Want to give and accept reduction this season? Here are some ways to do it

Hello, people! This is a weekly newsletter on all things environmental, where we prominence trends and solutions that are relocating us to a some-more tolerable world. (Sign adult here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.)

This week:

• How to remonstrate your family to give fewer gifts
• Power move: The descending cost of battery packs
• A B.C. association proves that electric atmosphere transport is possible

How to remonstrate your family to give fewer gifts

‘Tis a deteriorate for celebrated expenditure — a new consult by consulting association Accenture found a average Canadian skeleton to spend some-more than $700 on holiday purchases this year, about a same as in 2018.

What’s a environmental impact of shopping and gifting all that stuff? On Black Friday, protesters around a universe took to a streets to lift concerns about consumerism and a impact on a climate. Meanwhile, according to a attention announcement Plastics le Mag, 90 per cent of a toys for sale now are plastic, and many aren’t recyclable.

Many of us would like to cut back. But it can be formidable to remonstrate your family members, who competence feel that giving expensively is what a holidays are all about, and that fewer gifts meant reduction fun — generally when children are involved.

Sarah Herr, a plan partner for Living Green Barrie, formed north of Toronto, is good wakeful of this. She recently hold a seminar called “Greening a Holidays,” that enclosed tips on how to assistance your family transition to greener gifting. Here are some of her suggestions:

• Let them know we wish to be some-more aware about present giving. You can do so by essay a post on amicable media or essay a Christmas minute or email to your desired ones, including how we are changing your holiday traditions to engage reduction waste.

• Tell them since we are doing things differently. Let them know your concerns about environmental pollution, meridian change and waste.

• Provide alternatives. Your family will be most some-more approaching to get on house if we let them know about new ways to give.

And what are some swap ways to give that we could advise to your family?

What on Earth? readers had copiousness of suggestions, some of that we’ve already shared. Here are a few more:

• Lois Hosein suggested regulating leftover fabrics to make useful gifts such as pyjamas and aprons, and seeking kids to make booklets of “helping tickets” for their parents, with promises such as “I will take out a recycling” or “I will feed a cat.”

• Chris Lemphers was among several readers who make free donations in lieu of gifts. He wrote: “This year a family finished a corner grant to a Nuu-Chah-Nulth Economic Development Corporation girl micro financing module by a Anglican Church. This module provides seed income by tiny loans.”

• Debbie Kinsey pronounced her family has motionless to give “action gifts” only, that could embody tickets to a play or unison or even help, such as gardening or babysitting. (“It unequivocally takes a vigour off an already bustling season,” she added.)

• Several readers suggested used gifts, including Annie Sirois: “This year, I’ve bought my partner a retro Nintendo gaming console and will give it to him in a strange box.”

• Aniko Varpalotai pronounced that instead of everybody exchanging gifts, her extended family does Secret Santa draws among groups of 7 family members, with a $50 or $100 limit.

Herr had one correct final suggestion: “Know that we don’t have to do it all. You can use this holiday deteriorate as a transition year, so your family understands what your new traditions competence demeanour like.”

— Emily Chung

Reader feedback

To start, we wanted to put out another call for your environmentally disposed New Year’s resolutions. We will tell some of a responses in a entrance weeks.

Also, a QA with Queen’s University Prof. Brant Peppley on hydrogen vehicles final week generated a lot of reader questions about a intensity and pitfalls of this technology. We will be responding some of those queries in a followup square on hydrogen energy in an arriving issue.

Email us at whatonearth@cbc.ca.

Old issues of What on Earth? are right here.

The Big Picture: The descending cost of battery power

Battery energy is a pivotal member in efforts to decarbonize a world’s economies, either it’s used to electrify transport or strap solar and breeze energy some-more effectively. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in 2010, a cost of producing a kilowatt hour of energy with a lithium-ion battery was, on average, some-more than $1,100 US. But in a indirect decade, a cost has depressed dramatically to $156 — an 87 per cent drop.

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around a web

• Taking movement to hindrance meridian change works. Want proof? New investigate published in a biography Environment Research Letters shows that a 1987 Montreal Protocol, that was dictated to hindrance ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), actually slowed tellurian warming. Thanks to that agreement, normal tellurian temperatures currently are reduce than they would have been though it.

• Greta Thunberg is Time’s Person of a Year. Is anyone surprised?

• As meridian talks continue in Madrid, a European Commission has set out a bold, extensive plan to make a EU carbon-free by 2050. The 50 routine measures will hold each aspect of a economy, and embody a 100-billion-euro account to assistance countries that are some-more contingent on hoary fuels make a “just” transition.

• Here’s a startling fact: More land is now being deserted by farmers than is being converted into cultivation worldwide. The routine of “rewilding” enables inlet to recapture biodiversity, and researchers contend that a trend of land abandonment provides “an rare event for ecological replacement efforts to assistance to lessen a sixth mass annihilation and a consequences for tellurian well-being.”

Look during it go: B.C. flyer shows electric atmosphere transport is possible

It was a brief though ancestral impulse on a Fraser River progressing this week as Vancouver-based Harbour Air finished a entrance exam moody of what aims to be a world’s initial entirely electric blurb aircraft.

Harbour Air owner and arch executive Greg McDougall took off solo in a splendid yellow retrofitted DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver boyant plane, and spent 3 mins in a atmosphere over Richmond, B.C., before encircling behind and alighting in front of a throng of roughly 120 onlookers and media.

“It was good, like a Beaver [a single-engine de Havilland plane] on electric steroids,” pronounced McDougall, after a flight. “It was really well-spoken and a lot quieter than a piston [engine], that’s for sure.”

McDougall’s moody is a initial practice in what is approaching to be a two-year routine to get a e-plane approved for blurb use.

Harbour Air partnered with Seattle-based association MagniX 11 months ago to pattern a e-plane’s thrust system, that is powered by NASA-approved lithium-ion batteries that were also used on a International Space Station. 

“It’s a prototype, for sure,” pronounced McDougall. “But in each approach it’s a high-tech square of equipment, that is kind of mocking deliberation a airframe that it’s trustworthy to is indeed one year younger than me — 62 years old.” 

MagniX CEO Roei Ganzarski pronounced Dec. 10, 2019, will go down in story as a start of a electric aviation age, and believes a e-plane will eventually change how people transport by creation short- to mid-range flights some-more careful than driving. 

“It means we can stop pushing for three, five, 7 hours to get to a end since there’s no other approach to get there,” Ganzarski said. “It means we can fly in a tiny aircraft from a tiny airfield to a tiny airport…. It’s faster, cheaper and some-more available than any other process of travel, including going with a customary airline.” 

According to Ganzarski, a electric engine in a e-plane is a customary pattern that was blending to work reliably on an aircraft to yield a energy and torque indispensable to fly, though during a smallest weight.

McDougall pronounced there will be dozens of exam flights to come to accommodate a acceptance requirements.

“Today is a milestone,” he said, “and this aircraft is now a test-bed for all a things we need to do to get a regulatory side of it finished as well.”

— Karin Larsen

Stay in touch!

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Editor: Andre Mayer | Logo design: Sködt McNalty

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-newsletter-fewer-holiday-gifts-1.5394194?cmp=rss