paned windows with double panes to keep the heat in and the cold out. I replaced five windows, but kept the originals in the front because they are way too cool to change. The new windows and the insulation allow me to keep the temperature on my furnace at a lower level!

Although the original furnace was in good shape, it still needed to go, as there was asbestos wrap around the ducts. It was a sight to see. The gravity flow furnace looked like an octopus created during the industrial revolution. My basement was a very scary place. I have since removed the old furnace and installed a high efficiency model and have saved myself money on heating bills.

Through a city-wide Water conservation campaign, I was able to buy my low flow toilet at a reduced rate and install it, and receive a rebate from the City.

Although all these improvements to my house have kept me incredibly busy, they have helped me save money and reduce my impact on the environment as I require less resources to keep my house warm, and conserve the amount of water I use. 

FOOD IN CALGARY?? Sustainable...?


Imagine a natural disaster running through landlocked Calgary, taking out all major routes into and out of the city. How long would Calgary last without imported food?

Thinking about visiting any major grocery store in Calgary and the selection of fresh fruit and vegetables available at during all seasons, makes me wonder if we would be able to survive as a city of over a million without the importation of food!

I was fortunate to be invited to sit in on the Calgary Sustainable Food Committee’s forum with several other members from my business unit in January. I consider this one of the best events I attended this year to date. It was a broad spectrum of attendees; from community gardeners to farmers to big box food stores to chefs to City employees to charitable food organizations. We all had a common goal to analyze the food cycle in Calgary, and discuss ways to create a closed loop!

We broke into groups and discussed the growing, transportation, procurement, sales, consumerism and disposal of food in the city. What is seasonal here? How can we promote seasonal food choices in our markets, grocery stores, and restaurants? How can we ensure that all Calgarians have access to affordable and safe food options?

The trend of eating locally is an interesting one in a place like Calgary as we have, in some ways a limited growing season, unless we venture into the realm of green houses, and indoor gardening.

Are we actually helping countries when we import their crops as they often grow monocrops and lose the nutrients, and decrease the diversity of what they plant. Or should we be supporting our local farmers and ranchers even though all their practices may not be sustainable even close to home. 

Healthy Yards

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Parks/Pages/Programs/Healthy-Yards/Healthy-Yards-Program.aspx?redirect=/healthyyards


I spent the last two and a half months developing and facilitating a section in the City of Calgary’s Healthy Yards Program. This program is run once or twice a year through the Parks business unit and covers three main sections that assist Calgarians to strive to have a “healthy yard”. The three components are: Water Conservation, Composting, and Integrated Pest Management.  The participants in this free program attend a two and a half hour session and receive a rain barrel and a composter for their yards.

The goal of the program is to provide the resident with the tools to create a yard that improves environmental sustainability, improve diversity and preserve resources.

Money can be a barrier to participation. I am extremely happy that the City offers free programming to allow anyone to attend these sessions…so long as they sign up, as space is limited.

In one of my first posts, I mentioned how organic material isn’t breaking down in the landfill, and how important composting is to the success of waste diversion. Before I started working for Waste and Recycling Services I didn’t really have any connection with my garbage. My parents and grandparents composted and recycled so I grew up with that being normal. I didn’t realize that organics weren’t breaking down in landfills, so I couldn’t be the only one out there who was under this impression. My goal through the Healthy Yards program is to have honest conversations with Calgarians to set the record straight. If they choose to compost their food and yard waste in their backyard composters, then they can reap the benefits of the organic recycling they can do on their own! And most importantly all those valuable materials stay out of the landfill.

The best part, in my opinion, other than the free program, is the follow up that Parks does with the participants. They ask for photos of the yard before and after, and also will visit the yards. This is incentive for participants to work on making their yard a "healthy" one! 

Last Child in the Woods.



With so many articles, discussions, and papers about the state of doom and gloom our environment is in, it was refreshing to see a post and link on Facebook from an old colleague about an optimistic take on the future of children and the outdoors.

The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, was one of those books that has had a lasting effect on me. When I was growing up, I was lucky to have parents who loved to spend time outdoors. My sister and I grew up dipping nets off the boardwalks of Point Pelee National Park, playing outside in our backyard under maple trees, collecting rocks and exploring trails. I can’t imagine a childhood without nature, and as society moves into the comfort of home and technology, and away from the outdoors, I wonder what life will be like for my children, should I choose to have any.

I think if we, as environmental educators, continue to read and acknowledge the pessimistic views on the future of our wild spaces and the lack of interest or opportunities for outdoor education, we can learn about how and where to improve. It can bog us down when we let the negative ideals get to us, and we need to believe that we can make a difference, and that there is merit to what we are pursuing.

Having Louv address a room full of pediatricians about his theory of nature deficit disorder, and the medical professionals agreeing with his theory connects two worlds that sometimes seem very separated. 


Sunday, June 17, 2012

Grant Proposals, Non-Profits, and Mentors Oh My


Applying for a grant has been on my unwritten bucket list ever since my first job in Banff working for the non-profit, The Friends of Banff National Park. My boss, Leslie, became a mentor for me. Her passion for the outdoors, her ambition for sharing her love for the environment, and her penchant for doing the right thing was an inspiration and definitely led me down the path I am on today.

Leslie applied for grants to award funding to the Friends of Banff, and without her dedication, this organization would be very different, or even non-existent today.
When the projects for this course were unveiled, I was excited to have an applied learning opportunity.

Providing a worthy non-profit with funds was a chance to make a difference in a community. Fortunately my group had a perfect recipient, The Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA) in Vancouver. The work this organization is contributing to the City of Vancouver is amazing. Creating community gardens, working with inner city youth, and youth at risk, and teaching them how to grow and harvest their own food is one of those life skills that is slowly becoming scarce.


The Pollinator’s Paradise program is one of the EYA’s newer initiatives. Providing habitat and accessibility for pollinators was a topic I wasn’t too familiar with, but after a little research and information from the organization, I too became passionate about pollinators. I think the rest of my group felt the same way.

We ended up applying for a grant through a partnership between the Vancouver Foundation and the City of Vancouver through the Greenest City Fund. I sincerely hope the EYA receives this money as they have some phenomenal work that would positively affect and connect communities in Vancouver. I definitely wish the City of Calgary would team up with a funder to offer the same opportunities to organizations here.



I think the value non-profits bring to cities can really bring a community closer together and establish relationships between groups of people and their surroundings and create meaningful work.

The applicability of this project was the best part of this course!