Community members and website visitors of The Green Rocket – we thank you for your patience and understanding while our website is getting re-designed to maximize it’s user-friendly capacity and engagement of the Kitchener-Waterloo community and it’s sustainable resources!
 

Come back soon, and check out our Create and Collaborate section in the meantime to see the
many ways you can be a part of The Green Rocket.
We look forward to hearing from you!

– The Green Rocket team

With a concern for public awareness and sustainability, the Region of Waterloo has authored a comprehensive and accessible strategic plan to tackle environmental issues within the Waterloo region, entitled “The Region of Waterloo Environmental Sustainability Strategy”. The Green Rocket KW’s Content Development Manager, Jill Kolb, provides an overview of the document in this post.

The three R’s : Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We’ve had it drilled into our heads since grade school (speaking for Canada here). But have you ever sat a moment to consider each of the acts? In this post, Nicole McCallum breaks down why Reduce is the most effective of the three.

As the electric car makes its way back onto the market, researchers can’t seem to agree on the benefits of plugging in versus filling up. Nicole McCallum provides a history and overview of the electric car, and summarizes the discussion.

Industrial environmental standards have grown in importance and national focus in recent years, providing an opportunity to improve standards to yield both health and environmental benefits. James O’Shea from the maacenter outlines the impact and health consequences of inadequate industrial standards.

There’s a petition going on at Care2 right now to stop Iceland’s whale hunting.  As The Green Rocket recently released a strongly opinionated blog on this topic, I was pretty excited to see the online community taking action.  As I was signing the petition, my co-worker made a provocative comment:  “In the context of the world, is 50,000 signatures really going to matter to Iceland’s minister?”
Indeed, 50,000 signatures–the petition’s goal–does seem small in that context.  Perhaps it will mean nothing.
But consider it in another context: It’s 50,000 people who are …

In the previous two articles it was shown that there are some possible benefits of coal combustion–but CO2 emissions are still a major issue. Nicole McCallum concludes this three-part series with the question: Does the coal industry have the potential to be a part of the climate change solution?

AmericasPower–one of coal’s most vocal supporters in the U.S. strongly believes coal has a role to play in the future as America’s largest source of electricity generation. Nicole McCallum provides a discussion-provoking article that looks at the question: “Does clean coal currently exist in the U.S.?”

Coal is one of the largest sources of energy for electricity generation worldwide, accounting for half of the electricity generation in the U.S. As a fossil fuel, burning coal for energy creates vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, including its major component carbon dioxide (CO2). Nicole McCallum looks into the “clean coal” debate a little deeper.

Loblaw-owned grocery chain Zehrs celebrated Earth Day today with a bang by implementing a new policy to charge customers 5 cents for every plastic bag requested. Nicole McCallum presents information about the policy and its background.