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Palm oil is everywhere! Most of our day to day consumer products contain palm oil – which is not good at all!! Palm oil is contained in ice cream, margarine, pizza, lipstick, detergent, cookies, bread, soap and many more.

But whats the issue with palm oil?

Indonesia’s rainforests are being cut down at an alarming rate. 27million hectares of the earths surface have been deforested for the construction of palm oil plantations. The plantations are also called “green deserts” where there is absolutely no biodiversity due to the scale and intensity of the palm oil trees.  Displacement of indigenous people as well as loss of habitat for animals is a huge issue and is causing deaths all around. Over 100,000 animals die every year in south east Asia, all rooted to the devastating and huge palm oil industry.
Palm oil based fossil fuels have nearly 3 times the impact of standard fossil fuels. With the vast CO2 and Methane emissions from the processing and manufacturing of the oil, Indonesia surpassed the USA for having the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.

However scientists believe they have found a substitute to palm oil. The reason why it was so widely used and turned into such a massive industry is because palm oil is incredibly cheap. But how many lives is cheap palm oil worth? Orangutang’s are soon to be placed on the endangered species list, simply due to the deforestation for palm oil plantations.

Supposedly the solution to a more sustainable solution to palm oil is YEAST. A very common household purchase is mixed together with other components in a lab and ultimately generates the same substance and consistency as palm oil.

We need  to boycott palm oil to send a message to businesses and companies that palm oil isn’t necessarily needed to produce consumer goods. There are alternatives that need to be explored, however the first step is to understand the impact and understand what shifts in behaviour need to be made.

The image below shows the deforestation in Borneo, Indonesia due to palm oil plantations. I spent some time in the Borneo jungle in 2014 and its beauty inspired me. I hope that there will still be some left next time I find myself over there.

Over the past two years, the B.C. tech industry has grown by 14%, with much more promise to continue growing. This is a huge opportunity to Vancouver especially, where most of B.C.’s business is facilitated.

Many economists, politicians and journalists have already made predictions of business movement from the US to Canada, following Trump’s immigration ban on the 7 muslim dominated countries. Many people are being turned away at the border, oftentimes people returning to their homes in the U.S. after vacationing. Some, having valid green cards and working permits are being denied entry and out of matter of principle and pride, many people are choosing to leave. Canada is opening it’s arms to people of any ethnicity and faith to join the country in a strive for greater diversity and economic prosperity.

This means a lot especially for new and innovative businesses located in Vancouver. We have some of the largest government sponsorships for projects that innovate and explore technology in every way. Some of the newest and most developed sustainable technologies have been discovered in Vancouver due to the large amount of resources to conduct vast research and development.

In the next few months Vancouver is expecting an influx of young technology professionals from all across the globe. This will bring a lot of diverse new talent and ideas to the existing B.C. tech industry, and help it develop into a greater and more resourceful sector of the economy.

B.C. tech has developed 4 categories for the tech industry, starting with information & communications, digital media & entertainment, life sciences & health and ending with clean tech.

Clean tech is an area that needs to be developed much more, as currently there appears to be multiple small solutions being developed for one big problem. Ultimately, humanity needs one large overall solution to substitute fossil fuels, and hopefully with the arrival of young tech professionals and innovators this solution can be found.

Companies such as Carbon Engineering, Salt Works and the B.C. innovation hub will be able to research deeper into pollution abatement technologies with the aid of global talent.

 

Adidas has built itself an impeccable reputation of lifestyle, creativity, modernity, culture and sport. Since their birth in 1949, they have gone through a whirlwind of different projects, initiatives and movements.

Since about 2010, Adidas has been diving head first into Sustainability to better develop their business and brand in our ever growing market place. I have researched deep into the efforts they make and the messages they spread, and can’t help but applaud.

They put people before profits, and encompass people and profits with their endeavours to maintain the planet. Adidas’ core values include empowering their workers and increasing people’s awareness of health and education. All of Adidas’ products are produced in countries with cheap and fast labour, where worker’s rights aren’t necessarily the main objective.

The Adidas SMS Worker Hotline was established in 2011, and has since allowed 260,000 employees to anonymously voice concerns, ideas, opinions, and overall inquiries to their employers. Giving the workers in the suppliers factories in less developed countries a chance to be a bigger part of the business process empowers, but also educates.

In my opinion this is one of the most innovative new initiatives launched by any business. Giving people the option to play a larger role in such a big business will spread a level of importance as well as self pride. Additionally, i think this spreads an important message that every persons voice is valuable, and no matter what the circumstances in terms of race, gender and monetary situation.

While the famous 3 stripes will last forever in consumers’ minds, Adidas hopes to also push forward every effort they are making to be one of the most desired and admired brands in the world. Ranking number 5 on the “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations” list, it’s efforts can’t be dismissed as they have a strongly voiced passion to empower people to embrace themselves and respect the planet while making vast profits in the meantime. Adidas will never stop learning and improving as they have the necessarily resources and influence to create actual change.

I love Adidas and always will. Knowing about their plentiful efforts along the way make them so much more promising and inspiring for the future.

 

Most products and services that we consumers choose to purchase, come with some sort of appealing generic green label such as “organic”, “biodegradable” and “no added fats”, that allow the consumer to take no time at all to evaluate the purchase. Up to now this has been a something, looked at skeptically by skeptics and optimistically by optimists, but what about Eco-tourism? Is Eco-tourism also just a generic green label put on a service to make the decision to choose that service just one bit easier for the consumer?

Eco-tourism is roughly defined as the responsible travel to natural areas, that conserves the environment, sustains the livelihoods of local people and promotes interpretation and education of one’s surroundings. Essentially, Eco-tourism is suppose to be something that benefits all and has no negative effect on anyone or anything. When looking at the bigger picture however, many more unsustainable factors tie into the ecotourism process on a whole.

How do tourists reach the natural area with conserving the environment? Unless the area is in your back yard, you would have to drive, bus or fly to that place, which certainly doesn’t play off well on the environment.

How many tourists ACTUALLY go about every decision in order to follow the best behaviour and practice to conserve nature? climbing on tree’s, rock’s, breaking plants and littering are all unconscious but often occurring problems in Eco-tourism. No one can monitor who is playing by the rules, and and everyone believes they are.

Eco-tourism may not be inherently bad, but the more people decide that the environmentally conscious lifestyle is one they want to live, the more they become dependent on it. The more consumers want something, the more it gets used to the extent of no return.

When does the benefit of education outweigh the impacts that it has on the things we are educating about? In a way, Zoos, Aquariums and Botanical Gardens, promote the ideas of Eco-tourism but in an enclosed and monitored manner. What if our wildlife and natural areas that are so intriguing to Eco-tourists, soon become enclosed and controlled and monitored due to excessive consumer desire and difficulties in regulation.

Eco-tourism has good intentions, but ultimately there will always be a line that is crossed that takes away the labels credibility.

 

Fashion is a huge part of our society. Every person wears clothes, some spend thousands on a single garment, and some find their career paths in the ever changing trends. Something that I didn’t know until recently, is that most clothing isn’t recyclable. This took me by surprise, as wool and cotton is from natural sources. However, before being fully manufactured and put into consumers closets, producers weave nylon or polyester fibres into the clothes to make them more dense, stretchy and cheaper. The issue with this is, that once these materials are combined, they are no longer recyclable.

We are currently living in the era of Fast Fashion, where trends go in and out faster than most people even realize. With that, clothes become outdated faster and consumers have a ridiculously fast clothing turnover.

We’ve spoken about Patagonia almost regularly when thinking about fashion and the environment, but there are many more companies that have been endeavouring into the sustainable fashion industry. Patagonia obviously surrounds itself with using the most ethical materials and advertising that consumers should only purchase what they need, not what they want. But what about other companies? What do they promote?

Reformation is a clothing brand from the USA, that put sustainability at the top of their priority list. Their clothes are delicate, feminine and recycled. They provide customers with free shipping labels and boxes to send their used clothes to Reformation for recycling purposes. An average of 30 kilograms of clothing is discarded per person per year in the US, making this recycling program so much more viable. Additionally, the brand sources it’s fabrics locally when possible, or follows the highest environmental and ethical standard when sourcing from suppliers. The company is a certified B Corp, allowing them to combine the power of their business with sustainable practices. 100% of their electricity is generated through wind power, and their light comes from Energy-Star rated LED lighting. On a regular basis, Reformation invests profits back into the environment, by offsetting the water and waste created from the clothing manufacturing, and reinvests in clean water projects or tree planting.

What I wanted to share, is that there are many more companies that endeavour in sustainable practices. Some companies, such as adidas are now starting to incorporate waste management and fabric recycling into some segments of their business. Reformation however, has sustainability right at the heart of their business. Join the Reformation.

https://www.thereformation.com/

 

 

Carbon Engineering is a new start-up from Calgary, with a Pilot Plant located right next to us, in Squamish. The reason this company caught my eye was through its significant funding from Bill Gates, as well as the general business they are attempting to normalize and develop into consumers lives. What Carbon Engineering does, is take the Carbon from the atmosphere and create a synthetic fuel from it.

The mechanism works similar to wet scrubbers, which use a sticking solution and large fans, to push the carbon dioxide contaminated air through the device and allow the carbon to stick to the solution which is then later cleaned and separated while the carbon is remanufactured into synthetic fuel carbon pellets.

The thing that caught my attention the most about this company, is that they have absolutely no restriction to where the scrubbing facilities can be located to be fully efficient. These machine farms can be placed on completely unfruitful land with no other uses. This allows the company to maximize space and not harm the environment in setting up facilities.

With brand new start ups, especially in the technology and clean energy sector there is always some sort of problem. For Carbon Engineering I would say that the biggest problem they face, is the issue of demand. As aforementioned, they have started making synthetic fuel, which simply uses the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere and remanufactures it into carbon fuel. This project is not about extracting the carbon necessarily, but to make use of the carbon that is already present, and diminish the amount added on a daily basis. There is currently no demand for this type of fuel, as to accommodate it, people would need to make drastic lifestyle and purchasing changes. Car manufacturers would need to change their technologies, people would have to go elsewhere to buy fuel and Carbon Engineering in general would need greater funding and promise to expand to a level where consumers and businesses deem it worthwhile.

Availability and accessibility are always key components to the shift in consumer behaviour, which is something that Carbon Engineering has potential to adopt. I am looking forward to see more of what this company and other companies come up with in the future of clean energy solutions.

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Reimagining Waste is a topic that is becoming a more frequent area of discussion with the increase in conscious consumers. Everything we own is in someway waste, from our forks to our beds to our clothes; everything will some day be disposed of. Like the often discussed Patagonia brand vision, we need to immediately stop buying products just for the sake of buying them, and find lifelong quality and value within our consumerist purchases.

Melt Collective, is a group of UBC students who came together with a common pursuit: to reimagine waste and redirect its value. They melt down plastics, specifically Polypropylene (number 5 plastics such as hummus cartons) and use injection moulding to reshape and redesign what was once worthless to some. The main idea is to eventually launch into recycling and recreating products like plant pots, skateboards and hammocks from marine waste that washes up on the shores of Vancouver.

As of right now, what the Melt Collective is striving to achieve, is the non-disposal of Polypropylene in the rubbish bin, but rather have multiple collection points around campus for Students and Faculty to throw their number 5 plastics into, to recreate these materials into the aforementioned products. By doing this there would essentially be a closed loop effect of these plastics once they are purchased from stores. Melt takes the plastics, creates products and redistributes these, meaning that people can stop buying the same products from stores that are made from fresh materials, and start buying Melt’s 100% recycled goods.

On a whole, this project has an immensely large amount of potential, IF awareness can be raised. UBC, a school that prides itself on being Sustainable and having zero waste policies is an excellent starting ground for this project to take off it’s feet and hopefully expand further.

 

Jan Gehl is a Danish architect who researched the way in which people interact with cities. His exploration was encompassed by the discovery that cities are built to accommodate cars, but should in fact be built to accommodate more sustainable modes of transportation as well as accommodate the people who inhabit them. He looks into the changes that need to be made in architecture and infrastructure to evoke behavioural changes in the residents.

The way I see Gehl’s prophecy tie into sustainability marketing is that one can imagine cities to be a giant shop, in which there are many little shops, similar to one giant Nordstrom. Shops, apartments, transportation, recreation and resources are all the premise of consumerist culture. If we could change the layouts and intentions of our cities to accommodate sustainable practices such as bikes, walking, trains, outdoor seating and activities we could combine comfort with sustainability. What I mean by this, is that if we only have walking or biking as our means of transportation, every single person would adopt this change. If there is no alternative, people will be content with the norm of transportation. This is similar to Amsterdam, where the roads are narrow and bike paths are large causing people to completely change their behaviour and never even contemplate the idea of using a car in their cities, but rather see their bikes as an extension of themselves.

What this is essentially doing, is creating sustainable people, rather than people who sometimes engage in sustainable practices. Looking back at my analogy in which cities are essentially big shops, is if we have this lifestyle change that Gehl is promoting, people’s consumption patterns and living patterns will also become more sustainable for lack of other alternatives.

If sustainable people are the standard in a city, businesses, shops, restaurants will all be forced to adapt to this change and engage in a healthier and more environmentally friendly lifestyle. I see this as a way to redefine living space which will ultimately redefine lifestyles. While ‘forcing people to change’ seems like a harsh and strong way to phrase the idea that Gehl is exploring, the biggest part to people’s behavioural change is to influence them with no other alternative.

We need to market a more sustainable lifestyle, and what better way to start than within the inherent existence of people, their homes and their families.

http://gehlpeople.com/story/

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