We generate a huge amount of trash during the holidays, all in the name of giving.

Metro Vancouver is encouraging us to cut down on our holiday trash.

Here are some suggestions:

• Give great gifts, but don’t buy garbage. When trying to decide between two gifts, choose the one with the least amount of packaging.
• Give the gift of time. Offer your services or expertise as a present. Make dinner, knit a sweater or plan a special day out.
• Give an experience. Dinner, tickets to the movies or a hockey game, or passes to the local skating rink.
• Give a gift that lasts. Pass on a family heirloom or start your own tradition.
• Give a group gift. Pool resources with a few people to give a high quality gift.
• Give a gift wrapped in newspaper. Reuse a ribbon to fancy it up.
• Give your garbage can a break! Visit www.metrovancouverrecycles.org for a comprehensive list of things that can be donated, reused or recycle.

If you’ve got some holiday waste tips, you can share them with others on the Metro Vancouver website.  Here are some waste tips already submitted.

Here’s the video they did to get the point across:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC_LUpbZdOY

Author David Tracey has a new, 6-part series of articles about urban agriculture, currently running in the The Tyee.

The series is called Good to Grow: Raising Food in BC’s Cities.

I recently sat down with David to find out more about the series…

Runs: 11:08

podcast ISBN: 978-1-926758-02-2
podcast and photo © Bigsnit Media Consulting Inc.

• David Tracey’s website: DavidTracey.ca
• David is the author of Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto
• Good to Grow, a 6-part series in TheTyee.ca

I’ve started producing a series of podcasts about Urban Agriculture, hosted by Spring Gillard and David Tracey.

The series is for Spring’s new website, CompostDiaries.com, and will also be available here on VanGoGreen.

We recorded the first in the series on Tuesday at the YWCA downtown’s roof garden.  It’s an interesting project, and all the food grown in the garden is taken to a women’s group on the downtown east side. You can read more about the rooftop garden / food project on the Y’s website.

Ted Cathcart runs the project, and he was kind enough to spend an hour with us explaining the project and discussing the challenges.

The podcast runs just over 18 minutes.

podcast and photo © Bigsnit Media Consulting Inc.
podcast ISBN 978-0-9809054-9-6

It’s just over a year ago that I did a podcast with James Glave regarding his book Almost Green and we toured his, then yet to be finished, eco-shed.  (Give the podcast a listen, James is hilarious)

A year later, the Eco-Shed is  one of the jewels of Bowen Island, and was even featured in one of Oprah’s magazines.

Whether you’re visiting from thousands of miles away, or from just across Howe Sound, Bowen is a fantastic escape.  And you can feel good while you’re there, knowing that your carbon footprint is tiny – eco-tourism in the lap of luxury !

Creator and owner, writer James Glave and I had a catch-up meeting recently aboard my tiny sailboat Madsu at the Bowen government docks.

Here’s the latest on the Eco-Shed, according to James:

Within a couple of weeks guests will be able to help themselves to strawberries and blueberries in the rock garden bed right out their front door. Soon after, they can browse the raspberry patch nearby. We’ll be rolling this fruit into our baked goods that we deliver.

There are guest book entries in flickr.com/ecoshed… including one where the guest created a chinese character for the eco-shed.

Our favourite wine at the moment is blasted church “hatfield’s fuse.”

The weather is gorgeous and paddling season is well underway.

Over the summer I will be improving the rough trail that connects us with Artisan Square… the Artisan Eats bakery cafe, just down and over, is a popular destination.

At some point, James and I should arrange to bring a lucky guest(s) over or back from the island aboard Madsu, lowering the carbon footprint even more.

There are still dates open – so check out the Eco-Shed website, and book your escape now.

You are more likely to find fries and burgers than smoothies and salads – which is why so many parents of young children drag their kids past the café area after swimming – out to the car for a more healthy juice box and granola bar. It is also why teens like to hang around, filling up on fries and sweetened flavoured coffees.

That picture is changing.

The Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre in Victoria, British Columbia received a grant to help them transform their concession into one that serves healthy high quality foods.

This involved changing everything from the name, the menu, the food distributors, the kitchen equipment, servery and seating, to getting ride of the vending machines in the immediate area. Also key to the transformation was changing people’s ideas about healthy quality foods.

Springwell Nutrition Group, a team of registered dietitians with a holistic edge, were contracted to develop nutritional guidelines, a new menu and recipes, and to provide onsite nutrition education materials to support the transition.

What is Quality Food ?

First on the list was defining “What is quality, healthy food?” Something that goes beyond categorizing foods as green, yellow or red foods; something more holistic.

Juan de Fuca and Springwell decided to support a broader view of nutritional health, supporting quality foods – those that contain no artificial colours, flavours, preservatives and sweeteners.

They also believed that where food is grown, how it is grown, how it is transported, sold and ultimately prepared and enjoyed are all part of an integrated definition of what is nutritious.

Nutritional guidelines for the café that reflected these values were developed. The guidelines are similar to those used in leading natural foods stores and cafes such as Capers Whole Foods Markets. And yes, they work on a small level!

People are ready – vendors, distributors, cooks and customers – are all ready to take nutrition and health to the next level.

We just need more models of how it’s done and how to do it. Imagine, making money and having happy healthy people enjoying real food!

(click the photo for larger version. photos courtesy Victoria Pawlowski)

Café Fresh at JdF Nutritional Guidelines

All products sold are made with natural and/or organic real food ingredients,
without artificial flavours, colours, preservatives or sweeteners

Locally grown, locally sourced and locally manufactured ingredients and products are used whenever possible. Local is defined (in order of preference) as made within:

• Greater Victoria
• Vancouver Island
• Southern BC
• Pacific Northwest
• Canada

Fairly traded imported products are served (coffee, sugar, bananas, chocolate)

Cooking oils are mechanically pressed and/or organic including olive oil; grapeseed oil and organic canola oil

Breads and bread products are made with natural and/or organic sprouted whole grains

Yogurts are organic with live culture probiotics and less than 3.5% milk fat

Nuts, seeds, trail mix are raw or dry roasted, without added salt or oil

Baked products (whether made on site or outsourced) contain:

• at least 50% whole grain unbleached organic sprouted grain flours and
• at least one nutritional booster: fresh or naturally dried fruit; nuts or nut butter; seeds or seed butter; chia seeds; oatmeal; oat and/or wheat bran.
• natural whole food sweeteners such as honey, blackstrap molasses, maple syrup; raw sugar/organic fair trade sugar

Beverages served are natural and/or organic without artificial ingredients

• Coffee – organic/fair trade, locally roasted
• Tea – organic black, green, white and herbal (mint, chamomile, rooibos)
• Fruit juices – only real fruit juice with no added sugars or colors, etc.
• Sodas – natural source i.e. Organic Jones Sodas, Flavoured San Pellegrino
• Vegetable juices – V-8 and tomato juices (not Splash)
• Water – natural bottled waters (without added salt)

Real dishes are used for onsite eating
Take out containers and utensils are recycleable
Bins are available to recycle bottles, cans, and containers
Customers are offered a 10 cent discount for bringing their own cups/containers

REAL FOOD TASTES GREAT!

COST: $135 members, $150 non-members.,

TIME: 9:30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

LOCATION: Vandusen Botanical Garden. 5251 Oak Street (at West 37th Ave.), Vancouver.

Venue: Chinatown, Vancouver
Time: 10:00am-4:00pm

1. give with intention.
We challenge you to not just give for the sake of giving stuff, or because you are enticed by the merchandising or the brilliant price point in store windows. As Dora the Explorer says “stop and think”. Give to fewer people with more intention. Put more thought and energy into buying items and focus on giving quality.

2. spread the green around you.
Local, handmade, and artisan make timeless, unique gifts that keep the green in your community and strengthen the local economy. Or even better redistribute your wealth. Instead of traditional gift giving support a local non-profit that is making a difference in your local community. Tell your friends and family what you’ve done.

3. creative wrapping. don’t look for the silver lining.
Don’t kill the messenger. Use your vivid imagination and have fun with creating green wrapping – from the classic newspaper comics & magazine pages to silk scarves, cloth bags, storage containers, cereal boxes, kid’s painting, or even star shaped potato stamps pressed on post paper – really the sky is the limit. Start thinking about it now and set aside supplies (this will prevent you from resorting to the cheap, and not so cheerful solution). Use it as a good excuse to break out some cheer and have some quality bonding time.
At all costs avoid the silver lined gift paper – it can’t be recycled! If you must buy wrapping paper look for 100% post-consumer waste content that is processed chlorine-free.

4. give your time. being present is the best present.
Celebrate with the ones you love. Limit your party hoping, and plan to invest quantity of time with quality people. It seems simple, but as you get caught up in the craziness of the season it easy to over look, over book, feel frazzled, and not enjoy yourself.

5. celebrate what’s on the table.
Creative menu planning with food that shows taste and respect for your guest creates a memorable meal that is cause enough for good conversation. Focus on quality ingredients that are local, artisan, organic, fairly traded, homemade, and minimally processed. As for centerpieces, glass bowls full of cranberries, and citrus are festive and will live another day. Invest in beeswax (or soy) candles with all-cotton wicks, they burn cleaner and smell divine. And for the star of the show, we highly recommend Organa Farm birds raised with care in the Cascade Mountains by the Deschamp family. If you want to skip the dishes, use biodegradable cutlery, plates, and re-useable cloth napkins.

Green Gift resources worth checking out:

My favourite:
Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Others:
we’re dreaming of a green christmas
when visions of quince and hazelnuts dance in your head – Bill Jones
8 green ways to wrap gifts
20+ Ways to Give Without Giving “Stuff”

Giving

Treehugger 2008 Green gift guide

Sustainable Food Organization Membership:
Vancouver’s FarmFolk/CityFolk Society sells $30 memberships ($15 student/senior) that include a quarterly newsletter, voting rights so you can influence how the organization runs, discounts at events like the harvest celebration Feast of Fields, and access to a community of like-minded people who want to make the world better through food.

All right !

If making it a competition means more institutions will become greener, I’m all for it

BCIT won the gold green star from Achieving Business Excellence magazine – a UK based magazine that recently did an article on Canada’s Greenest Campuses.

“I am thrilled that Achieving Business Excellence has featured BCIT as Canada’s greenest campuses,” says Jennie Moore, director of Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship within the BCIT School of Construction and the Environment (SoCE). “It is thanks to the foresight and team approach between BCIT operations and academics that we are reducing our footprint.” read the full press release

Congrats to BCIT.

The article is on page 63 of the hard-copy version of the magazine.

They do have a very fancy flash version of the magazine online – you know, with pages that turn – essentially what looks like a PDF on steroids. It looks great but it’s really tricky getting the pages sized so that you can actually read the copy.

A little tip: use this direct link instead, and you’ll get a larger version without having to futz with the pop-up window on the magazine site.