Time

The great thing about ambitious goals is that they have a way to drive you, get you out of bed in the morning and set you up to accomplish more than you would ever think possible. Once you reach that goal, it's a time for celebration. And rest.

But then what?

I'm going through a phase of random and unguided reflection. It helps that I started walking to and from work every day. That time is my time, it is a bowl of energy in the morning and a great way to relax after spending eight hours in front of the computer. It's also a time when I think of everything and nothing. I think about weekend plans, career plans, what I want to eat for dinner, that bill I should pay when I get home, the good things that happened to me during the day, and the bad. The big difference between now and before is that I HAVE time.

I'm not really planning for anything at the moment. I don't think it is wise to jump from one goal to the other without a pause, a break. And my thinking time is not focused on anything in particular, so whatever I decided to do next would probably change at every walk. That's OK. My brain has been under a very disciplined regimen for the past few years, I need to limit the boundaries for the next little while.

I also had to write about a few things I'm pretty pleased with right now: I stopped getting junk mail the very moment I placed a little sticker from the Red Dot Campaign on my mailslot, and last weekend, I joined a political party for the first time in my life. I'm guessing I should get a membership card shortly and soon, I'll be a card-carrying member of the Green Party of Canada. Adriane Carr is a lovely lady who made a convincing pitch at EPIC last weekend. She's also running in my riding.

Sustainability or PR exercise?

I'm glad I slept in a bit this morning. I've been off work for the last three days of the week, but I was spending lots of time at the Globe 2008 conference, where I was volunteering. Three days of conference, walking around, greeting delegates, answering questions tired me out. It's hard being pleasant eight hours a day ;)

There a few things I enjoyed about the conference: meeting other volunteers (many interested in sustainability), getting acquainted with clean tech companies in the Trade Fair, some of the panels where the discussion was made lively by involving the attendees or having a good representation of various stakeholders in the panel speakers. As far as networking was concerned, I think volunteering made it hard to have meaningful conversations with delegates, as we were always pulled away from our posts to help with various tasks.

There are several things I didn't particularly enjoy though: delegates who walked in and out of conference rooms throughout presentations (people walking in 45 minutes late), delegates not turning off their cell phones and letting it ring as they rushed out of the conference room (brilliant), and panels that were often one-sided and not really addressing the sensitive points of a given topic. I think the conference could have also benefited from networking rooms. They were serving coffee between sessions, but the coffee tables were in the corridors and there didn't seem to be enough sofas for people to sit down and catch up with other attendees. Finally, neither the Trade Fair nor the conference were very green, with lots of promotional material printed on glossy paper, lots of cheap, plastic swag, a delegate bag made out of nylon or soft plastic that had a terrible chemical smell and since the coffee breaks only started after the first session (no coffee before the morning session), delegates were forced to get coffee from Starbucks or Tim Hortons, usually in single-use paper cups.

I do think a lot of the presentations were also PR for the oil and gas industry in Canada. I cannot belittle the effort made by these companies towards reducing their environmental and social impact, but when their core operations are so damaging in the first place, the concept of sustainable business practices by these companies is hard to swallow. I recently rented a movie by the NFB called The Refugees of the Blue Planet. This documentary discusses the impact of "development" by large multinationals on rural communities across the world. Many of these refugees are in developing or third-world countries, but the film also talks about Alberta where family farms are slowly being shut down by the drilling of H2S (sour gas) wells close to their homes. Farmers end up in evacuation areas where they would be required to leave at a few hour's notice to avoid being exposed to toxic levels of the gas. I'm pretty sure all the major companies involved in the drilling have sustainability departments and publish detailed yearly reports about their environmental and community initiatives. Hard to swallow.

I heard from many delegates who were also unimpressed with many of the panels. Session attendees often tried to challenge panelists to answer some difficult questions, but the answers they got were often vague or blatantly avoided the questions. On a dialogue about the partnership between NGOs and companies, one attendee asked a panelist to provide examples where their relationship with NGOs went beyond philanthropy, where the company had listened to the NGO and then changed some of their business practices accordingly. The company representative had spent his entire speaking time listing contribution made by his employer to non-profit organizations, but could not give any examples of changed practices as the result of a partnership with one of these organizations. Interesting "partnership" indeed.

Shivers down your spine

What a great feeling. It's a sunny Saturday morning here in Vancouver, I slept wonderfully last night (I was going to write "like a baby", but do babies really sleep throughout the night? I hear they wake up all the time) and besides some work with my team at school tomorrow, I don't have much planned. A weekend to relax :-)

Just as I was about to leave work yesterday, around 5:30, I saw a very bright rainbow around BC Place when the sun poked through the dark skies to illuminate buildings downtown. The colors were amazingly sharp. A few of us just stared out the window until the colors disappeared. Beautiful.

Then, I stopped by the Green Living Show. I was going to go over the weekend, but when I learned that Stephen Lewis was the keynote speaker at 7, I knew I couldn't miss it. I remembered listening to his five-part Massey Lectures on CBC a few years back and he was an incredible speaker.

His talk last night did not disappoint. The room was full, probably well over 100 attendees who were attentively listening to Mr. Lewis discussing global warming and its impact on some of the poorest societies in the world. Stephen Lewis has traveled extensively in Africa, and continuously works to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and the impact of the disease on the very fabric of society. What was really interesting about his speech was about the limited choices faced by the very poor on our planet. He brought us back to one of the early conferences on climate change where a minister from Indonesia stood in front of a group of Western leaders and told them that if they thought they could prevent developing countries from using dirty coal and other non-renewable energies without offering an affordable alternative, they were dreaming. Such a powerful statement. Western, developed countries are in no position to impose environmental guidelines on the rest of the world, especially when our governments refuse to set any aggressive targets for greenhouse gas reductions on their own soil.

I'm so glad I had the incredible opportunity to listen to Mr. Lewis. At times, his enthusiasm and powerful rhetoric sent shivers down my spine. I would love to be one of his students at McMaster University in Ontario to have the pleasure of listening to him every week.

The rest of the show was predictable as far as the exhibitors were concerned: organic and bamboo clothing, organic food, green building solutions, and hybrid cars. Interestingly enough, last night there were more people checking out folding bikes than hybrid cars. Are we potentially reaching a tipping point where people realize that cars, regular, hybrid or electrical, are not sustainable? Rex Weyler, a local Vancouverite and the co-founder of Greenpeace International, also spoke last night and he said that half the environmental damage of a car is done by the time the vehicle is sold, before one kilometer is even added to the odometer. Resources, building and assembly, transport, all these processes to get the car to the dealership and in the hands of the driver also have a big impact on the environment.

Killing us softly

Watch this video, send the link to friends, to family, to men and women around you. We all know this is happening, I've never seen it so bluntly exposed.

Killing Us Softly 3, Advertising's Image of Women

Some of these ads make me sick.

Tell them you care

After writing my last post about my recent handbag purchase, I dropped Matt & Nat an e-mail about my concern with their choice of material. I received a prompt reply from their marketing department and here's some of what they had to say:

Thank you for contacting us to address your concerns.
The matt & nat policy of using 100% vegan materials was conceived in the interest of preventing cruelty to animals. We do use pvc, and when recent research brought to light some issues with the material, we began to test our pvc's and look into alternatives as well.

Matt & nat pvc contains neither lead nor Santicizer, which are the most prevalent pvc constituents that have been found to be problematic. We are also researching
recycled materials and linings to use in upcoming collections. The environment is important to us, and we are always seeking to ameliorate our methods to be
more earth-friendly.

If you have any other specific concerns that you would like to address, or any information resources that you would like to share, we would love to hear from you.

Thank you for choosing to make a difference.

And later on, after asking if they could add my name to their mailing list so I could be informed about their new collections:

Thank you for letting us know your thoughts on these very relevant issues. I am quite sure you will be pleasantly surprised by some of our
upcoming collections!

I can't imagine that they will change everything overnight and never use anything toxic. I will stick to my guns and won't buy another purse from them until they've made some serious improvements in their choice of material. I do however feel that if enough people also write to them about concerns with PVC, we might actually see some changes in the future.