Green Halifax

In a city where it feels like it’s always raining, an issue we could all stand to be better informed on is stormwater. Monsterous downpours, awful sideways rain, perfect snowfalls washed away within days—sure, these common occurrences are irritating, but the unpredictable precipitation around these parts is putting a beating on water treatment facilities, and […]

You’re both really well-travelled. When did your focus shift to exploring locally? Gillian Wesley: It’s something that happened naturally. Drew has lived all around the province, Pictou County, Clare, East Hants and Halifax. For the past five years his work has taken him to almost every region and town in the province, and whenever possible […]

Laura Walton has a thing for rescuing used clothing. Her little home-sewing room houses stacks and stacks of various-sized, brightly-coloured cotton t-shirts just waiting for new life. A love of fashion and second hand duds lead Walton to start recycling and re-imagining used garments, and eventually her needle and thread lead her to Cinderella Sew. […]

Patience is a virtue definitely held by the members of the East Coast Organic Milk Co-operative. It’s been over seven years, and a ton of hard work, since a bright-white idea cropped up among a small group of green-minded farmers who saw a void and knew just how to fill it. “They realized that there […]

Geordie Ochterloney built Home Grown Organic Foods from the ground up 14 years ago. The local, organic food delivery business got its earliest beginnings in a one-bedroom apartment on Hollis Street, from which he’d walk to the farmers’ market to pick up and borrow friends’ cars for drop-offs. Eventually, Home Grown found more suitable digs […]

Never has a cold, dark, damp basement seemed so appealing. Thanks to the revival of the root cellar, the usually unfavourable qualities found on the bottom level of many old homes in town are actually ideal for those seeking fridge-free cold storage, and perhaps a little springtime project. Traditional cold storage can take many forms, […]

If there was a time and a place to feed your hungry child, when and where would it be? For most mothers, it’s far from that simple. Entrepreneur and mother-of-three Hannah Gibson is one of them. A restaurant owner of five years with three sons under six, there aren’t many hours in a day that […]

Remember when the corner of Robie Street and Bell Road looked like leftovers from some sort of apocalypse? Nowadays, it’s much the opposite. It’s an oasis actually, thanks to a bunch of hardworking folks who spent the past few months up to their elbows in earth at the Common Roots Urban Farm. And now that […]

Launched in the fall of 2009, the Halifax Regional Municipality’s five-year strategic operations plan laid out the city’s future transit initiatives, full of good ideas to provide better service for people moving from point A to B in the HRM. It charts projected population growth, assesses bus routes and suggests service changes and improvements. But […]

BIOSOLIDS In our 2010 issue of Green Halifax, we did a story on the controversy around the use of biosolids as fertilizer on crop-growing soil. Biosolids are marketed as fertilizers that incorporate human waste—and more problematically, other potentially toxic ingredients—as extracted from sewage sludge. Prominent people in the local food community, the Canadian Horticultural Council […]

If you’re still driving in a vehicle that was made in 1995 or earlier, guess what? It’s probably issuing 19 times more emissions than a vehicle made after 2004. Yep, that old Tercel that works “just fine” is actually one of the worst polluters on the road. Probably time to recycle it. It’s important to […]