Category Archives: media

This feels a bit like confession: “forgive me readers for I have sinned; it has been over 2 months since my last post.” So much for my weekly installments.  . .

Grant and I got pretty wrapped up in our cycle trip across the country this summer, and I got preoccupied with organizing community screenings of our film, but there’s no excuse really.

So to get back on track, I want to jump in with what we did last weekend. Last weekend, we attended a heartfelt presentation by Jan Vozenilek about the growing problem with plastics in our oceans and its effect on Midway Island’s albatross.

Although we have known about these issues for a couple years, we were still both overcome with emotion; seeing Jan’s latest powerful images from Midway made it feel as if we were hearing it for the first time. In addition to sharing short films and images, Jan brought a collection of plastic collected from inside the stomachs of dead baby birds. I was astounded by how many lighters and toothbrushes there were in the pile, and it really hit home that this plastic was our plastic: stuff that we all use everyday is killing marine wildlife.

To balance all that doom and gloom, Jan shared some positive stories such as the girl in Penticton who campaigned to get her highschool to give up plastic waterbottles (and achieved success in only one year!) and how the videos his team took on Midway have reached thousands of people around the globe. If you ever get a chance to see Jan speak, I highly recommend it, but in the meantime, please visit www.midwayjourney.com

In the photo left to right… Joe Schweers (filmmaker), Jan Vozenilek (filmmaker), Grant, Jen, Taina (Plastic Manners – who is living plastic free for 2010!)

Do you remember the Strathcona zero waste group?  Well it seems that they’re not the only ones up for a challenge.  Yesterday, Grant and I were invited to the  Glenbrook North Zero Waste meeting in New Westminster where another group of citizens are getting set to tackle their own zero waste project.

This is the second zero waste pilot sponsored by Metro Vancouver, but what’s really cool about Glenbrook North’s group is that all the 14 participant families live on a single street.  Talk about community!  The other thing that is great is that there is a diversity of family sizes and there are loads of kids which will make for an interesting project.

They’ve spent the last 5 weeks creating a baseline for their garbage (something I really wish we did before our project), and they’re just about to start a 12 week (or maybe a lifelong) zero waste challenge.  Because everyone is literally next door to each other, they’ve really been able to work together, meeting in each others living rooms, and setting up a communal green cone conveniently at the end of the cul-de-sac.

I can’t even explain the great sense of community we got from the meeting.  The teamwork (and perhaps friendly competition) that comes from doing a street-scale challenge is amazing.  Grant and I talked a little about our own year long project, showed our trailer, and shared tips on what worked for us, but mostly, we just got rejuvenated about zero waste.

It’s so exciting to talk to other people who are excited!

I’ll definitely be following the Glenbrook Zero Waste blog and wish them luck in their project.  To finish this post in the spirit of zero waste, here’s a hilarious commercial I snagged from the Glenbrook website.