The Film “Clean Bin Project”
I took my 8 year old daughter with me to go see the Vancouver premier for The Clean Bin Project. This is the 2nd time I have seen the film in less than 3 days, and I am happy to report I enjoyed it as much the 2nd time as the first.
Grant and Jen who are in the documentary (Grant is the producer) bring a wonderful amount of energy and enthusiasm to their commitment to zero waste for one year. The project set out on a very simple quest: 1. to produce no (or virtually) no garbage for one year and 2. other then food, buy nothing for one year and 3 (more importantly) Grant and Jen were competing with each other to see who could create the least amount of waste. I won’t give it away who won, but I can tell you it is amazing and admirable how little garbage they created or needed to create when they put their minds to it.
It certainly would take a considerable effort to get my family to no waste. With four kids under 8, the consumption habits are prohibitive and to reason with a child that no new toys should be acquired would be tough, for sure. My 8 year old was asked what she thought about the movie? Her response was very sweet and painfully honest “I enjoyed it a lot, but thankfully mummy is not making us live zero waste!” She got it, zero waste means no stuff, for her.
One of the painfully realistic things about zero waste, you do have to consume less in order to try and achieve “it”. A tough change for our society. One that I am trying to make.
I am not sure if I can achieve zero waste right now, but I am going to try and get it to 90% at home and at work. Stand by for results!
RCBC Conference 2010 at Whistler
Many positive thoughts on the RCBC conference @ Whistler Westin Hotel. By the way, if you decide you don’t need your room tied or cleaned, the Westin will donate $5 to www.carbonneutral.com, seems like a reasonable gift in lieu of making my bed and replacing 1 day old practically unused towels.
In any event, the most postive experience yet (other then Urban Impact winning the Private Sector award – yeah!) was meeting Grant Baldwin and Jenny Rustemeyer a couple who lived waste free for 1 year. Can you believe it? Amazing and inspirational. The premier of the film is tomorrow at the RCBC Conference and the Vancouver Premier is on Saturday May 29 @ Granville 7 Cinema.
The movie trailer: http://www.vimeo.com/3301133
Their website: http://cleanbinproject.com/
I admire and applaud what they have done!
Giving back to the community Urban Impact serves:
Urban Impact had a great session for some staff on setting some BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)’s and we came up with the idea of an Urban Impact event (sports, charity or other). We want to give back to the community and come up with an event that does just that and represents who we are.
First, The event has to represent who we are and what we stand for. Second, it has to give back. And thirdly, we want to raise some serious cash! What will this event be? We don’t know yet, but I am hopeful that the next few months will allow us to formulate a plan for such an event. Any bright ideas, please share! Criteria is simple (see above) and most importantly it has to rock!
Donations instead of gifts
I think I might have tweeted or blogged this before, so sorry for the possible repetition. Rather then giving a gift – a donation to a favourite or local charity is a wonderful carbon reduced and thoughtful gift.
I have bribed my children to accept cash for donations as birthday gifts. Although it is terribly hard for them to get their minds around not receiving the wrapped gift from their friends, they seem to accept it (as long as I promise them a birthday gift of significance) and like the attention they get when other adults applaud their generosity.
Try it, you will like it, and so will your charity of choice.
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Waste Free Lunches
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