Eco ice cream

Is carbon-counting the next big food trend? Unilever is introducing a new low-carbon “ambient” ice cream. You read that right.

In an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, the company responsible for other successful ice creams such as Ben & Jerry’s, has developed an ice cream that need not be frozen until the consumer takes it home.

Freezing is an incredibly carbon-intense process when done on such a large scale.  By omitting the frozen storage and transportation, Unilever hopes to see huge savings. The company is also making changes to their bases of operations, installing more energy-efficient appliances and making other carbon-smart energy upgrades.

Low-carbon ice cream sounds like a great place to start. But the company is less confident about how the product will be received, and even how it will taste. If you’ve ever let a bowl of ice cream melt, and tried sticking it back in the freezer, you’ll understand why.

A spokesperson for Unilever says “when the ambient ice cream is frozen at home it will have the right microstructure to produce a fantastic consumer experience.”  But will the product taste any good after it’s been frozen in an uncontrolled environment?

So far, it looks like taste has taken a back seat to carbon-conciousness. But as any carb-counter will tell you; if it tastes good, it must be bad for you – and may be bad for the planet too!

Youngsters influence families in climate change challenge

A climate change challenge on the B.C. coast has changed how kids view their impact on the environment.

Now, they can turn it around and change how their families’ perception too. The B.C. Sustainable Energy Association Climate Change Challenge was like an eco-marathon, where students had to complete 34 environmental tasks in 30 days.

Of the 550 students participating, two won first place by accomplishing all the given tasks. The prize was a new bicycle and helmet, awarded to two first prize winners: Alexander Mayrhofer from Nanaimo; and Lindsay Richards from Gabriola Island.

One of the tasks was abstaining from meat at least once a week, a task both winners found particularly challenging. Despite this, both students claim the month of living with the environment uppermost in mind has changed their daily lives for good.

This school year, teachers in B.C. can book a Climate Change Workshop in their classrooms. The B.C. Sustainable Energy Association uses a climate change game to illustrate how even the smallest everyday decisions can have a major impact.

The workshop may even inspire their students to have a 30 day challenge of their own. This year’s participants showed how much of a difference only a month can make: both in their own lives, and the lives of their friends and families.

The take-home lesson is what some parents may not necessarily have learned while they were in school. Namely, that doing your part for the environment can become an easy part of everyday life.

If that’s not a good lesson for kids, what is?

Carbon footprint of the internet is growing

When Google started, there weren’t enough computers around to bother worrying about their combined energy efficiency.

Over time, computer and Internet use has exploded in ways they never imagined. In addition to probably rubbing their hands with glee, Google also started devoting resources to thinking about how much energy they were wasting.

Every search and every page you load requires energy, releasing 20 milligrams of CO2 per second. While it may not be included in your energy bill, it comes from somewhere. Giant data centres – warehouses of servers storing every Internet file – require lots of energy.

The Internet has an enormous carbon footprint, and it’s only getting bigger. Certain environmental groups claim the IT industry has an even bigger carbon footprint than the aviation industry. It happened so quickly that many Internet firms had a hard time catching up.

Luckily, some were prepared. Google’s headquarters makes use of 9,200 solar panels, and their new Toronto office is Bullfrog-powered. It’s also constructed almost entirely from recycled materials, from old tires for their floors, to pop cans recycled into work stations.

Google’s data centres were already upgraded to be energy-efficient about six years ago; way ahead of the curve. The company is now looking at enhanced geothermal energy as an equally green – but possibly more reliable – energy source.

In Kelowna, the biggest green data center in Canada has recently been completed, and runs on hydroelectricity. RackForce Networks Inc says that it has only 2% of the carbon footprint a typical data centre does.

In time, renewable energy sources may prove the most important “Google search” ever.

Eco-friendly schools

This fall, kids going back to school will be learning a lot about a certain colour: green.  In many places in Ontario, kids will be starting their day by climbing onto green buses.

They’re still yellow, don’t worry all you traditionalists.  But inside, they’re actually “green.”

Student Transportation of Canada (STC) has announced plans to increase their fleet of “green” buses to 900 biofueled vehicles. Already a leader in biofuel transportation, STC is intent on reducing their carbon emissions and shrinking their carbon footprints.

The green doesn’t stop once the children get to school.

In some lucky places, the kids are greeted upon their arrival with school gardens designed by Evergreen, a non-profit organization. They help create a garden that is both attractive for play, but also teaches them about plant growth and food production.

In Hamilton, a design for a new Catholic school will include solar panels, a green roof, rain-water toilets, outdoor classroom, and light systems that self-adjust based on the amount of sun. It will be the only LEED-certified school in the area.

Apart from the prestigious LEED-status, the Seeds Foundation has been recognizing schools for their green efforts for 30 years. Schools are rewarded for taking on projects as simple as recycling in the classroom, and litter clean-up days.

Designations are based on the number of projects completed, from Green status for 100 projects, to Earth School status with 1000 projects, and beyond.

With everyday exposure to things like recycling, awareness of greenhouse gas, and environmental clubs, students walk away with the tools to make smart and Earth-friendly decisions later on.

Will the end of oil force greener lifestyles?

Mom said not to eat anything that’s been on the floor, but what about the roof? Green roofs are sprouting up worldwide as Peak Oil is starting to force a movement of eating locally.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that approximately 15 percent of the world’s food is grown in urban areas. This number is expected to rise as the population increases, food prices sky-rocket, and environmental awareness swells.

But in places like Cuba and other developing nations, the new Green Movement is old news. When the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, Cuba’s oil supply was cut off, reducing rations of imported foods. Cuba was forced to become self-sufficient and began planting thousands of cooperative gardens. They have been hitting pay dirt ever since.

Cuba may have been forced to go green, but now busy cities in North America are starting to pay attention. Vertical urban gardens are blooming on rooftops, beside parking lots and in vacant and abandoned spaces. Some architects are even beginning to design urban buildings to incorporate these rooftop gardens right from their inception.

And this ‘growing trend’ is catching on in Egypt, Singapore and Russia. Increasing oxygen production in some of these congested areas is nothing to cough at either. Energy, economic and environmental payoffs make vertical farming such a fruitful solution.

Vegetables and chickens: coming soon to a rooftop near you.

Green cows

The focus of most eco-technology is improving the efficiency of things in order to minimize their carbon footprint. Car manufacturers aim for more fuel efficient cars, manufacturers to try for streamlined processes and everywhere people are scaling back to use less energy.

And now biotechnologists are looking at ways to increase the efficiency of cows. 

A study presented by Cornell University and Monsanto revealed that bovine somatotropin or bST, also called bovine growth hormone (BGH), a protein hormone produced in the pituitary glands of cattle, could make a real difference.  Using BGH could reduce the overall carbon footprint by as much as 9 per cent.  

Research shows that cows given BGH can produce 10 more pounds of milk per day. In terms of eco inputs, that means less land is required, less water and feed is consumed, and less fuel is needed. On the other side of the eco-quation, these high-performance cows produce less manure and greenhouse gas per unit of output.

Translated into energy usage, BGH on a large scale could save enough electricity to power 15,000 households; generate enough heat for 16,000 households; and save enough water to supply 10,000 households. The reduction in the carbon footprint is equivalent to removing 400,000 cars from the road or planting 300 million trees.

Put another way, a 150-cow dairy producing 10 more pounds of milk per cow would be equivalent to removing 38 cars from the road or planting 28,000 trees. 

Indeed, biotechnology is making the most unlikely eco-friendly industry a little easier on our environment with what amounts to a simple solution to the problem: instead of making more, make things better.

Going green goes to Hollywood

It’s no surprise that a Hollywood blockbuster leaves a huge carbon footprint. The lights, the camera, the action all cost energy, not to mention the flights to global locations, lavish studio offices and the multiple takes to get it just right on screen. In fact, the film industry has the dubious distinction of being a top polluter in Los Angeles, second only to petroleum. 

Thanks to A-list stars like Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Harrision Ford standing up for the environment, Hollywood is going green and offsetting their carbon footprint.  The most straightforward approach is to tally carbon emissions and plant trees to offset that number. Other approaches include recycling programs, reducing paper consumption by using double-sided scripts and supplying crew members with bikes for on-set transportation.

Recent carbon neutral films include “Evan Almighty”, “An Inconvenient Truth”, and “Syriana”.  Producer Marty Bowen and Director Catherine Hardwicke even shelled out $15,000 to offset the carbon emissions for “The Nativity Story”.

Other members of the industry are taking it even further. For example, The Dave Matthews Band has partnered with a company called Native Energy to offset their carbon emissions for their entire history. With a dose of cool from Hollywood, going green getting is likely to continue as the hottest trend in the consumer mainstream.

A stocking full of coal or an atmosphere full of gas?

The more concerned about climate change we get, the more difficult it can be to absorb the only thing more invisible and pervasive than greenhouse gas: guilt. Taking the weight of an entire planet on your shoulders is tiring work, to be sure, and every decision we make to reduce our carbon footprint seems impossibly insignificant when compared to kilotonnes of annual Canadian emissions.

But if years of dealing with crushing guilt has taught us anything, it’s surely that the best (or, at least, easiest) way to defray our feelings of inadequacy are to point fingers. And where better than into our past?

While conventional wisdom tells us that our current levels of pollution far outstrip our past’s, researchers at Reno, NV’s Desert Research Institute have found the highest levels of heavy metals in arctic ice from the periods of highest coal use, namely about a century ago. Taken from Greenland, the core samples suggest that it was during the time that North America and Europe were still voraciously consuming impurity-laden coal that the most pollution was created, as much as two to five times more than our current levels, which are a byproduct of cleaner-burning oil and gas.

It’s important not to read too much into the discovery, assuming, that is, you’re held back by the bounds of personal environmental restraint and the recognition that making more responsible choices about your energy use is an important responsibility.

In the absence of those, however, you’re free to blame your great-great grandfather for everything from the melting arctic ice shelves to your disappearing beer. Personally, I never liked him anyway.

Calculating your carbon footprint

In an increasingly environmentally conscious world, keeping track of our impact on the environment has become as essential to our lives as understanding the food we eat. And if the comparison seems forced, consider that Japan recently announced it would be including carbon footprint information on products, strikingly similar to existing nutritional information.

In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that tracking our carbon footprint has become something of an obsession, even to the point of making consumers cautious when making any decisions at all. From energy-efficient homes to a campaign of “green” marketing campaigns so ever-present they’ve been given their own name, environmental consciousness has become a global pastime.

But with the current focus on greenhouse gas emissions, one of the most popular measures of our environmental impact is the carbon calculator. Easily accessible and simple, these electronic resources help measure the impact of your daily energy use in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, sometimes even including a few spiffy interactive components to while your day away.

Online, there are literally thousands of resources available for calculating your energy use. It’s worth noting that many such carbon calculators, like EcoNeutral’s, are tied into carbon dioxide offset programs, with the results of your consumption bumping you to a dollar amount of offset credits. Airlines in particular, including Air Canada and WestJet, have made carbon offset credits a part of their business models, often making the credits available during the ticket purchase process.

The carbon calculator has even been taken advantage of as a political maneuver, as in the case of the Nova Scotia Conservative Party. In response to federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” carbon tax plan, the provincial Tories posted a carbon calculator purporting to show the increased tax burden on Nova Scotians in the event of such a tax.

But not all carbon calculators are designed to sell a product or win political points.

The federal government has assembled many of the available energy calculators created by various governmental bodies on its ecoACTION website, and on provincial websites like the Ontario region’s. From appliance efficiency to vehicle idling, these calculators offer measurements of many of our most common energy consuming behaviours, albeit without the simplicity of a single set of basic questions, as with SafeClimate’s.

There are a dizzying number of factors that make up our individual carbon emissions. Broadly, for example, we already know there’s a direct relationship between wealth and our carbon footprint. In particular, we contribute to greenhouse gas emissions whenever we eat (meat or vegetables), drive or contribute to a wide range of essential Canadian industries. Together, these add up to megatonnes of CO2 emissions nationally, which may or may not eventually find its way into our atmosphere.

The bottom line is that, while knowing Canada produced 1,920 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions in forestry and agriculture in 2006 might seem like a daunting number, knowing exactly how much you personally produce is a far simpler place to begin evaluating your energy use.

Add calculators, subtract energy use. How much simpler can it be?

Carbon offsets in Ontario

Ontario has begun to put a price on carbon, and they’ve started by looking in farmers’ fields.

Based on agricultural projects, the Ontario government recently announced three new “carbon offset” programs, moving the province one step closer to a cap-and-trade system with Quebec.

Earlier in the year, the two provinces signed a “memorandum of understanding” as a first step toward an interprovincial cap-and-trade system, which would offset pollution beyond a certain level with purchased credits from projects like those recently announced. Quebec, for one, was already a member of the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), an organization of American states and Canadian provinces that has long been in discussions toward creating a cap-and-trade system, even recently releasing a set of draft guidelines (340 KB PDF) outlining the eventual agreement’s goals.

The offset projects represent three distinct ways of reducing emissions: reducing nitrogen-enriched fertilizer use, preventing its release as a greenhouse gas; employing low-till and no-till farming techniques, similarly reducing the amount of gas released from the soil; and afforestation, planting trees on deforested land that wouldn’t otherwise be used for crops.

Nationally, attempts to institute a province-spanning cap-and-trade system ran out of steam earlier at the end of 2007, though British Columbia later announced it would pursue an internal cap-and-trade policy compatible with the WCI’s.

BC’s movement toward a cap-and-trade system was also an important lesson for its energy suppliers in Alberta, showing that the voluntary nature of similar emissions trading programs may belie the fact that powerful energy alliances may ultimately make those decisions mandatory. And with Quebec and Ontario the most populous provinces in confederation, their determination toward a cap-and-trade system could well become the standard across the country.

While it may not exactly be a grassroots movement, it’s beginnings are certainly beginning in the soil.

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