Deeper Shade of Green

This past weekend (March 16 thru 18) saw the birth of a first Canadian sustainability exhibition, and of course I was there. The event was pretty darn good, with over 130 businesses showcasing their products and services. There were also free presentations every single day on wide range of topics, including a live presentation of An inconvenient truth, a presentation on how to green your home, your office, what humanity needs to do to secure sustainable future, etc.

One presentation that stood out for me was from MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) where we learned how they put thought behind every single step of a production – from inception to delivery to their store. And their thinking is guided by sustainability and elimination of pollution as much as possible. They constantly seek ways to eliminate all chemicals from all of their products. They want you to use their product as long as possible so you don’t need to buy a new one in order to reduce the pollution generated from production. Wow, how many companies you know do that? Another speaker of theirs informed us that he travels the world and visits factories in third world countries and check for violations against a strict UN protocol. If they find violations (child labour, wage fluctuations, poor treatment, exposure to hazards, etc) they work with the company to fix these problems. They don’t simply walk away, because that child might be the sole money maker and cutting them off will hurt the family. Instead they work with the company to phase child labour out and put kids in school. Employees also have access to MEC’s hotline where they can call confidentially and complain about their employer and MEC then takes action. I know very few companies that do this. This is true social responsibility. And that is why I no longer buy sport equipment elsewhere but at MEC (they also have a warranty that allows you to bring back merchandise whenever for whatever reason).

Apart from all this, there were some interesting booths:

• An organization building community gardens. They were building at the expo a demo wall out of clay mixed with sand and cob straws. Pretty amazing stuff. It drew by far the largest crowd. They were mixing all this with their bare feet and kids just loved to join them and have their pictures taken. I will be building my shed this spring in a similar fashion.
• Hardwood floor seller – but the hardwood planks were made from reclaimed wood (wood from demolition). Some beautiful stuff. The sealer was low VOC (volatile organic compounds) and next to chemical free.
• Local manufacturers of electric cars. Only problem is, they can’t go higher then 40km/h (this requires no test crashing on the manufacturer’s part and thus lowers the costs significantly for them to even exist). This means they can’t go on highways. They’re basically city-cars. But they are terrific. Huge market in southern United States apparently.
• Local manufacturers of electric scooters and bikes. I love those! I will be getting one this year probably, since we want to cut down on our pollution from our car and when my wife is working, I want to be able to get to parks which are out of reach of buses. By the way, Canadian Tire sells some for quite reasonable prices.
• Wonderful non-toxic building materials, such as bamboo floors with non-toxic glue and non-toxic varnish, beautiful counters out of 100% recycled paper (PaperStone) – you can even put a hot pan down on it!, cork floors, low-flush toilets, and american clay to stucco your walls for that beautiful rustic non-toxic look

In closing, here’s a winner of a competition entitled Convenient Truth: a green video contest. This was an international contest put up by Treehugger and 7th Generation and the winner (incidentaly, from Vancouver) was presented at the EPIC show. I think you’ll agree the video is awesome and hopefully it will make you realize that one person can make a difference. Perhaps, just perhaps you’ll also understand why I work so hard to protect our beautiful home – our Planet Earth.