What has changed since last year? That was the main question when we began planning this second edition of Green Halifax, a guide to sustainable and environmental living. The answer: lots. We’re in a recession. The good work local businesses are doing to exercise their ecological conscience is now so much harder. But the need […]
Environment
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to get sustainable seafood
In a feature called “The catch” in The Coast’s February 26 issue, news editor Tim Bousquet explained why it’s so very difficult to get sustainably caught seafood here in Halifax. The expression “sustainable seafood” is itself fraught with problems. There isn’t enough of a demand for it, as there is in the organic produce and […]
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Mother knows best
From birthing blanket to bottle to bibs, babies are born into a complex world full of toxins and chemicals. So if a parent can take steps to reduce their exposure to these elements, why wouldn’t they? Long-time P’Lovers staffer and mom Shelby Lendrum is an enthusiastic advocate of organic and natural baby products. She points […]
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Local and environmental cookbooks
The Trout Point Lodge Cookbook by Daniel Abel, Charles Leary, and Vaughn Perret(Random House) Offering dishes with New Orleans Cajun flavour, tracing them to original Acadian recipes in Atlantic Canada. Eating By The Seasonsby The Food Action Committee of the Ecology Action Centre A collection of 160 recipes featuring largely Nova Scotia-grown food, with a […]
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Halifax Green Builders Collective does it naturally
It hasn’t got a name, a phone number, a website or its grant money, but a Halifax Green Builders Collective is happening. “Clients want it,” says Anne Sinclair, an architect with a lot of green knowledge and 25 years design experience, who sees how hard it can be for people to realize their ambitions for […]
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Is Halifax still a recycling leader?
Last year we spoke to Darren Welner—sales and marketing coordinator for Scotia Recycling, the largest recycling business in the province—about a trial project to recycle Tim Hortons cups. As an update to that piece, he reports the Yarmouth trial run had positive results: Cups were successfully processed and their constituent fibres were found to be […]
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Stimulating ecocide
Nova Scotia has leapt the bandwagon and launched a craptapulous economic stimulus package: $1.9 billion of vague promises, spread over three years. Fifty-million clams is for energy conservation and $1 billion for roads, bridges and highways. Two years ago, before the curtain was drawn to reveal that those big numbers in our gross domestic product […]
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Religious eco-wars
Last week’s “Can We Be Good Without god” debate, a response to Metro Transit’s ban on atheist advertising, got me thinking big, post-modern questions such as: What does “good” mean? For “Sustainable City” purposes, let’s assume being good means living sustainably, allowing life to continue for as long as possible on this planet. To what […]
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Local catch key to fisheries
We’ve got a strange relationship with fish. On the one hand, Nova Scotia pretty much is fish. The human geography of the province consists mainly of hundreds of settlements built around the coves and inlets that stretch along our coasts. From the Mi’kmaq forward, fishing has been the foundation of the local economy and fishing […]
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Tracking our eco-footprints
Environmentalism is commonly criticized for replacing an overly human-centred worldview with one that ignores, even alienates, people. The ecological mindset is pie-in-the-sky long-term soothsaying at the expense of our immediate needs, critics say. Speaking with Daniel Rainham, an environmental science professor at Dalhousie University, it becomes apparent how wrong those critics are. Rainham is at […]
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Drive-thru madness
St. John’s city council started 2009 by becoming the first Canadian municipal power to pass a moratorium on drive-thrus. The problem was traffic: inconvenient, hazardous lineups right into the highway, especially around the ever-popular, always fresh Canadian wunderkind, Timmy Hortons. When the moratorium was approved, the mayor, deputy mayor and councillors lined up to proclaim […]
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Halifax’s cardboard economy
1. Halifax’s waste system is easy for residents: one green waste bin, recyclables in blue bags and garbage in a regular trash bag. The recyclables are sorted at the Materials Recovery Facility in Bayers Lake, with plastic, glass and paper sent to processors. The MRF sorts about 22,000 tonnes of paper each year; newspaper, cardboard […]