Category: Environment

Neat idea in The Montreal Gazette this morning. The newspaper looks at its own operation and grades itself on its own sustainability footprint. Reporter Marian Scott has a long piece inside the paper about her own paper and the newspaper business generally:

…we looked at every aspect of our business: printing, distribution, advertising sales and newsgathering.
We checked the heating bills for our printing plant and downtown office and counted everything from newsprint – 15,000 metric tonnes this year – to the 61,500 Styrofoam cups used in our coffee machines. What did we learn? The biggest part of our footprint – by far – is paper.

The newsprint in one year’s worth of The Gazette consumes the equivalent of 186,816 trees.

To produce that much newsprint uses enough energy to heat 2,472 homes for a year and enough water to fill 272 swimming pools, and emits as much carbon dioxide (C02) as 1,500 cars.

The paper’s publisher Alan Allnutt says in a letter to readers that this public self-assessment is the beginning of  process that he plans to continue to reduce his paper’s impact on the environment:

Already, we have found that we – and the whole newspaper industry – have come a long way over the past couple of decades. A share of the newsprint The Gazette uses is made of recycled paper and the rest is made from wood chips that are a byproduct of the lumber industry – the trees are not cut down solely to be ground into pulp. The mills that produce our newsprint are state-of-the-art. Our own printing plant, which we opened in Notre Dame de Grace five years ago, is continually making environmental improvements, from using vegetable-based inks to steadily decreasing energy use.

Our product, the daily newspaper, is recycled in growing amounts in Montreal.

Still, further improvements in all these areas are inevitable. Increasing use of online versions of newspapers, like the digital Gazette, will help.

There are other parts of our operation where we don't do nearly as well as we'd like. We're an information business, and it's clear in our offices that the dream of a paperless society has not come true. We have recycling bins everywhere, but we shouldn't be using all the paper that ends up in them. As of this week, company policy will require everyone to do double-sided printing and copying whenever and wherever possible.

The delivery of the paper is heavily dependent on vehicles, and while it will be harder to find a solution to that, we know that education of our distributors and carriers will be a good first step.

We are, after all, in the same boat as everyone else: We have to balance our desire to do better on the environmental front with our need to prosper as a business – providing a vital service to our readers, as well as jobs for our employees. We do believe, however, that becoming a greener, more environmentally sustainable operation will be good both for society and for business.

… cuz those trail networks are slowly going to disappear. So says the latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report will be released Friday but I (like tons of reporters around the world) got look at a final draft.

Here’s the story I wrote:

Canada's claim to be The Great White North may be in jeopardy, says a report to be released Friday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the second of a series of four reports it is releasing this year, the IPCC paints a picture of a Canada that will be, by and large, increasingly milder and wetter this century.

The northern Manitoba town of Leaf Rapids will prohibit retailers from using single-use plastic bags. The ban will go into effect on April 2. Here’s part of the press release being issued by InStore Products Ltd., a Mississauga, Ont. company that makes those green re-useable shopping cart bins (left)you often see some grocery store shoppers use.

“…By-Law 462, which will be implemented on April 2nd states that retailers will no longer be permitted to give away or sell plastics shopping bags that are intended for single use. The town of Leaf Rapids is the first town in Canada to do so.

With this important environmental announcement, the town will set precedent and send a message to other Canadian cities that we need to collectively raise awareness on this topic and take a more proactive role in preserving our landscape. Leaf Rapids is taking a huge step towards recognizing and responding to the detrimental impact that plastic bags have on the environment.”

Here’s some background on this issue published in the Winnipeg Free Press last fall:

Leaf Rapids giving free cloth bags to residents
September 2, 2006
By Jason Bell

Leaf Rapids town leaders figure the fight against pollution is in the bag.

The northern Manitoba community has stepped up its municipal recycling program by giving away free cloth grocery bags in an effort to phase out the use of plastic bags.

There are about 700 cloth bags available — that's more than each of approximately 550 residents in the community 150 kilometres northwest of Thompson.

…

The Town of Leaf Rapids has also implemented a levy on plastic shopping bags — three pennies per bag — paid right at the grocery store checkout. It's a program used by some communities in Europe and the United States, but it's a brand new concept in Canada.

“The idea is not to make money. The idea is to reduce the use of these bags,” said Bond Ryan, Leaf Rapids' municipal administrator. “The hope is that we can greatly reduce the amount of bags flying around (as litter) and in our landfill.”

Leaf Rapids usually spends about $5,000 annually to clean up bags that blow out of the dump.

The town is also buying plastic bags from residents for one cent and then sending them off to be recycled.  

Now playing: Van Morrison – All Saints Day

Anyone look at the Prime Minister’s Web site recently? At the top, underneath the banner with Harper’s picture, there has always been five ‘tabs’ representing the government’s five priorities: Accountability, Lower Taxes, Crime, Child Care, and Health Care.

But today, we noticed, there’s a new sixth tab: Environment.

The hyperlinks for all those tabs take you to another section within the PM’s Web site. But the hyperlink underneath the Environment tab takes you to the federal government’s ‘EcoAction’ Web site — a section that has a ‘newish’ feel to me to be run by the Department of Natural Resources. Lots of info under the slogan “Using Less. Living Better.”

Some selected excerpts from evidence given to the House of Commons Legislative Committee on Bill C-30 (The Clean Air Act). THis is from Meeting No. 4 of this committee held on Feb. 6, 2007:

Mr. David Boyd, Adjunct Professor, Policy, University of British Columbia:

 I want to mention the current government's proposal to use intensity-based targets. Intensity-based targets are inherently a fraudulent approach to climate change. They simply endorse and entrench the status quo, as business is consistently improving the efficiency with which they produce goods and services. The problem with an intensity-based approach is simply that it allows total emissions to continue rising, and total emissions are what we need to keep our eye on. …

When I read through Bill C-30, I see precious little in terms of new tools for addressing climate change. I'm left scratching my head about what it actually adds to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and I'm concerned that, for minimal benefits, the Clean Air Act creates substantial risks.

The majority of experts and economists agree that the most effective and efficient means of addressing the market's failure to internalize greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon tax, a tax on the sale of fossil fuels based on their carbon content. …

Carbon taxes offer numerous advantages. … Carbon taxes are comprehensive. They cover the entire economy. They are widely regarded as the most efficient policy approach. They're transparent. They're administratively simple and they're less likely to cause energy price volatility than a cap and trade system. As well, the revenues generated by a carbon tax could be returned to the public in various ways to ensure the tax is not a new tax but is revenue neutral. Finally, carbon taxes have a proven track record of success in Europe. …

I note that the four top nations (Switzerland, Sweden, Finaldn, and Denmark – ed.) in the World Economic Forum's rankings of economic competitiveness this year have carbon taxes, and all of those nations ranked ahead of Canada on the competitiveness scale.

…Concluding on a couple of brief notes, regarding the provisions of Bill C-30 that deal with the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act, that law has been on the books for 25 years and should come immediately into force.

    You should also know that in 2010, even if Canadian motor vehicle manufacturers comply with the current voluntary agreement, Canadian fuel efficiency will still lag behind Europe, Japan, Australia, California, and China—yes, China.

 

…Mr. Nathan Cullen:

    When the government has been asked for their plan for climate change, they've held aloft Bill C-30 as their plan and said, this is the plan. In an international context, what type of credibility would Canada have presenting a plan like Bill C-30 as the initiative that Canada is willing to undertake in the global effort to fight global warming?

Mr. David Boyd:

    I can give you a short answer to that question, Mr. Cullen. The answer would be zero. Bill C-30, as it currently stands, offers no comfort to anyone in Canada or elsewhere that Canada is going to change course and begin taking this challenge seriously….

 

….

 

Mr. Nathan Cullen:

    For Canadians watching this debate and listening to this go back and forth in Parliament, we are amongst the greatest laggards in the world with one of the most difficult targets, and we have in front of us a so-called plan, a bill, that would gain us no international credibility whatsoever. Is that true? Have I summed it up?

Mr. David Boyd:

    You've summed it up correctly, and I think this committee…. That's why I made my first point. It was recognizing that it's simply not feasible for Canada to meet that 6% target in such a short amount of time. We have to think of global warming as a marathon, not a sprint. Canada is like someone who has talked about running a marathon for years without ever doing any training. For us to try to run one would inevitably cause severe injury.

…..

 

Mr. Brian Jean:

    I'm wondering, Professor, how would you grade the government's action from 1993 to 2005? What kind of grade would you give them on their adherence to their own finish line plan?

Mr. David Boyd:

    I'd give them an F. But I'd also like to respond to your question to Mr. Erasmus to clarify that everything you pointed out that the government is able to do on indoor air and bio-monitoring, in terms of reporting on pollution to Canadians, already exists under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act as it stands. You don't need Bill C-30 to do that….