“Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.” - Paul Hawken
For about a year and a half, Vancouver’s regional government has been running a pretty innovative initiative to discourage bottled-water consumption. Here’s a deliciously subversive decal from the tap water campaign that I spied on the back of one of Metro Vancouver’s trucks this morning.
The large type reads “Tap Water. Drink it.” and the secondary copy says “World Class Water: Mountain Fresh and Pure.” Here’s to truth in advertising.
Now, I haven’t yet seen this on a billboard anywhere; Metro would have a hard time coughing up the cash for an outdoor campaign. But how great would that be, if the kind of money that Pepsi and Coke pumped into Dasani and Aquifina, instead sold some of the finest water on earth, the stuff that’s piped straight to your house? Does anyone else out there know of a local government that is actively marketing its water like this?
Last summer, Metro Vancouver also partnered with Pacific Cinematheque’s Summer Visions Film Institute for Youth to produce a series of public service announcements about drinking tap water. They’re all pretty good, but here’s my favorite of the bunch:
Metro has been working on other programs as well. During the Olympics, Metro parked a Kewl Earth Water Wagon outside the Main Library downtown, and offered refills of fresh tap water to visitors and residents. According to corporate communications division manager David Hocking, some 4,700 people took the “tap water pledge” during the two weeks of the games, compared to 3,700 who did so during previous 17 months.
The regional government also developed a program with the new Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. The property offers co-branded reusable Metro Vancouver water bottles for sale in guest rooms, for visitors who would prefer not to use the one-off bottles in the mini-bar when they head out on daytrips into the city.
This is all classic community-based social marketing. Metro isn’t trying to educate residents or drown them in brochures or make them feel bad—it’s working to build new social norms. How is it going? In 2008, as part of its Zero Waste Challenge, Metro set a goal to reduce the sale of bottled water in the region by 20 percent by the end of this year. Hocking says they’ll do a survey at the end of the year to find out how they did. I’ll let you know when he does.
My first piece for The Walrus is up on the magazine’s site. Here’s an excerpt:
Squirrels, it turns out, compost quite nicely. Small birds? Sure. Happens in the woods every day, after all. But stuff a human body into a backyard bin, and within a day or so the neighbours will start to complain.
Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, a Swedish biologist specializing in soil production, explains: “When you die, you start smelling, because the oxygen does not reach inside the body.” More specifically, an abundance of anaerobic bacteria quickly takes hold in such a large mass of tissue, resulting in the rank gases CSI techs use to sniff out “decomp.” But after a decade spent investigating green options for dealing with dead bodies, Wiigh-Mäsak has finally figured out how to discreetly turn our earthly remains back into, well, earth.
A petition is presently circulating through my community; it opposes a proposed development on the grounds that it is “far too big for our island.” The Cape Roger Curtis Neighborhood Plan has its shortcomings, sure, but also its strengths—including space set aside for a seniors care facility, affordable housing, community food gardens and composting, an outdoor amphitheater, bike paths, $7 million dollars worth of amenities, and hundreds of acres of protected parkland. More than 75 percent of the development is within a five minute walk of its center crossroads, where a bus stop, general store, or car co-op lot could potentially be located.
Those behind the “no” petition are running a well-organized campaign that includes phone tree work. So far more than 650 people have endorsed the document; in doing so they affirm that they are “For Bowen.” That doesn’t sit right with me, so I wrote this letter to the local paper this week.
If you call me on the phone and ask me if I am “for Bowen,” here’s what I’ll tell you.
I am for a Bowen where grandparents aren’t forced to leave when we can no longer provide them with care.
I am for a Bowen where young families can afford to live and give their kids all the rich experiences mine are presently enjoying.
I am for a Bowen that admits that saying “no” to everything is not an effective growth management strategy, and will in fact result in more of the ugly unplanned patchwork of McMansion sprawl that is currently marching across our landscape, and that we have somehow convinced ourselves represents treasured rural ambience.
I am for a pedestrian-friendly Bowen, where riding a bicycle is no longer a death-defying act.
I am for a Bowen where I don’t have to get behind the wheel every time I want to join friends for games night, grab a coffee, hit a garage sale, pick up a jug of milk, or attend a concert.
I am for a Bowen that preserves its green leafy heart by focusing growth in clustered settlements where residents can chat with neighbors when they want to, avoid them when they don’t.
I am for a Bowen where neighbors can potentially together generate clean energy to use in their homes and vehicles.
I am for a Bowen that protects its forests, lakes, streams, and wildlife, grows an ever-increasing proportion of its own food, and produces its own soil.
I am for a Bowen where change is not a threat but an opportunity.
I am for a Bowen that is all of these things and that is also resilient, vibrant, eclectic, and authentic.
The global economic downshift could potentially be hitting home in an unexpected place: your blue box.
“Recycling companies are saying we can’t take metal or plastics anymore,” says Mairi Welman, Director of Communications for the Recycling Council of British Columbia. “They don’t have any space to put it, and they can’t sell it.”
The problem originates with the hundreds of mills in India and China that normally accept corrugated cardboard, glass, mixed papers and plastic, but that have closed their doors to new materials, Welman explains. She also has heard that there are issues among the container shipping industry with letters of credit.
“The whole market has crashed on everything across the board,” confirms Mike Sullivan, general manager of Metro Waste Paper Recovery, one of several materials-processing firms in the British Columbia. “We are still taking mixed paper, but nobody can move glass. For mixed plastic, everyone that has it is just stockpiling the stuff.”
…
“In China they are not producing finished goods, so they are not buying the corrugated boxes to pack them in, and then the box mills are not in turn buying the waste corrugated material from Britain or North America.”
“I don’t think we are going to see any improvement in the next month; I haven’t seen anything like it in 25 years. It is not just a few mills closing down in the Northwest. It is not just a few on the east coast shutting down for a few weeks. We are talking about every mill.”
…
Read the rest of my story over at The Hook. It’s ironic, really. In reducing our consumer appetites for packaged goods manufactured in Asia, we are — in a round-about way — starting to crunch our recycling programs. Perhaps we could start stacking our tin cans and plastic tubs in the stadiums. Is Wall-E available?
