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Today is July 1, and that means North America’s first ever carbon tax will take effect in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The carbon tax, introduced in the Feb. 19 budget, taxes carbon-based fuels like gasoline, diesel, natural gas and home heating fuel. The rate of taxation is $10 (Can.) per ton of greenhouse gases generated. The carbon tax will rise $5 a ton for the next four years until it hits $30 per ton in 2012. The tax increase works out to an extra 2.4 cents a liter on gasoline, increasing to 7.24 cents per liter by 2012.
The government has said all carbon tax revenue (roughly $1.8 billion over three years) will be returned to British Columbians through reductions to income and business taxes. But with rising gasoline prices, the addition of the new carbon tax will certainly be making some British Columbian drivers cringe when they fill up at the pump.
By Olga Orda •
June 15, 2008
A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch
For all those days when you believe your green values aren’t aligned with your workplace but you can’t - or don’t want to - make the eco-entrepreneur step, here are some immediate action steps to try out at the office this Monday.
Remember: while many green teams start from humble beginnings, they can grow exponentially - pent up passion for green amongst employees can be powerful driving force.
By Olga Orda •
June 6, 2008
Image source: it all skyrocketed with Gutenberg’s printing press…
A Green Printer dispatch.
Ever wondered how much energy and thought it took to produce that shiny brochure your marketing staff handed to you this week? And no, it’s not just the brand and visual design genius we’re talking about.
Let’s face it: making a few pieces of paper look pretty takes up some pretty hefty resources and the paper and pulp industry is there [...]
By Olga Orda •
April 15, 2008
We’ve come this far in our exasperation with junk mail-apalooza and now people are luring us with cold, hard cash (or the beauty of planting a tree) to get us to stop receiving virgin-forest-eating junk mail.
By Olga Orda •
March 29, 2008
Uber heavy hitter John Macdonald, Chairman and CEO of the Vancouver-based solar energy company Day4 Energy, recipient of eight honourary degrees and former MIT professor, knows a thing or two about renewable energy.
He also readily admits, with a signature askew smile and hearty laugh, that “being an academic is possibly the worst possible preparation for the business world,” and endorses a strong marketing presence in any renewable energy start up because the engineers “can’t seem to understand why somebody wouldn’t want this marvelous invention!”
It’s 7:52pm Wednesday night at the venture capital-esque forum put on by the VEF on CEO War Stories.
By Olga Orda •
March 29, 2008
Image source: http://timblair.net | Lights out for Sydney, Australia 2007
An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
Earth Hour is tonight, March 29th from 8 to 9 pm. The idea is to turn off the lights as a symbolic gesture that us citizens, business owners, uber-corporations (hello, Google’s black screen, hello McDonalds in Toronto saving 10 000 kilowatt hours) local governments and non-profit groups are taking climate change seriously.
Despite gripes that Earth Hour falls on the NCAA basketball regional, it’s lights out for over 23 major cities worldwide like Toronto and Bangkok.
By Olga Orda •
March 17, 2008
Image source | www.jiinjoo.com
An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
When asked: how “green” are you, the brains behind accounting, IT and architectural firms who, kudos to them – both the closet greens or eco-warriors who proudly bear their eco-badge on their sleeve – jump up to say that they are helping their clients drive sustainability solutions.
Even lawyers are realizing their impact on their environment. No seriously, lawyers are sharp enough to know that using all that virgin paper cannot be good to the environment.
But when it comes to driving internal sustainability initiatives? Many still respond by: “we recycle”. Period.
‘UniverCity‘ might sound like an imaginary place, a conceptual model confined to the framework of academia. It is, however, the name of a very real community located in Burnaby, British Columbia. UniverCity came into being through a 1995 agreement between Simon Fraser University and the Province of British Columbia, in which forested land owned by the university was exchanged for the right to build new housing near the University campus. The 820 acres transferred from the University to the City of Burnaby became part of the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area.
UniverCity recently received the 2008 National Planning Excellence Award for Innovation in Green Community Planning from the American Planning Association (APA). Utilizing mixed-use planning principles, the finished project will consist of several neighborhoods, each with its own town square, as well as its own school, community and childcare center, and parks. Once completed, UniverCity is expected to house 10,000 people on 200 acres.
By Olga Orda •
March 3, 2008
Photos by Chris Jordan | “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption”
Design Goes Green - The first of a series of articles by Green Printer on the cross-section between the environment, business and the creative communications industry.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, used or unwanted electronics amounted to 1.9 to 2.2 million tons in 2005, with most of that ending up in landfills. We did a post earlier on the how the chemicals that seep into the soil, even decades later, can have harmful human health effects and the fact that heaps of the stuff are often left abandoned in developing countries.
By Olga Orda •
February 25, 2008
Warning: so, as the video and Oprah’s darling du jour and guerrilla closet warrior Peter Walsh so clearly outlines, our pack-rat habits are making us chubby. They can also be a barrier to us going green. Not surprising, did you notice that your lean and toned friends also tend to have pretty darn spotless, sustainability-forward and organized homes, while your plumper friends tend to lavish in “chaotic creative” spaces. Hmmm…
By Kristin Dispenza •
February 19, 2008
Sustainability Victoria, in partnership with ICLEI/Local Governments for Sustainability Oceania, has been encouraging developers to work in accordance with the ICLEI’s Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Capacity Building Program. This program promotes a ‘bottom line’ that incorporates three measures for success: environmental, social, and financial. In 2004, the City of Victoria requested proposals to redevelop a 15-acre harborfront site using the Triple Bottom Line criteria. Windmill Development Group, partnered with Vancity (Canada’s largest credit union), produced the winning proposal, and the partnership began work on the development of a new-urbanist style community called Dockside Green.
Today is July 1, and that means North America’s first ever carbon tax will take effect in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
