Hey Metro Vancouver!

I'm Alison Richards and for 30 days, starting on April 1st, 2011 I'll be monitoring and documenting my actions and activities while striving to live with the least amount of impact and creating zero waste. This interactive web site is meant to serve as a portal for your participation. Chat with me during my daily 5PM web cast or post your tips and suggestions on the Facebook page. I hope to create a ripple of change through awareness and focusing on making one small change each day.

Day Twenty Six - April 26th, 2011

Have you heard about these guys, they invented an organic foam packaging?
It's made from mushroom fungi and agricultural waste. We need to start moving towards finding more solutions like this alternative to Styrofoam. They just signed a contract with Dell computers who will now ship with compostable packaging. Hopefully more manufacturers with transition to sustainable packaging like Ecocradle.

 

Live @ 5 Watch each day at 5PM or archive on demand

I posted a personal blog entry yesterday.

What do people in Japan do to help the Environment?

Dear Alison,

You know. I don't mind getting older, as I find that life just gets easier and there's less pressure to conform. There isn't all that fuss and bother about keeping up with everyone else and having the right hair and clothes, and being seen in the right places with the right crowd. As the fabulous Wanda Sykes says on this subject, "I don't give a feck!" It's true! I wander into the variety store in my pyjamas, don't care about what I'm wearing when I walk the dog, and don't feel the need to see-and- be-seen anymore. Who gives a feck?! HOWEVER! The aches and pains of encroaching age ain't no picnic! CRIKEY! I woke up Monday morning after a weekend of singing and dancing and flailing about, feeling like I had been trampled by a heard of goats! And stiff??!!! Holy crap! (And I don't been stiff in the good way, either!)

At one point between shows I was talking to my colleague Mal, and asked him what he does for the environment other than the usual common sense stuff. He has a beach condo in Ibaraki (they lost part of the beach and some trees in the tsunami!), and he and his surfing buddies get together and comb the beach for garbage that's washed up or been left behind by inconsiderate A-holes. My friend Jo Ann has a Japanese surfer boyfriend, and they also do the same thing, although it's a very carefully organized affair. They go around to different beach communities in Shikoku, and get together with the resident volunteers to clean up specified areas, whether it be a beach or river, or forested park. Lunch is provided and everyone has a matching "neck-towel" to wear as a bandana, or around your neck to soak up sweat. They then spend a morning or an afternoon cleaning the area and having FUN! Jo Ann says she loves the sense of community and camaraderie and feeling of satisfaction after putting in several hours of hard work. It's also good exercise, not to mention the beer and wine afterwards!

So get together with some friends, your kids and your dogs, pack a picnic lunch, go to a conservation area, or the beach, or wherever, hand out garbage bags and work gloves, and spend a day having fun AND doing some good for mother earth! (I see everyone in matching caps and neckerchiefs!) VOILA!

Brent

Brent Fialka

Rafe Mair has been a dominant voice in Canadian print and broadcast journalism for more than a quarter of a century. These days he reaches, beseeches and teaches us through his hard-hitting, no-holds-barred contributions to BC's on-line newspaper,

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