Category Archives: Sustainability

Bamboo as a replacement for trees

 

27,000 trees each day are flushed down the toilet in the form of toilet paper. That’s a pretty high price to pay for the luxury of soft toilet paper. Even with recycled varieties, I’ve had trouble finding substitutes that function as well as their more wasteful counterparts. Luckily, there seems to be a better alternative in sight: True Earth Paper Corp is a company I came across haphazardly in Save-On-Foods one day, yet has made an ingenious little innovation that could be the solution to a very real global problem of deforestation. True Earth Paper uses primarily bamboo instead of tree in their products, which include toilet paper, paper towels, and disposable food trays.

 

 

Bamboo is considered a grass, which grows quickly and easily without need for any pesticides or fertilizer. It can grow up to 75cm in one day, and does not need to be replanted after harvest– in fact, regular harvesting actually improves the health of the plant! It is also 35% more efficient than trees at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as releases 35% more oxygen into the atmosphere than trees, and, of course, it is 100% biodegradable.

While I was skeptical at first, I found that the company’s claims of the towel being as soft and as durable as regular paper products to be true, and the price point to be reasonable compared to other products. Their paper towels are reusable and machine washable for at least 25 times (!!), which again helps reduce waste. The only problem I found in my research of this product is that the bamboo is sourced from China, raising concerns of pollution in the transportation of supplies, and some worries of the way the workers are treated (though the company assures us that they are striving to provide a good workplace for their workers!)

Their products can already be found in grocery stores across Canada, including Safeway, Save-On-Foods, Choices, IGA, and more. The company is also currently working to get their products sold in Costcos across Canada, which I think could be extremely effective at bringing bamboo paper products into the mainstream. If this post has piqued your interest in alternatives for your bathroom tissue or kitchen towels, I urge you to give this product a chance!

Paving the way to zero waste

I really don't think a caption is necessary for anyone that has been on campus at UBC. Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/teachereducation/2012/08/23/how-do-i-get-to-scarfe-construction-update/

I really don’t think a caption is necessary for anyone that has been on campus at UBC. Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/teachereducation/2012/08/23/how-do-i-get-to-scarfe-construction-update/

Every morning, it’s guaranteed that I’ll wake up to one of two kinds of noise– 1) the cheering of excited parents and kids for soccer matches on the field adjacent from the apartment I rent, or 2) the clanging and banging of construction for the in-progress elementary school and condo on the other side of the block.

On my walk to school, I pass by at least three different construction projects on campus. Over the years, I can’t help but to wonder what becomes of the buildings that I’ve watched being torn down to be replaced by shinier, more modern counterparts.

Construction and demolition waste is one of the most voluminous waste streams in the developed world, creating 160 million tons of waste each year, 44% of which comes from renovations alone. While many of the disposed materials (timber, glass, metals, soils, etc) can be reused, only one third of them are recovered or recycled.

So what of the materials from our beautiful campus, UBC, one of the world’s top universities and leaders in sustainability? Doing the Google search led me down a rabbithole of articles, papers, and documents that detail UBC’s efforts to address these concerns.

Setting it into perspective, UBC currently diverts about two thirds of their operational, construction and demolition waste from the landfill, with goals to set this rate to 80% by 2020. For construction efforts specifically, it is mandatory for 75% of waste from construction on campus to be diverted , with real diversion rates exceeding this expectation by 6% in 2011. Additionally, wood, carpet tiles, metal, and components such as drywall and separated and sorted for reuse or recycle.

It’s not every day that I’m singing praise about UBC construction, but I’ll have to admit, this is one place where the institution seems to be doing a good job at practicing what they preach. Next time you make a block long detour around blue fences in the rain, rest assured that at the very least, UBC is taking some serious precaution for renovating our campus with the environment in mind.

On the quest for a more sustainable cellphone

 

An Indian boy sorts through a pile of discarded motherboards in an e-waste landfill. (Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/indias-mounting-e-waste-woes/)

Innovation is happening at a faster rate than it ever has been before, with new ideas emerging seemingly every passing second. An increasingly connected world means consumers are adopting new technologies more readily than ever before as well. The invention of the telephone took decades for people to adopt, while today the cellphone (and smartphone!) are nearly ubiquitous after only about five years of being introduced. Increase in global wealth also means the global consumption rate is higher than it’s ever been, and for increasingly complex goods, such as electronics, appliances, and automobiles.

But as suppliers and producers in the world are scaling up to accommodate for this growing demand, how are we addressing the problem of e-waste? Most electronics are not designed with ease of recycling in mind and thus are nearly impossible for the common consumer to discard of responsibly. With every discarded cellphone or earbud set, these goods are left to sit in landfills, leeching arsenic, lead and poly-brominated flame retardants into the earth or sent overseas to developing countries to be scavenged for parts in hazardous conditions.

While few companies are beginning to address these issues, such as Finnish startup Circular Devices with PuzzlePhone, a modular cellphone that features parts which are built to last, but more importantly, to be swapped out instead of discarding the entire device. Tech giants are also listening, including Google, which has their own Project Ara, whose prototypes are set for 2016.

Finding a sustainable balance between the production of these devices to accommodate for people’s changing needs, as well as the safe disposal and recycling of the components is an issue that governments, companies, and society needs to address. In the meantime, we need to do what we can as informed consumers to learn ways of reducing our impact with our use of electronics.

A few points to consider when getting started:

  • Research durability and maintenance details. Are parts replaceable? Was the product built to last?
  • Learn about local safe disposal locations (such as FreeGeek in Vancouver)
  • Research sources which are more sustainable, such as Energy-wise certification or those certified by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT).

 

Other sources:

http://curbed.com/archives/2016/01/19/sustainable-electronics-modular-phones-puzzlephone-fair-phone-phonebloks.php

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/search-smartphone-soaked-blood

http://www.green.harvard.edu/tools-resources/how/6-ways-minimize-your-e-waste