In the News

SUN: City considering pilot project to fully recycle food scraps

By JEFF LEE, Vancouver Sun | July 12, 2011

 

 

 

VANCOUVER, B.C.- Fish bones, paper cups, and pizza boxes, will all be able to be put into the green box recycling starting this fall. Here, executive director of City Farmer Society, Mike Levenstone, loads up a bin with some samples here in Vancouver, B.C. on July 11 , 2011.

Photograph by: Ian Smith, PNG

Over the last 20 years, Mike Levenston has watched as the number of people who recycle yard trimmings and vegetable materials in backyard composters has steadily grown.

His City Farmer Society has helped educate thousands of Vancouver residents about how easy and beneficial it is to turn potato peelings, carrot tops, apple cores, lawn clippings and leaves into valuable, rich soil, and at the same time save space in their garbage bins.

The one thing that has always been missing has been a way to deal with the meat and fish scraps, dairy and waste food paper such as pizza boxes.

“It is a very slow education process. You are transforming society, you are changing peoples’ behaviour. It just doesn’t happen overnight,” Levenston said.

That slow process is taking another halting step forward this week. Vancouver’s engineering department says the city is ready to join the growing number of municipalities that fully recycle food scraps from residential homeowners. City council is being asked to approve a six-month pilot project for 2,000 homes in the Riley Park and Sunset neighbourhoods at a cost of $383,000.

Residents there will discover their weekly garbage pickup will drop to once every two weeks. On the other hand, their yard-trimmings bins, which now get emptied every other week, will be picked up weekly. A small number of multi-dwelling buildings and commercial premises will also be included.

If the project is successful, the city expects to expand it to all residential neighbourhoods next year. This is the second phase of a plan the Vision Vancouver council enacted to aggressively reduce the amount of putrescible material — stuff that goes putrid — going into the landfill. Last year it began to allow raw fruit and vegetable scraps in residential yard trimming bins, following in the footsteps of other Metro municipalities that endorsed full food-scraps recycling. Port Coquitlam started in 2007 and has been followed by Burnaby, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Moody and Richmond.

Vancouver has delayed going to a full food-scraps program to allow the company that takes the material, Fraser River Soil and Fibre, to gear up for the production, said Chris Underwood, Vancouver’s manager of solid-waste management.

The first phase has met with only limited success. About 12 per cent of households recycle raw vegetable and fruit scraps, well down from the 35 per cent the city is shooting for. That may be in part because nearly six in 10 Vancouver homes already have a backyard composter where they dump their vegetable and fruit scraps, Underwood said. “They don’t see a need to put them in the green cans because they already do it themselves,” he said.

It can take years for recycling programs to catch on. It took 15 years for Vancouver’s blue-box recycling program to achieve a 77-per-cent participation rate. San Francisco, which brought in its food-scraps program in 2000, has a 30-per-cent participation rate. Seattle, which began diverting food scraps in 2005, has a success rate of 50 per cent.

But the incentive is there, says Underwood. Fully 35 per cent of the city’s garbage — or about 129,000 tonnes — is made up of kitchen and compostable wastes, he said. Of the more than three million tonnes of garbage produced in region, 55 per cent is already diverted to recycling and composting.

The vast majority of the city’s compostable garbage comes from commercial operations, including restaurants and food-processing facilities. Those companies will be targeted at a later date in the third phase as part of a larger campaign by Metro Vancouver.

Coun. Andrea Reimer said Monday the program won’t affect homeowners other than changing which bin they put their garbage in. She sought to allay concerns that it would draw rats and vermin.

“The really important thing to remember is that between the black bin and the green bin, all of the waste is still there,” she said. “If you’re not having a problem with the food in your garbage bin, you’re not going to have a problem in the bin right next to it.”

Reimer said residents could possibly see their utility rates go down as a result of diverting more material from the landfill.

“There’s nothing about this program that costs more,” she said. “If it is successful, rates could even go down.”

jefflee@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/sunciviclee

Blog: www.vancouversun.com/jefflee

CKNW: City of Vancouver pilot project: Fewer garbage pick-ups, more composting

7/10/2011

Garbage collection in Vancouver could be moving to once every two weeks.

A report coming before city council this week is recommending the expansion of curbside compost pick-up to once a week, which would include any food scraps or waste.

Many municipalities are trying to divert more waste from landfills to save space and materials.

Composting, combined with recycling can divert massive quantities of trash.

Councillor Andrea Reimer says if you think about it, the majority of your household garbage can be composted.

"The idea is to get the food waste part out, along with things like food packaging, so pizza boxes and paper cups and things that might have been contaminated by food, into it's own pick-up."

The report recommends a two neighbourhood pilot project followed by some fine tuning, and a possible city-wide roll-out in 2012.

NEWS 1130: City of Vancouver to expand composting program

To be tested in two Vancouver neighbourhoods this fall

News1130 Staff | 2011/07/10

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - The City of Vancouver is looking into expanding its composting program. The plan involves reducing garbage pick-up to once every two weeks, with compost pick-up increased to every week.

Councillor Andrea Reimer says decreasing garbage removal shouldn't be a problem.

"The part of it that smells and is so yucky and annoying is the food waste part of it," she says. "If you can gather the food waste altogether, the garbage that remains is essentially dry garbage, so we don't have to pick it up as often."

The city also intends to accept all types of food scraps in composting bins, such as dairy, eggs, bread and meat. 

"Something like composting is a no-brainer for us to get moving on," says Reimer. "Thirty-five per cent of garbage generated is compostable. Here is an opportunity to turn it into a resource."

The compost is brought to a processing facility and sold to people who want it for their gardens and landscaping.

A recent survey found only five per cent of Vancouver food scraps were diverted for composting and only 12 per cent of Vancouver households were actually taking advantage of the program.

The City intends to try out its expanded program in the Sunset and Riley neighbourhoods in the fall.

Meantime, Brigitte Pronovost with the City of Port Moody explains they made the switch in January and the quantity of garbage in the first six months of the year is down over 35 per cent.

"I've people come back to me who were very much objecting to it at the beginning, and I've actually had people come back to me and say, 'You were right.'

She adds it takes about a month and a half for people to figure out what to do and how to cut down on waste.

XINHUA: Five Hole For Food scores big for Canadian food banks

by Christine McLaren

VANCOUVER, July 9 (Xinhua) -- "He shoots, he scores" is a phrase that comes naturally to many Canadians who spent their childhood years playing hockey in the streets.

But players in a ball hockey game in downtown Vancouver Saturday afternoon were shooting for a different kind of goal, where the real winners were those in the community most in need.

Over 100 people gathered downtown in support of Five Hole for Food, an annual coast-to-coast street hockey tour that shuts down the streets of Canadian cities and invites the public to bring food or money donations for their local food banks to join in a game of pick-up hockey.

Five Hole for Food was started just last year by Richard Loat, a now 22-year-old Simon Fraser University communications student and hockey fan.

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Loat realized how sports brought an entire country together. He was already planning a road trip across Canada that summer, and decided to spin the trip into good cause by organizing ball hockey games in major cities across the country to create awareness and generate donations for local food banks.

"Last year during the Olympics I saw how hockey not only brought together Vancouver as a city, but Canada as a country, and I thought why not harness that potential and not only give back in my community, but give back in communities across Canada? And thus Five Hole for Food was born," said Loat, taking a minute' s rest from a game Saturday afternoon.

Last year the tour raised 6000 pounds of food for food banks in nine cities across Canada.

This year, their goal was 20,000 pounds. By the time the Five Hole for Food team arrived in Vancouver however -- their final destination on a thirteen-city tour -- they had already received 30,000 pounds in food donations.

Loat said he chose local food banks as his cause because of the time of year, and the immediate impact they have on members of the community most in need.

"People don' t really realize this sometimes, but the summer is the greatest time of need for the food banks because at Christmas and Thanksgiving they have those huge food drives and their stocks are running out by the time that June and July role around. A lot of people go out of town, there' s less to give, so by targeting hunger at this time of year we' re doing something we love and are able to give back at the same time," he said.

Five Hole for Food' s Vancouver stop included a VIP game where local celebrities including city councilor Andrea Reimer, BC Lions football player Dante Marsh, and Olympic athlete Justin Kripps joined in the fun.

Kripps, who competed for the Canadian bobsleigh team in the 2010 Olympics said that it is encouraging to see such support for the cause from major corporate sponsors like one of Canada' s largest breweries, Molson Canadian; General Motors; western Canadian airline, WestJet; and the mobile phone giant, Telus.

He said he hopes to see more events like Five Hole for Food using athletics as a vessel for community service.

"I think it' s a great idea. I think we should use sport and sporting events more often to raise money for charity. I mean, you could use big events like NHL hockey games, or you can do things like this," said Kripps.

"Richard did a great job of organizing the whole Five Hole for Food tour, and there should definitely be more of this kind of event because it' s awesome. It brings people together, and you can get local athletic people in the community to come out and support it," he said.

Mother Wendy Hartley brought her eight-year-old son Aidan -- and four bags of food -- to participate in the game and use Aidan' s love of hockey to teach him about the importance of giving back to use the community.

"Every chance he can get he' s playing road hockey with his friends, and this cause is exceptional: bringing down food for the food bank. So teaching him about doing something he loves while giving back to the community it was like, hands down an event that we were going to be a part of," she said.

And though the Five Hole for Food team might be exhausted after 18 days of ball hockey, Richard Loat says they will back on the road next year filling Canadian streets, and bellies, with goodwill worth cheering for.

"Next year we'll be back at it," said Loats before heading back to the game. "This is going to be an annual tour, so the rest of the country better get excited because we' ll be back playing road hockey for a food bank near you!"

SUN: Don't take feeding yourself for granted

By Derrick Penner Biz 4 Jul 2011 City of Industry

You buy food at your local grocery store, but that's not where it comes from, which is something we should think a little more about at a time when feeding oneself has become a more difficult task in many parts of the world.

I am on vacation this week and am not covering the resources beat, but am keeping up with my reading and thought I'd share some of it to work up a little bit more blogging muscle.

And today, I'm pretty interested in this story by my colleague Randy Shore about local efforts to start the discussion on food security. Say what you want about the appropriateness of Vancouver Councilor Andrea Reimer leading the charge, it is an important topic.

Drought in some countries, floods in others and extreme weather everywhere is hurting crops and harvests in places that are dealing dangerously volatile swings in food prices. I wrote this earlier blog post on how poorer regions of the world are suffering.

Locally, food security starts with realizing that if the food we eat isn't grown nearby, it has to be transported to us, sometimes imported from thousands of miles away. At some point, this puts us at risk of being beholden to producers who raise prices uncomfortably because of crop failures somewhere, or who can't or don't want to sell to us because they're more worried about feeding their own communities.

It is true Metro Vancouver has grown too large to be supported by the rich agricultural lands of the Fraser Valley, and our high housing prices are causing increasing conflicts in the discussion about what is the best use of our real estate. But there are things individuals can do.

If you have a yard, or there is a community garden nearby, and have a little bit of spare time, planting a couple of rows of carrots, radishes, lettuce, that's a step. If you have some help, maybe put up some beans, peas and potatoes.  We used to do a lot more of this.

No, one little garden is not going to make you self sufficient, but this little bit of produce perhaps reduces our need to import a like amount of vegetables from California, Mexico or further away. And it's not just about the efficiency of farmers growing food versus you growing food, it's about remembering where food comes from, and it is not always going to be as convenient as going to the grocery store.

But read my colleague Randy's blog, The Green Man if you want more, he's the expert.

SUN: Eating consciously starts at the dinner table

Can be a deliciously social and political act

By RANDY SHORE, Vancouver SunJuly 4, 2011

 

 

 

Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer (left) is served by Karen Konoval (centre) and Steph Kirkland (right) during the pancake breakfast Friday at the PAL studio.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG

VANCOUVER - Eat together. Could the solution to the vexing challenges of peak oil, food insecurity, food price shocks, diet-related disease, globalization and commodification of food be that simple?

The dinner table is as good a place to start as any, and that’s exactly where about 100 of Vancouver’s farmers, policy wonks, food and poverty activists, non-profit sector apparatchiks, farm market managers, educators and bloggers were this week to knock around some of the city’s goals for enhancing our food security.

Hosted by the city’s food policy advisory council, it was the third in a series of forums convened to hash out the next logical steps toward ensuring people have access to safe, affordable, nutritious food. In amassing the data and strategies contained in the 193-page report How Food Secure Is Vancouver in a Changing World? 2010, dozens of indicators and metrics were considered and employed to create a baseline snapshot of a complex system that includes agriculture, food processing, marketing, access, safety assurance and consumer behaviour that penetrates every nook and cranny of our daily existence.

For you it needn’t be that complicated.

“Our strongest connection with food is in eating it with other people,” said Coun. Andrea Reimer, former chairwoman of the food policy council. “Imagine if the family dinner came back into vogue?”

Any opportunity for extended family, neighbours and friends to bring something to the table to share can only make you more conscious of the food you eat, its origins and its nutritional value, she reckons.

There are skills that need to be recovered in the process. Along with not growing much of our own food for the past 40 or 50 years, we have also fallen out of practice with cooking from scratch, said Reimer, who helped drive the early development of the report as far back as 2007.

Reimer is among those reviving the tradition of canning fruits and vegetables in season with a small group of like-minded people as a way to support local growers and save money at the same time.

But she admits that few of her age group, the 35 to 55 cohort, are actively gardening or practising traditional foodways.

Even if the local food revolution hasn’t fully penetrated the consciousness of average consumers, there is a lot going on — from community kitchens and gardens to a fast-growing local food production and distribution sector as evidenced by the growth of farmers markets — but most of it isn’t well coordinated, said Reimer.

“That’s a role that the city can play, we are pretty good at convening,” she noted. The other tools at city hall’s disposal, bylaws and zoning, are blunt instruments at best.

“There are areas of the city where it’s hard to find good nutritious food so we have to think about that when we are zoning and land-use planning and talking about public facilities,” she said.

“Why wouldn’t we think about a grocer as part of a housing development? But that said, we can’t force businesses to open where we want them.”

The city can, however, make community centres and parks into local food hubs with fruit tree planting, community kitchen programs and community gardens.

Schools across the city are teaching cooking to students even in the primary grades and converting land swaths of playground into vegetable gardens. High schools are developing for-credit courses in food gardening, urban agriculture and sustainability.

The next generation will be more plugged into where their food comes from than the postwar generation of shiny supermarket shoppers and TV dinner kids, though there is some evidence even they are coming around and that people generally understand what it means to be food secure.

Nine in 10 B.C. residents polled by Ipsos Reid agree that it is important that we produce enough food so that we don’t have to rely on imports, an increase of eight percentage points from 2004, the report notes.

A Mustel Group poll earlier this year found that 93 per cent of people in Metro Vancouver agree that it is important to protect local agricultural land.

However, the abundance of supermarkets gives little indication to the average shopper about the vulnerabilities of commercial food systems, in particular its reliance on cheap fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, cultivation and transport, said Brent Mansfield, co-chair of the food council, which advises Vancouver city council on food issues.

“In North America we spend less of our income on food than at any time in our history and we spend less than anyplace else in the world,” he said. Rising energy prices are already moving the needle on food prices generally and extreme weather events have precipitated wild swings in wheat, rice and fresh produce prices since 2008.

He suggests that regional rather than global systems are a safer and more stable approach to ensuring a secure food supply, but consumers need to start making choices that support local systems now to ensure the needed infrastructure is in place when we need it.

“We want people to see that there are ways to eat and to buy food that are more respectful of the planet’s resources,” Mansfield said.

“The Food Secure report and the baseline data it contains will become a living document moving forward, adding trend data as things change. We want to use it as a way to recognize vulnerabilities, but also to celebrate successes as things get better.”

rshore@vancouversun.com

CTV: Police want more access to Vancouver's CCTVs

Updated: Thu. Jun. 30 2011 7:15 PM ET

Every moment of the Stanley Cup riot was captured by cameras, and not just of the smartphone variety; Vancouver police used seven closed circuit surveillance cameras to monitor the mayhem.

The City of Vancouver installed about 100 cameras for the 2010 Winter Olympics to watch high-traffic pedestrian areas, but deactivated them once the Games ended.

Now, Canadian Police Association President Tom Stamatakis says he wants to see cameras utilized "on an ongoing basis in the downtown core, the Granville entertainment district and other areas that are frequented regularly by people for events."

"If we can't have that, though, for sure I would strongly advocate for them to be used during any major event," Stamatakis said, offering examples such as the Celebration of Light, Grey Cup and Stanley Cup runs.

Police say the cameras would help them deploy resources to trouble spots more effectively, but that doesn't sit well with the BC Civil Liberties Association.

Policy director Micheal Vonn said the police argument may sound reasonable, but it doesn't necessarily work in practice.

"The places in Canada we've seen this deployment argument used is places like the G20. There we have a billion dollar security budget, which involved blanketing the downtown core with cameras, and a riot goes on for an hour and a half virtually uninterrupted by police deployment."

Using CCTVs is also pricey. The cost of implementing and monitoring 100 cameras during the Olympics cost about $2.5 million.

Vonn also argues that if the cameras start off being used for deployment purposes, they could still end up serving other purposes.

"The reason why we don't buy that is we cannot point to a policing technology that remains within the four-square of what it was originally designed for."

Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer says police have made similar requests about CCTV use before, but she has only seen evidence that they are useful during large crowd scenarios.

"I haven't seen compelling evidence as to how [CCTVs] would change things in the normal course of events," Reimer said.

She added that CCTVs don't prevent criminals from acting out, but could make it easier to catch offenders after the fact.

"Given the loss of civil liberties involved for all of us who might be on that street… that's not that compelling an argument," Reimer added.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Lisa Rossington

COURIER: Urban picnic among VIVA Vancouver’s outdoor events

City council approved $650,000 for street openings

By Cheryl Rossi, Staff writer | June 28, 2011

Sometime this summer on a city street downtown, a 128-foot long by 14-feet wide stretch of Astroturf will be rolled out for an urban picnic.

“Picnurbia,” an “uber picnic blanket and undulating croquet course,” as its organizers describe it, is just one of the events included in VIVA Vancouver.

City council approved $650,000 in March to support ongoing seasonal openings of Granville and streets in other neighbourhoods to pedestrians this summer.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer says small-scale street and parking stall closures benefit residents, businesses and the environment. “Community gardens are the other spaces where you start to see different cultures, different generations, different incomes all interacting,” Reimer said. “From a cohesive city standpoint that’s huge.”

VIVA Vancouver kicked off last weekend on Granville Street with skateboarding and the Latincouver festival.

Granville between Smithe and Hastings streets will be closed to motorized traffic every weekend and on statutory holidays until Labour Day. Concerts, dancing, and walking tours led by youth are among the activities planned for the busy downtown street. Performances will be held in an East Side alley with the Vancouver Design Nerds building stages and seating for the lane on the west side of Main Street between East Broadway and Eighth. The fire escapes of the Lee Building will be transformed into an installation and a weekly Saturday evening art market starts in the laneway July 9.

A deck will be installed just east of Main on East 14th Avenue to provide a “no-purchase-necessary” hangout, Genus Theatre will cruise around in the group’s cube van and perform five-minute “playlets” on Saturdays, and the Vancouver Public Space Network will roll a mobile digital projection unit around on a cargo bike and invite onlookers to write or digitally draw on buildings on Saturday nights in July.

VIVA Vancouver events near Cambie Village in August include a paint-by-number mural led by Public Dreams and community artists guiding painting sessions for youth on Saturdays.

Using recycled materials, Collingwood residents will transform four parking spots near the Joyce-Collingwood SkyTrain station into a mini plaza Aug. 7 to 14, with attractions including street food vendors and performances Aug. 14 to 28.

VIVA Vancouver evolved out of the city’s Summer Spaces 2009, the 2010 Olympic pedestrian corridors and Rediscover Granville in 2010. It differs from larger-scale car-free days and festivals such as Greek Days because the neighbourhood happenings rely less on entertainment and more on community participation, Reimer said.

Summer Spaces stalled on Commercial Drive in 2009 after business owners complained they’d seen sales drop during consecutive Sunday road closures to cars. But Reimer noted Summer Spaces followed the economic downturn, and she said transit reroutes to Clark Drive caused more problems than Commercial Drive being closed to cars. She added a survey revealed residents loved space to commune on the street.

“It’s a lower-income community, generally speaking, and a lot of people living in small spaces, basements, walk-up apartments, and they were just thrilled to have that outside space available to them,” she said.

For more information, see Vancouver.ca/viva.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

NEWS 1130: National honour for Vancouver seawall

Named best public space in Canada

Andrea Macpherson Jun 28, 2011 10:55:40 AM

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - The number one public space in Canada goes to the Vancouver sea wall.  The positive news is good news for the city and local tourism industry.

Councillor Andrea Reimer says the recognition comes from Spacing magazine's Summer 2011 edition.

"There was a panel and 135 judges that range from architects to urban planners and members of residents associations and Business Improvement Association's [BIA] from cities across the country.  It is fairly subjective what makes a public space.  They were given some latitude on that."

Aaron Jasper with the Vancouver Park Board isn't surprised by the honour.  "I think it is largely the setting that is the main attraction and being around forests.  I think it is quite a unique location not only here in British Columbia, but obviously in Canada.  That is the main draw."

About $5.5 million worth of upgrades were recently done to the English Bay portion.  The project will be completed by July 5th.

 

GLOBE: Green grant to grow grain ‘goofy,’ Anton says

WENDY STUECK | VANCOUVER— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jun. 15, 2011 9:06PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Jun. 15, 2011 9:22PM EDT

She could have planted rhododendrons, roses or potatoes.

Instead, Revel Warkentin turned a strip of her Vancouver yard over to Red Spring wheat, in the process joining dozens of other city residents taking part in a Lawns to Loaves project co-ordinated by Vancouver’s Environmental Youth Alliance.

And Ms. Warkentin doesn’t much care that NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton has called a $5,000 city grant for the project “goofy” and questioned the efficiency and rationale of city dwellers planting minuscule plots of grain.

“For me, this is kind of the reverse of the Little Red Hen,” Ms. Warkentin said on Wednesday. “She did all the work and then nobody got any of the bread – here, everybody comes together and everybody shares in the result.”

A $5,000 grant for the Lawns to Loaves project is one of 16, totalling $100,000, that staff have recommended under the city’s Greenest City program and that councillors are scheduled to approve on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Ms. Anton, the councillor and mayoral candidate, called attention to the grants, singling out the grain project as a waste of taxpayer funds and linking it to backyard chicken coops as evidence of a city government gone to seed.

“To give money to people to investigate growing wheat on their front lawns is just goofy,” Ms. Anton said on Tuesday. “Vancouver gardeners are endlessly inventive and creative and grow all kinds of things – they don’t need taxpayer support to do that.”

Vision Councillor Andrea Reimer called Ms. Anton’s comments “disappointing,” noting that Ms. Anton had voted in favour of the grants program on several occasions over the past two years.

With or without the grant, miniature wheat fields are springing up across the city. Ms. Warkentin planted her crop on an 8-by-12-foot section of her yard in May and expects to hand-harvest the grain in the fall.

Nobody’s expecting to put Prairie grain farmers on notice.

“It’s not so much about food security as it is a symbolic gesture,” said Andrea Bellamy, who writes about urban agriculture and serves on the board of a community garden in her neighbourhood, where she and others seeded a 40-by-50-foot lot with wheat.

Come harvest time, the plan is for all participating growers to pool their wheat, mill it and use the resulting flour to make pizza dough for a community party, Ms. Bellamy said.

The city’s financial support for the program is justified even if small-scale wheat production is unlikely to play a major role in the city’s food future, she maintained.

“The community angle is important – it brings people together – it’s about raising awareness of what we can do in small spaces,” Ms. Bellamy said.

Ms. Anton, meanwhile, says the city should look to areas such as transportation and urban design to meet its green goals and refrain from spending taxpayers’ money on what she describes as frivolous projects.

The Greenest City grants are awarded based on criteria that focus on areas such as reducing city waste, Ms. Reimer said, adding that it’s unlikely that councillors would consider eliminating any project already approved by staff.

“It’s a dangerous precedent to make it into a political process – non-profits and community groups need to know that when they take the time to come up with the ideas and make the application, that there are criteria that are fairly applied.”