Blog 7 Synthesis of presentations.

Today we had all the groups from the class present their various topics from “A Geography of Hope” on themes pertaining to sustainability. Overall I found it enlightening, albeit at times some of the groups overlapped each other, but I suppose it’s the same in the realm of sustainability, where topics will overlap.

Team 1 covered the topic of sustainable energy and used a case study from Denmark, which was mentioned in our course book “A Geography of Hope”. Their local case study was from Barrie, Ontario and dealt with solar powered lights to be used in parks.
The main point that I gathered from group 1’s presentation is that our current supply of energy comes from dirty sources. Coal and oil power plants not only produce CO2 in vast quantities when power is generated, but also during the extraction of the raw fuel and the transportation of it to the power plant. The case study the group used was an island in Denmark called Samso. All the electricity generated on the island comes from wind turbines. In fact, wind turbines produce 24% or 3100MW of Denmark’s power. In Canada, we have a similar amount of wind generated, at 3150 MW according to http://www.canwea.ca/pdf/Canada%20Current%20Installed%20Capacity_e.pdf. We still have a long way to go, as there are still many coal fired plants, such as Nanticoke in Ontario still in operation.
Wind power is also a major player in Denmark’s economy, which contributes to wind power being very sustainable to that country.

Group 2, which is my group, covered sustainable transportation. We looked at a case study from Singapore dealing with hydrogen fueled cars, and a case study that I had found comparing 3 universities across the country and the impacts of implementing a universal transit, or u-pass had.
The hydrogen cars in Singapore were not overly sustainable because of the cost of the car and the infrastructure needed to sustain them. It is pointless to produce a car if the fuel can only be replenished a 1 station. The case study regarding the universities was of particular interest to me because I’ve worked for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) for the past 3 summers, so I had somewhat of a vested interested in the study. The long and the short of it was the introduction of the universal transit passes at The University of Victoria, The University of Western Ontario and St. Mary’s University was a success. It increased the public transit use of students to bring them to and from school. It also increased the use of public transit on weekend and non school hours. Another benefit of increasing public transit and reducing car usage was that land that was otherwise used for parking lots was able to be built on, which preserved green space.

The idea of a transit pass has been thrown around RRU. This would not work in the least at the school. It is in an isolated part of Victoria, in Colwood, which doesn’t have much of a public transit system to begin with. There aren’t enough students at the school to make it economically feasible to implement. Lastly the school doesn’t have the road infrastructure to facilitate full sized buses coming into the campus every 10 minutes between 8 and 9, then again between 4 and 5.

Group 3 covered sustainable urban development. I’m not sure what their examples from the book were, although I think it was the distillery district in downtown Toronto and Belmar, a suburb of Denver Co. Both of those examples dealt with having a pedestrian friendly core and keeping cars out of the main area. The example that group 3 used was Dockside Green in Victoria and Malmö in Sweden. Dockside Green is a green minded persons’ wet dream. It is built over a Brownfield, incorporates waste reduction, on-site heat generation, and even maintained part of the Galloping Goose Regional Bicycle trail. Malmo is a large city in Sweden that encompases many sustainable features. It has a power plant which burns biogas. Many of the apartment complexes in Malmo are now sporting solar panels to reduce energy consumption. Malmo helps to increase its sustainability by reducing the ecological footprint caused by hydrocarbon fueled power plants.
Ideally, I would like to see RRU use some solar panels so the school can come close to achieving its sustainability goal, but unfortunately the weather in Victoria between November and March doesn’t favour the sun.
The case study the group went into detail about was the use of green roofs. Green roofs contribute many different factors to sustainability. They clean the air due to the roof being “green”. They are made from placing soil on top of a conventional asphalt roof and planting various flowers, bushes and other plants. Green roofs also reduce storm water runoff, which helps to clean water ways and prevent peak surges from occurring. There is also the added benefit of having a place for birds to rest and providing them with shelter.

Group 4 had a similar theme to group 3. They covered sustainable buildings and green roofs in Toronto. I should mention that I did a study of a degraded watershed in Toronto, the Black Creek. One of the recommendations that I had to improve the watershed as a whole, and solve a number of water quality problems associate with the creek was to implement the use of green roofs throughout the Black Creeks 66 km2 watershed.
Group 4 used a case study of a house called the Chateau Mango. The Chateau Mango was designed with sustainability in mind. It comes with the usual assortment of solar panels, south facing windows, special paint to heating and a way to recover air conditioning moisture. The 1500 ft2 was quoted at costing $125,000. I’ m not sure which currency that is in, but I’ll assume the Loonie. More houses should be designed with sustainability in mind, it will greatly improve the ecological footprint and GHG of our society if our homes could be more energy efficient.
Group 5 unfortunately didn’t upload their powerpoint to the course site, so I cant speak about that presentation.
Group 6 covered Smart Design. Smart Design uses ideas and technologies used to efficiently create long term living/working space. It can reduce the negative effects on ecological health and improve the quality of life for residents. Smart Design can come from LEED certification. LEED certification is a rating system of how “green” a building is. It uses elements similar to the previous groups Chateau Mango in its design. Bio-mimicry is another example of Smart Design. Its taking natures design and modeling it into a man made structure. The best example that I can think of for this is the airplane wing. A birds wing was the inspiration for Orville and Wilbur Wright to build their Wright Flyer.
Group 6 referred to Royal Roads University and smart design. They provided the following examples of how RRU contributes to smart design
• Compost bins in the classrooms
• Recycle plastic and glass
• Composts paper towels
• Non-flushing urinals (Water efficiency)
• Restoring the Colwood creek watershed
• Bateman Center (Gold LEED certified

I don’t agree with this completely. Installing a compost bin in a classroom doesn’t take the design of the building into considering, its just putting a bucket in a room. Restoring Colwood creek and the much hyped Bateman Center will be good examples of smart design.

Team 8 covered the ideology of sustainability. They covered the use of communication in the realm of sustainability. I believe this is a fundamental factor in the sustainability movement. Without effective communication, its impossible for them message of sustainability to spread.
Team 8 also focused on advertising, and a term called green washing. In a nut shell (cue Austin Powers joke) green washing are all the outlandish claims that a manufacturer will use to market and sell a product to the green crowd. I found this slide to be quite interesting
TerraChoice Environmental Marketing: 1018 products, 1753 claims
• Sin of the hidden trade-off (998 products, 57% of claims)
• Sin of no proof (454 products, 26% of claims)
• Sin of vagueness (196 products, 11% of claims)
• Sin of irrelevance (78 products, 4% of claims)
• Sin of fibbing (10 products, <1% of claims)
• Sin of lesser of two evils (17 products, 1% of claims)
• Sin of worshipping false labels (23% of claims)

It pretty much sums up how I feel about most so-called green products. They might be in a green bottle, but that’s the extent of how green they actually are.
Team 8 used David Suzuki as their case study and example of a good communicator. He is one of the faces of the green movement, and can reach a wide audience with his messages. He has his TV show, The Nature of Things, he’s also on CBC radio, he has written more than 40 books, and even has a Facebook page.

The presentations were very well done and thought provoking. I enjoyed them thoroughly. I am glad we got the opportunity to research and discuss various aspects of sustainability.