Derek E. Silva

It’s been a while since I’ve found some really good initiatives that I thought London, Ontario and Canada at large should be adopting or plain old ripping off. After all, I’ve never seen a government agency claim intellectual property (IP) infringement if someone else began doing the same thing, so why shouldn’t we?! This type of stance has been brought forth by Shawn Adamsson very recently.

Food 2030

The UK government recently unveiled Food 2030 – a food strategy designed to ensure that Britons have access to high quality, sustainably farmed/grown, food that benefits both the farmer/grower and the consumer. At the same time Food 2030 should ensure that people have good jobs, a reduction in greenhouse emissions and food waste. (more…)

Seeing as we have entered construction season here in Canada (a.k.a. spring and summer), I thought it prudent to collect some things that other cities have been doing that I think we ought to be implementing here in London (in some cases especially since we’re known as the Forest City) and other Canadian cities ought to be at least contemplating.

Let’s start with a great example from Vancouver: The roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre has been turned into a green roof. What does that mean? (more…)

As a follow-up to my previous post, A Sustainable Food Cycle, I have done some research recently in the interest of covering some more ideas surrounding the subject. Talks from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, pro-business magazines like Fast Company have both been covering the topics recently and I think it’s worth noting. Admittedly this entry will not have nearly as narrow a focus as part 1, but I don’t think that will really matter.

First off it’s worthy to note that Fast Company, a magazine & website all about business innovation, recently put up an article entitled the Ten Best Green Jobs for the Next Decade. The very first job listed? Farmer. Why? Because the move to a sustainable food cycle invites urban/vertical farming to be a part of the solution. Translation – we’re not going to replace the farmers we currently have, we’re going to offset the lack of supply during non-growing months. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Indeed, it may be high time for a former client of mine to realize his dream of it “being a good time to be a farmer” fairly soon. And the message that Mark Bittman, cookbook author, journalist and TV personality, has been espousing recently just lends more credence to that. (more…)

One of the largest contributors to problems in our society in general has got to be the way we’re eating right now. There are people in Canada who crave things like watermelons, cantaloupe and pineapple even in the middle of winter. Clearly none of those things can be grown in either Canada or the US in January without being grown in a greenhouse, so typically those fruits and others are flown/trucked in from thousands of kilometres away.

The result is a vastly inefficient food cycle. Things are even poorly managed locally during the past few years. E. coli outbreaks, listeria, salmonella, etc. The solution? It may be vertical farming. (more…)

Although I tend to shy away from such groups simply because no one activism group really fits my opinion on topics or the extremities of where they go with their opinions and actions, I would very much like to congratulate Maude Barlow and being named the UN’s first water adviser.

Maude is the chair of the Council of Canadians which, among other things, has been looking for leadership on the issue of water and the sustainability of some of our practices for some time now. Finally someone as realized that Maude has some very important, intelligent and insightful things to say on the issue and has recognized her for it in one of the best ways possible.

So congratulations Maude, make us proud!

Thumbnail photo on homepage taken by KaterKate.