1. Get a reusable water bottle and/or coffee mug.  Apart from the waste, purchasing bottled water is also bad because it’s RIDICULOUSLY expensive, devalues public water systems, is usually not better or even worse than tap water (less regulation), begins to taste like plastic after a while, and is often shipped in from other countries, taking water away from them even though Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water.
2. Clean with vinegar and baking soda.   It is REALLY CHEAP, works well, has approximately a thousand different purposes, doesn’t contain toxic chemicals, and is time-tested.  Especially by Dutch people, my roommate says.
3. Learn to recycle properly.  This is hard, because there are different rules in different municipalities, but super important because if you put lots of stuff in the recycling that shouldn’t be there, it just gets sent to the landfills anyway.
4. Bike!  I know, I know, we have to get our bike share up and running.  But in the meantime, check out Bikechain (they do rentals for free too) or Bixi ($5 rentals for a day to see if you like it, or $95 year long memberships).  I started biking about 1.5 weeks ago and it is THE GREATEST.  I was previously extremely terrified of it (and still avoid major streets without bike lanes) but I feel so much better about EVERYTHING.  You have so much freedom to go anywhere, and you feel great and get plenty of exercise.  I’ve even learned to ride in dresses, which is good because approximately 80% of my wardrobe is skirts or dresses, no lie.  Plus you can get all sorts of cool things attached to your bike so you can carry groceries etc around.
5. Use the TTC instead of a car for longer trips – sure, $6 for a round trip seems expensive, but if you buy in bulk it’s only $5 – and compare that to the price of gas + insurance.
6. Autoshare or Zipcar if you desperately need a car, or carpool.
7. Don’t idle if you’re going to be stopped for more than 30 seconds.  Idling vexes me.  A lot.
8. Grow your own food: start a garden (or come by our community garden!).  Plant a fruit tree and make me happy.
9. Grow plants in your house/apartment/dorm – cleans the air and makes you happier.  Spider plants are great for cleaning the air, and herbs are easy(ish) and are useful.
10. Help out with
11. Buy local food: Visit a farmer’s market near you to buy your groceries or get a Good Food Box from UTSU.  Local food is the shit.
12. Eat seasonably: Do you actually need to eat strawberries in December?  When you learn to eat more with the seasons, you appreciate food more.
13. Try going vegetarian for two days a week.  It’s a lot easier than you think.  Vegetarianism isn’t all about tofu – I hardly ever eat tofu, yet I find myself also buying very little meat these days.  You can get protein/iron from lots of other sources, like beans, lentils, dark green vegetables etc.
14. Eat organic as much as possible.
15. Compost or worm-compost.  I want a backyard desperately, but for the foreseeable future I’m in an apartment.  However, you can still compost – with vermiculture!  VPI Karol Dejnicka is a huuuge fan of vermiculture; go talk to her about it sometime.  Basically, you put your food scraps (not meat/dairy but everything else) into a box with worms and voila, compost.
16. Don’t waste your food.  If you eat at Burwash every day, this means not taking more than you think you’re going to eat (you have nooo idea how much food is wasted at Burwash every day).  If you live on your own, it means doing stuff like freezing your bread to ensure it doesn’t get moldy, being conscientious of your leftovers, freezing extra quantities, using up what you have instead of buying more food, etc.
17. Buy second-hand clothes.  Our fabulous Environmental Fashion Show hopefully demonstrated the awesome things that can be found at vintage clothing stores.
18. Freecycle
19. TUSBE your old textbooks or sell them back to the bookstore.
20. Reusable bags for groceries and for everything
21. Unplug appliances you aren’t using to prevent phantom loads.
22. Repurpose old stuff – ex rags out of old t-shirts, orange peels to make vinegar smell good
23. Reduce – do you really need it?
24. Buy locally produced goods
25. use as few loads as possible to wash your clothes, wash with cold water
26. hang dry your clothes
27. have a christmas with no presents
28. take a mental detox week

+ MORE!

Please submit your applications by March 29th, 2013 to fashionshow@vusac.ca

Fashion Show – Exec Comm

Fashion Show – Constitution

Fashion Show – Application

For many of us, university is a time when we learn to take care of ourselves. Yes, like adults. And part of that regimen is to start fending for ourselves in the kitchen. Whether cooking is a chore, a joy, or just plain intimidating (why hello there, Kraft dinner), making your own food opens up a whole new realm of sustainable living choices.

These choices don’t have to constitute a drastic lifestyle change either. In fact, there are numerous things we can all do to lessen our environmental impact. I’ve listed just a few that I think are easy ways to transition into eco-friendly cooking:

1. Eat/Buy locally. This one’s a no-brainer. The less distance food has to travel from where it’s produced or grown to your plate, the better. Every item has a ‘product of_____’ label and it only takes a few seconds to check where your apples or granola comes from.

2. Eat/Buy seasonably. Similar to the last one, produce in season takes less energy to produce and will often taste better!

3. Eat less meat. This one’s a little tricky – I’m not saying that everyone should become a vegetarian. But, it is a well-known fact that raising animals uses up a lot of resources. Most of us can afford to include more veggies in our diets since we are getting more protein and fat than we need. Plus, buying produce, lentils, and beans are friendlier on the student budget than picking up a roast chicken! However, if you’re not willing to give up meat entirely (like me!), there are still more sustainable choices you can make like looking for meat that was locally raised and sustainably-sourced fish. In fact, some people argue that occasionally buying locally-raised meat may actually make more sense than buying imported monocropped grains and legumes.

4. Learn to cook! Making your own food allows you to choose what ingredients you use and is usually healthier. Plus, there’s something really satisfying about making a delicious meal from scratch rather than ordering take-out.

There are many more ways to incorporate sustainable living choices in your kitchen, and I’ve found several blogs and websites that use these practices to create some really tasty-looking recipes. Check out some of my favourites!

http://smittenkitchen.com/

http://www.simplebites.net/

http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com

http://www.healthygreenkitchen.com/

The problem is, some things that are valuable are hard to turn into numbers. I want to use the example of advertising. Advertising uses sex to sell you things. It uses happiness to sell you things. It uses convenience to sell you things. And maybe you might not have realized it, but it uses nature to sell you things. Nature is a salesperson that advertising trots out over and over again.

Let me walk you through the ads that I have to sit through before I can watch ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ First, there’s an ad for Telus. It’s trying to persuade me to get a smartphone, but all the words are saying is “we have a selection of smartphones.” Most of the ad is a lion cub dancing around the phones and playing with them. The lion cub is courageous, ready to explore the world and uncover its wonders,
like you, if you were to buy a new smartphone. The lion cub is selling you the phone. The second ad wants me to buy the Chevrolet Malibu, which is a boring family car named after a place known for pristine beaches and excellent surfing weather. Most of the ad is the car driving through a pristine wilderness, while the voice-over guy talks about how Malibu means a relaxed state of mind. It mentions
the MPG of the car, but that’s not the point. Pristine beaches and excellent surfing weather mean tranquility, and tranquility is what you want when you drive to work in the morning. Malibu’s peaceful beaches are selling you the car. The last ad is for a “Baja style” steak sandwich. It probably just has extra seasoning, but that’s not the key selling point. The Baja desert is an exotic desert in California, it’s
different, hot, and exciting, and it embodies the spirit of your steak sandwich desires. Maybe the next time you buy a lunch, you’ll buy this sandwich, and it’ll be because an extreme ecosystem sold it to you.

From this, you can see that Nature is a big player in advertising. Unfortunately, the effects of advertising are subtle, and unless there’s a measurable spike in Telus sales and every customer is coming in and yelling “I bought this phone ‘cause the lion was cute!” then no-one’s going to be able to put a dollar figure on how important the lion was in selling the phone. There are a couple things, however, that we can put dollar figures on, and they show us that we can make better decisions for taking care of our lands, rivers, and oceans.

Telus spent $464 million on advertising in 2011. Since 2006, they’ve used tropical frogs, coral fish, parrots, lemurs, and lions as the main ‘spokes-animals’ in their campaigns. Unfortunately, according to the IUCN red list, 31% of amphibians, 27% of corals, 14% of birds, and 22% of mammals are extinct or threatened. Lions themselves are classified as “vulnerable” and heading towards becoming endangered. Surely it’s worth something to make sure that fifty years from now, Telus can use animals that still exist in their advertising.

General Motors spent close to a billion dollars on advertising in 2011. Surely, some of that would have been wasted if newspaper headlines read “Malibu beaches unsafe for swimming due to bacterial infestation.” It wouldn’t be quite so tranquil anymore, which is why it’s good that the city of Malibu spent over $30 million on buying and developing parkland in return for a tenfold improvement in their ability to treat stormwater flowing out to the beaches.

While nature is less of a focus in Subway’s advertising than enticing slow-motion videos of melting cheese and meat, they still spent over $400 million on advertising in 2008. The main threats to the Baja desert are, ironically, livestock rearing and salt extraction, both central to the production of steak sandwiches. “Baja cattle pasture and salt mines” doesn’t quite have the same exotic element.

Now, I’ve used two examples from California, but I guess that’s what you get for watching American TV. For us Canadians, I want to bring this on home. The 3% reduction of federal business taxes by the federal government last year, from 18% to 15% in 2012 is projected to cost $10 billion CAD. The annual budget for Parks Canada last year was just under $750 million. Somewhere in those numbers, there should be room to convince business to pay a little more to make sure that fifty years down the road from now, when they want to run an ad campaign featuring the great Canadian wilderness and the things that live in it, our natural bounty is more vibrant and protected than it is today. Maybe the government could have helped the advertising industry more by spending an extra $9 million to make a new national park instead of handing them the same money to run those economic action plan ads touting ‘responsible natural resource development’.

I’m not saying we should fence off everything that lives from industry. What I’m saying is that the decisions we make about how we use the land in Canada can’t be made with numbers alone. The undefinable values of life and land in Canada are real, and vast. It is our collective responsibility to make sure that we let our politicians know that we’re not going to vote for them if it means that we have to explain to our kids why Tony the Tiger became extinct.

Image Source:  http://sheltonshinji.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wwfeab3b5ec9db5eab491eab3a0.jpg

http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-09-18/world-s-top-environmental-success-stories.html#slide1

Image Source: http://cdn.media.discovermagazine.com/~/media/Images/Zen%20Photo/H/happy%20enviroment/458.jpg

I recently went to see Finding Nemo in theatres, and (aside from falling for the obvious money grab that the inner child in me could not resist) while re-watching the movie, I came up with a fantastic idea for the sequel. Seriously, I’m pitching it to Disney next week.

  Just imagine as the audience watches Nemo and his friends dodge long-lines, trawlers, shark finners, and swirling vortexes of garbage, while their coral reef home turns into an underwater wasteland.

   Picture the drama, the comedy, the excitement as Nemo, Marlin, and Dory realize that they are doomed because of problems – like overfishing, carbon emissions, and pollution – that they can do nothing about.

…Maybe Nemo was safer in the fish tank after all.

It’s not that I’m trying to get you to renounce your carnivorous ways, but we could all stand to make some changes to our lifestyles so that this sequel has a happy ending. Because if we keep going the way we’re headed, it’s not just all the fish in the sea that have to worry about their survival.

Every time you take a breath, thank the oceans. Current estimates source up to 90% of Earth’s oxygen as coming from marine life in those big blue bodies of water. Those oceanic critters (namely, algae) are also the planet’s biggest carbon sink.

But now you might want to take a seat, because I’ve got more fun facts for you.

Humans are overexploiting ocean life at such a high rate, that we will likely see mass extinctions and oceans devoid of marine life by the middle of this century: in fact, in the past few decades, we’ve already lost 90% of large fish populations ocean-wide.

To make things worse, oceans are warming and becoming more acidic as we continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ocean acidity is expected to double in the next few decades – considering that this is over a hundred times faster than any changes over the past twenty million years or so, it is unlikely that ocean life will be able to adapt.

If ocean systems collapse, which could happen in our lifetime, the rest of the planet’s ecosystems would follow. And as amazingly resilient as we are, we cannot survive without thoseecosystem services, much less oxygen. Does this sound apocalyptic, or is it just me?

If you’re like me, and you enjoy things like healthy oceans, life on Earth, and being able to breathe, you may have a problem with this.

Trawlers, long-line fishing, shark fining, whaling, and floating plastic wastelands: there are more than a few serious issues to contend with when facing ocean sustainability. Tackling problems like unsustainable fishing deals with an important part of the problem, but to fully address this issue, we still have to contend with all of the same problems facing our atmosphere: industry, greenhouse gas emissions, consumerism, denial, etc.

These issues aren’t about what your children or grandchildren will have to cope with during their lifetimes. The more we learn about our planet, the more we have to come to terms with the fact that we are living through climate change. And the growing plight of the oceans is evidence that this human-made change is quickly becoming a severe crisis right now.

So watcha gonna do bout it?

… But maybe think about who’s being hit by your wake.

For more on this subject –

TED Talks are awesome! And, incidentally, informative. Check out a couple of the relevant ones:

Ocean acidification, warming, and rising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evfgbVjb688

Sylvia Earle (and general amazingness): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43DuLcBFxoY

And if you haven’t seen Finding Nemo, I question your ability to lead a full and meaningful life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPHfeNgogVs

Events: we are looking for a creative, organized and hardworking individual, who can plan and run events

Advertising: Caffiends is really looking to improve Vic’s (and UofT’s) awareness of our cafe, and needs a creative, artistic individual to create posters etc. Experience with photoshop or similar programs is highly preferred

Treasurer: we need an organized individual who can maintain our financial records. Experience/knowledge in bookkeeping or accounting is preferred, but not necessary

Email us a paragraph or two outlining

a) your name, year of study and program, how long you’ve been volunteering at Caffiends, what position you’re applying for

b) Why you want to run for the position,

c) What qualifies you/ what prior experience you have that would make you a good candidate for the position,

d) What you hope to achieve in that exec position this year

e) include anything else you feel is relevant

We look forward to seeing all the talent that you guys have and expanding our exec team!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84zIj_EdQdM

Caffiends is honouring this week by having a workshop on… Caffiends!

I know, I know. Sounds thrilling. But it is! Trust us! Why is Fair Trade important, ethical, life-changing, kick-ass cool? How is an urban, commercial business sustainable? You’ll find out, all while drinking fantastic espresso (FAIR TRADE espresso at that!) To make things CRAZY (’cause with all this caffeine running through us, Hannah and I came up with a stellar idea) we’re taking Jeopardy, throwing in some cocoa and espresso, stirring the pot, letting it simmer, and KABAM, psuedo-Jeopardy: Caffiends The Quiz. Is born. (not unlike Frankenstein, but with out the gothic revenge part, so very unlike Frankenstein.)

This thursday from 12-2, we’re going to be testing your Ken Jennings impersonationsknowledge in anything fair trade or environmentally friendly; even some geography and history are thrown in! Every question will have a level of difficulty, with a corresponding ‘Prize’ drink. The profits of the drink whose question you correctly answer will be added to Environment Week’s donation to our lovely friends at Evergreen Brickworks (check them out! http://ebw.evergreen.ca/).

If you just so happen to be struck by an itch to learn more about Fair Trade or how to be environmentally friendly, here are a few websites we suggest exploring:

Ecological Footprint Calculator: http://www.myfootprint.org/

Fair Trade Canada: http://fairtrade.ca/en

See you guys this week (CAUSE WE”RE OPEN! Finally! YAY!)

Tuesday September 25th 
11-1PM: Campus Farmer’s Market + Special Pancake Brunch (Cat’s Eye)
7-9 PM: Documentary Night! (Cat’s Eye)

Wednesday September 26th
1-3 PM: Vic Community Garden Workshop (behind Lower Burwash)

Thursday September 27th
12-2 PM: Green Workshop with Caffiends (VC111)
9-2AM: Hippie Groove Pub Night! At the Duke of Gloucester (649 Yonge Street)

Friday September 28th
12-3 PM: Quad Picnic (apple cider and corn)
8-11 PM: Night Cream with Lower Burwash (open mic and ice cream/coffee, Quad/Cat’s Eye)