Green Edmonton

Editor’s Note:I recently discovered a wonderful blog called Avenue Homesteader. Carissa Halton writes about her experiences with green local living in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue area. I love her focus on food production and community efforts in the area. Carissa has generously offered up a guest post for Green Edmonton readers:

Cross-posted from http://avenuehomesteader.blogspot.com/:

For members of my household who love pumpkin pie and butternut stew, 2009 was a disappointing year. Total number of winter squash: 2. I gleaned one Buttercup and another Spaghetti squash from six large plants. It was a lot of green square footage producing a whole lot of nothing.

After some sleuthing and input from my squash-crazy sister-in-law, we’ve deducted a pollination problem. In 2009, I had plenty of flowers and the fruit would look like it was growing then instead yellow and die.

This year, I have taken matters into my own hands and started playing ‘Birds and Bees’. The first thing to surprise me was the sheer number of available male flowers and the woeful number of willing female compatriots. The ladies are more inclined to draw their virginal petals up demurely around their centre and remain like this most of the day. In my patch, fruit-making action happens exclusively in the mornings.

So if you share my problem, or skipped the Bio class where they taught this stuff, here’s how you can increase the conception rates in your squash patch:

1. First, figure out who’s female and male. The female flowers blooms from what appears to be a miniature squash. They look like they’re growing from a new fruit while the male flower buds burst from a long, narrow stem.  read more... »

I'm a born and raised Albertan. I love this province and I'm proud of it's natural features. Having said that, I was shocked to see a recent article in the Edmonton Journal about how Alberta has started importing natural gas from the United States: Scarcity drives deal for imports

To be honest, I thought this should have been front page news.

Travel is the toughest nut to crack. As a family, we’ve reduced our footprint in most areas of our lives by 80%-90%. However, there is no getting around the fact that travelling from Edmonton to Vancouver in a few days will burn a whole lot of fossil fuel.

We just got back from a three week tenting trip to Vancouver Island. We visited some of BC and Alberta’s wonderful provincial and national parks, and we also managed to see a piece of the lovely Northern Cascades National Park in northern Washington. It was a fantastic trip. After all, what could be better than camping with your spouse and kids?

Our MEC tent – home for 19 days.

Our trip wasn’t greener than a cycle tour, but it was greener than it might have been. Some random thoughts about the trip, and greener holidaying in general:  read more... »

I don’t think that anyone explains the predicament that we humans are in more clearly and intelligently than Richard Heinberg. I was disappointed to miss his Edmonton talk in February, but lo and behold, the entire thing was captured on youtube for our viewing pleasure (by no less than the City of Edmonton itself).

I watched all six 9-minute videos, and I recommend them to everybody.

Heinberg tells it like it is:

The link video above is the first in a series of six that document an April 2010 talk by Peter Amerongen about how to build a Net Zero residential house, at the lowest possible cost, in a cold climate like Edmonton’s.

Peter is Edmonton’s foremost authority on energy efficient residential building, and his talk gives details about his experience as the project manager on Edmonton’s first three net zero houses. This stuff is pure gold.

All of the videos can be accessed right here on youtube.

 (fire-rated door, Mill Creek Net Zero Home)

Every door in the Mill Creek Net Zero Home was once used in a different application. There are thousands of doors thrown in the landfill every year in this city, which is a real shame.

Both Home Re-use-ables and Architectural Clearinghouse will come to you and pay you to pick up doors if you are tearing down a house or you’ve removed them for some other reason.

We saved a few doors from the old house that we deconstructed before building. For the rest, we paid $30 for old fir doors plywood doors, and $50 for solid core doors. That’s well under what they would cost new, but with two catches: they’re all different sizes, and they’re not pre-hung. Because of these two reasons, we paid more for the carpenter's installation labour.

We also bought antique hardware for the doors, including glass handles for $50/set. That may seem expensive, but it is competitive with brand new, mid-range door hardware.

I do have a few projects to complete (stripping and refinishing the more “rugged looking” doors), but I feel good every time I notice the character and beauty of the old-timey doors in our house.

(antique doors with glass knobs. They don’t make them like this anymore.)

(it’s tough to find reused 16” closet doors. Oak veneer? Hey, they’re reused, I’ve grown to like them!)

(bedroom closet doors. The blue one is from the old house that we deconstructed and tore down.)

This is probably the second last big tour that we have for the Mill Creek Net Zero Home.

Details on all five locations here. See y’all Saturday.

Left: Home Depot’s modern, efficient lighting.  Right: Rona’s wasteful, antiquated lighting.

One of the hardest things about being aware and concerned about the environmental crisis is witnessing how many profitable planet-saving measures are ignored. Take lighting. Investments in new lighting technology can often pay themselves off in two years or less.

That’s why I’m frustrated with the approach taken by Rona Home and Garden. Rona’s President and CEO Robert Dutton recently claimed that “at RONA, we are committed to sustainable development from a social, economic and environmental perspective. This includes making a difference in Canadian communities…” (source).

And yet Rona store at 10450-42nd Avenue is wasting huge amounts of polluting electricity and money by lighting with 1960s-era technology. And that hurts my Canadian community.

Rona’s Dirty Old Technology

I did a walk-through recently, and came up with the following estimate of the 42nd Avenue store’s electricity use from lighting. This estimate is almost certainly biased in Rona’s favour because there is much information that I don’t know, so I’ve given Rona the benefit of the doubt as much as possible:

• I estimate that there are about 500 metal halide lamps (lights) in the 42nd Ave. store (see above, right).
• They consume, conservatively speaking, 320 Watts each (it could be as high as 460 Watts, but I can’t tell from visual observation alone).
• These 500 lamps, assuming that they’ve been in service for 10,000 hours, consume about 160,000 Watts when turned on

On the other hand..

The efficient lighting used at, say, Home Depot’s 6725-104 Street store (pictured above at left),  could provide the same amount of light at a burn rate of 129,000 Watts.

Assuming that Rona has its lights on one hour before and one hour after closing, its lights are turned on for about 113 hours/week (source). If it updated to modern lighting, the Rona store on 42nd Avenue could save 3503 kWh per week, worth about $350. In case you’re counting, that’s 182,156 kWh and $18,216 per year.

Given that a kWh of electricity in Alberta is responsible for about 1 kg of carbon dioxide, Rona could therefore reduce the emissions of their store by 182 metric tonnes per year of CO2, while saving money in the process. It would be like taking 35 cars off the road for good.

Until Rona cleans up its act (in a profitable venture, I might add), its green claims will continue to ring hollow. Come on Rona Home and Garden! Do Edmonton and yourself a favour. Stop your polluting ways.

Note: My information comes from a contact that I have in the lighting industry. I believe that it is biased in Rona’s favour, and does not include factors such as motion sensors and variable lighting modes that could be incorporated with new technology.

Last year we took possession of a new home that surpassed an energy rating of Energuide 86. Because of that, Climate Change Central, an arms-length government organization, mailed us a $10,000 cheque.

What we really need is a carbon tax. Economists (the good kind) and environmentalists agree, putting a price on carbon is the simplest, most effective way of changing people’s earth-destroying ways. And I don’t buy the argument that Stephane Dion’s doomed election campaign proved that Canadians don’t want a carbon tax. The nerdiest, least competent Liberal leader in a generation lost that campaign for reasons other than his Green Shift idea.

Since a carbon tax is a political hot potato right now, one behaviour-changing alternative is the green subsidy. I have to give the Progressive Conservatives credit, this is no longer Ralph Klein’s Alberta. Stelmach’s government recently enacted an excellent net metering policy, and they also introduced the new home rebate policy.

With the right builder, we estimate that the incremental cost to building a house to meet Energuide 86, which would include excellent windows (triple-pane, low-e coating, insulating spaces, etc.), at least R40 walls, R60 in the ceiling, and a very tightly-sealed envelope, is $20,000-$25,000. With the $10,000 incentive, that cost is now ridiculously low.

Build a house that is extremely cheap to heat, much more comfortable in the winter, and cool in the summer. And get paid ten grand to do it - it’s a no-brainer.

Climate Change Central has another three years of funding in place (it may be extended beyond that time). Ask your builder to save you $10,000 today. If your builder can’t build an Energuide 86 house, find another one.

I’ve been contacted by a few green businesses lately. While I haven’t directly experienced these businesses myself, they sound sincere enough that I’m willing to give them some exposure. Please leave your comments on any dealings with them.

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Maximum Impact Renovations

“My husband and I have just started a renovation business that specializes in environmentally-friendly kitchen and bath renos.

Our business is run out of our home, and we endeavor not only to installing eco-friendly products, but we also try as much as possible to use sustainable business practices. For example, my husband (a Red Seal Journeyman plumber) was appalled at how much garbage the construction industry (especially new home construction) contributes to landfills. In the past two years, he has committed to recycling or repurposing all packing materials (i.e., cardboard, plastics, wood) from his job sites. In fact, last year he built shelves in our garage, entirely out of wood that he diverted from the dump!

We have also committed to sourcing as much of our products from post-consumer recyled material as possible. It might cost more to print on recycled paper and purchase bamboo T-shirts, but we consider it a good investment in the environment. If you're interested in writing a blog entry about sustainable business practices, please feel free to give us a shout. We'd love to participate!

Josephine Lamy, www.maximpactrenos.ca

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Good Earth Coffeehouse and Bakery

Hi we just opened a family run cafe on the south side of Edmonton called Good Earth Coffeehouse and Bakery @ the market at Summerside.

With personal views that are in line with your organization with Sustainability, Environmental Responsibility, on the forefront of my opinions and actions making choice like using Bullfrog to Power my cafe, doing planters that are edible, using recycled wood furniture, and supporting local companies where possible such as Alberta Coffee Roasters and Beef Farmers.

I wanted to offer that if you ever wanted to display any materials on our bulletin board or need support to please feel free to contact us.

 www.goodearthsummerside.ca .

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 LED Ligths Canada

HI, I wanted to introduce myself and my company to you. I stock and sell LED lighting in Edmonton. I spent years as a kitchen renovator and began using LED lights in my renos years ago when they were very hard to find. I have now moved full-time into promoting LED lighting and would like to be represented on your site. There is a link on the site you might be interested in called "The Total LED Kitchen". Harvey

http://ledlightscanada.com