SUSTAINABLE LIFE

Water is moved around the world in commodities.

Hidden Streams

Water is embedded in and enriches nearly everything, including food. Agriculture accounts for a staggering 92 per cent of the rain, ground and surface water that people consume, most of it pumped for irrigation to produce cereal grains, meat and milk. This crucial reliance on water faces big challenges; a […]

Heidi_Landscape_960

Meet 6 Environmental Grads

Evan Hall BScH, Environmental Science, Queen’s UniversityPostgrad certificate in Environmental Visual Communication, Fleming College Current Job: Marketing and communications officer, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF)

Hospital food

When’s the Last Time You Visited a Hospital for the Food?

This past June, while attending a food-related conference in Burlington, Vermont, I inevitably found myself looking for somewhere decent to eat near campus. After asking around a bit, I was surprised to hear how many people recommended the hospital. Hospital food generally evokes the same reaction as airplane food. It’s […]

Eco-polymaths, illustration by nik harron

The Genius of the Generalist

Predicting the best career options for the next four years, or the next 20, seems next to impossible these days. Today’s postsecondary students are overwhelmed with choice, anxiety and the worst job prospects in three generations. The current youth unemployment rate for Canadians ages 15 to 24 was 13.2 per […]

Mike Morrice and Priyanka Lloyd from the Sustainability CoLab.

Change Agents

At first it can be tricky to pin down what Sustainable Waterloo Region does. That’s not to say the volunteer-fuelled non-profit doesn’t share its own success story well. It’s that SWR’s influence is naturally understated, an unseen support beam to the goals and achievements of other businesses trying to cut […]

DIY Solar Water Heater

Solar Water Heater

THE 31st annual Hillside Community Festival at Guelph Lake Conservation Area in Ontario made a notable addition to its clean-up crew this year. After 10 years of dreaming up plans, a small team of volunteers led by Nick Dalton of Magda Farm constructed a solar-powered water-heating system for dishwashing that […]

Newfoundland root cellar

Deep Green: Newfoundland’s Root Cellar Renaissance

To be brutally honest, I actually don’t believe in sustainability at all. I confess! The trend currently identified as “sustainability” would simply be called using common sense if either of my grandmothers were to offer their posthumous opinions. While it is true that new technologies and radical innovations might sell […]