Posts Tagged ‘Sustainability’
ThredUP misses the point of thrifting
ThredUP is an online shop selling secondhand clothing. Veiled in the rosy rhetoric of sustainability, savings and style, their Facebook page preaches, “get thrifty with it!” Online thrifting seems like a godsend, and maybe it could be, but thredUP is not it. No one will deny that reusing clothes is better than tossing them. The concept seems sound. Send in your old…
Read MoreGood People Doing Good Things: Lily Barraclough
Lily Barraclough has a lot on her plate: she’s a student, she volunteers with multiple organizations and she’s a program coordinator for iMatter. Barraclough came to Halifax in 2016 and started her student life in the Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College. Now, in her third year of her environmental science, and…
Read MoreSustainability not just a society
Sustainability is one of those words you’ve probably been hearing a lot lately. That’s because, with issues like climate change, people are coming together to figure out what can be done to achieve sustainability. Changes can occur on the individual, local, regional or even international levels. They’re happening in Halifax. Campus causes for climate change…
Read MoreDalhousie on track to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets
Rochelle Owen, the director of the Office of Sustainability at Dalhousie University, says she’s confident the university can meet its greenhouse gas reduction target of 50 per cent by 2020, and net zero by 2050. According to its last greenhouse gas inventory, Dalhousie University emitted 98,659 tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2014-2015. These are gases…
Read MoreDIY renewable energy
What do an old bike, water jugs, a steel rod, a generator and a car battery have in common? A group of mechanical engineering students at Dalhousie are using all of them as part of a renewable energy project. They’re also using a few other materials and bits of hardware, but the essence of their…
Read MoreBrianna Maxwell shares some sustainable life hacks
Brianna Maxwell’s garbage fits in a jar. So far it’s a couple tags, some Band-Aids and a plastic straw. Maxwell has been living a sustainable lifestyle for several years, but in January she decided to take it one step further and challenge herself by starting a zero-waste project. She finds creative ways to re-use, replace…
Read MoreKing’s students grade Halifax on climate change
Two students from the University of King’s College are giving Halifax a C+ for the city’s work on climate change. First-year students Lilian Barraclough and Cameron Yetman started collecting data this fall to generate a climate change report card for Halifax as part of a campaign called iMatter Now. iMatter Now was started in the…
Read MoreCycling through the snow
It’s not easy to miss the bundled-up cyclists on the Halifax streets. Wearing bright colours, reflective tape and, sometimes, goggles, they seem to be out even in the foulest weather. If you’ve seen the recent video by 22 Minutes, “Hinterland Who’s Who: Winter Cyclist,” you might even have had a good laugh about it. But…
Read MoreDal students work to further UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
For Paul Bissonnette, the adventure started in summer 2016. Two weeks before he was scheduled to be in New York for the World Merit 360 conference, the fourth-year chemistry student loaded a hundred pounds of gear onto his bicycle, including solar panels and air-quality measurement instruments. He jumped on a ferry to Portland, Maine, and…
Read MoreOutdoor adventuring made easy through new gear library
Evan Groen was patching up a pile of tents donated to the Dalhousie Outdoor Society (DOS), when he came up with an idea. Here was all this gear, sitting around, not really being used. What if he started a gear library? The system would be similar to the Dalhousie Bike Centre: gear, loaned out to…
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