Monthly Archives: March 2014

Walk around the corner and there it is a new construction or renovation project… Humans, like animals, will nest. We all will be at one point in our life searching for that one of a kind place to call home and to come to at the end of the day. The population is growing and as there are more and more of us, there will be more housing projects across the planet. The construction industry leaves an important footprint on Mother Nature. For centuries, we have been taking over farm land, urbanizing and depleting nature for building materials. Let’s be optimistic:there is hope for improvement.

My parents are renovating, it has been 19 years and we, the kids, have moved away to university, so without the fear of us trashing the place they are giving it a more updated look. Taking down walls implies redoing the hardwood floors. While searching for the perfect match, my parents discovered a more sustainable approach to their renovation: reclaimed products.

A company in Ontario scouts out old barns in the country and salvages the woods. Then they will bring those all barn planks to your house, nail it down, refinish it and here is your one of a kind hardwood floor. One of a kind: perhaps (I’m no interior designer) But certainly is a creative way to be sustainable! It definitely has a rustic look to it and a certain price tag too. For the conscious consumer, the price differential is minimal.

Looking into the concept of sustainable construction, making something new out of the old, I came across a great project OneNest, the first one of a kind fully sustainable, green-built home constructed of Structurally Insulated Panels and reclaimed product by the GreenSpur construction team, built last year. The building team has high hope that this will not be the first and only one!

I recommend that everyone should consider reclaimed products as the way of the future in construction and take advantage of the customer solutions that are available to us.

http://onenestproject.com/about/

The number of worldwide annual airline passengers is expected to reach 3.3 billion in 2014. An increase of 32% since 2009 and another 800 million more are expected in the next 5 years. Now let’s pause for a second: what do all travelers have in common?

Their need for a luggage: small or big, hard or soft, roller bag or duffel bag, and for sure light and durable, shock resistant. All filled up and packed, weighted, thrown around on the tarmac and in the baggage hold and then on the carrousel, again and again! This is the exciting life of a luggage! Do we really care: NOPE!  Most of us will just wonder, every time we travel: will our luggage be the first one out of that dark tunnel…

I am not overly attached to my luggage. In my traveler’s life, I am already on number three. So I was not surprised to discover that the retail sales value of the travel segment worldwide is expected to generate about 13 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. For the sustainable traveler, looking beyond offsetting their carbon footprint, there is one luggage manufacturer that will help them stay true to their philosophy: Heys.

Heys has developed the world first line of eco-travel products, with hard shell pieces made from 100% recycled plastic and soft or flexible pieces made of plastic water bottles. Every flexible piece has actually a label stating how many water bottles were used to make the product. Only 6 water bottles are required for a toilet bag and 185 for a standard 3 piece set! This line of luggage  does reduce the amount of plastic headed up to the landfill but it also saves Earth resources by reusing old products to make new ones. And they are still attractive and colourful…nothing like a standard plastic water bottle. So let’s all be better consumers and let’s make all the right choices. Every little step is a step in the right direction.  I hope more companies follow the trend as the demand for such products should rise!

The more I do these posts the more evident it seems that customer solutions can be implemented with a little intuition and research.

http://shop.heys.ca/search?q=ecotex

There are 49,896 students at the UBC Vancouver campus alone this year, plus another 14,118 prof and staff. So approximately 64,000 people! Let’s imagine that they use on average 50 sheets of paper a week , or 3 reams of paper, 3 packages of 500 sheets, a year (apprximate figure). On average, a pine tree provides around 17 reams of paper. To satisfy the needs of all people on campus, we would need 11, 294 trees! A forest, the size of 24 football fields approximately. And those trees would need at least 15 years to mature.

What about that innocent sheet of paper? Not so innocent after all when we just take time to think… Well many researches have tried to find an alternate to trees for making paper. A Winnipeg based company, Prairie Pulp and Paper Inc., has developed a new straw-based paper, branded “Step Forward”. The paper is actually made of leftover agricultural products, which would probably go to waste:  80% wheat straw after it has been harvested. This idea was born 20 years ago and went through 14 years of research and development, before “Step Forward” was born. It was finally produced commercially and launched in Canada in 2012! I personally love the idea. Here we are just double dipping: the wheat is still harvested for providing food and the leftover straw is used for making paper. And our farmers will increase their revenues.

So let’s keep recycling, let’s refrain from printing when there is no need for it and let’s make the right choice. Let’s leave our trees in the forests, let’s tree purify the air we breathe and let’s use tree-free paper! It is available at all Staples! And only for about a dollar more a ream! Not even the price of a latte!

http://stepforwardpaper.com