This week I received a green bin at my home; it was just outside my door and all the way down my street. It seems my neighborhood was added to the next 50,000 homes enlisted into the regions “Green Bin Organic Program” which started in October 2006 in 5 neighborhoods totally 5000 homes.
The Region of Waterloo’s Waste Management Division is implementing an organics collection program. This program is similar to the Blue Box program, except it collects household organic materials such as food scraps and paper towels in green bins. The Green Bin program …

Ontario Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller is encouraging the province to amend its policies and better protect the Waterloo moraine based on points released in his annual report at the end of September. He mentions the policies are missing crucial measures critical to protecting natural heritage.
Gord Miller:
The Region of Waterloo has the best water conservation plan in the province, but is it enough? There’s tremendous growth pressures driving up against natural limits, and do we recognize those natural limits.
My concern is that our land-use planning system is still based in simply identifying …

Harold Albrecht, Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Conestoga, on behalf of Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, announced funding from the Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk with $7,989 in federal funding which will support environmental action focusing on conservation and protection of species at risk and their habitats, helping to preserve Canada’s biodiversity.
Harold Albrecht, Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Conestoga:
As part of the International Year of Biodiversity, we are proud to support Canadians protecting species at risk. The City of Kitchener’s project will empower Canadians with the skills to become better stewards of …

Martin Neumann, a supervisor with the Grand River Conservation Authority, overlooks a project that will raise a flood plain Carolinian Forest from what was previously a 23-acre cornfield in south Kitchener near Pioneer Memorial. Trees Ontario, a non-profit organization, provided $30,000 in support of the planting. The GRCA has planted 26 million trees since the 1930s and has increased forest cover on southern Ontario’s biggest watershed to 19% bringing them to just over half their goal for achieving a healthy watershed of 3o%.
The Conservation Authority will plant about 15,000 trees …

Earth Day began in the U.S. in 1970 and has grown to a worldwide environmental movement. As many as six million Canadians will participate in Earth Day events around the region and there’s lots of ways to celebrate Earth Day this week, including:

Community Cleanups: The cities are looking for organizers of local cleanups around the region throughout April. Kitchener is providing free garbage bags and gloves and tip sheets. Tim Hortons is also giving away prizes and supplies to organizers. For more information, visit kitchener.ca/earthday, waterloo.ca, or cambridge.ca.
The Living Earth …

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.

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.

In the recent decades of globalization the tourism industry has been quickly expanding. By making wise choices as a consumer of tourism facilities/services, you can help sustainability continue to increase as a defining principle of the tourism market.