The King’s Green Pad

The City of Edmonton is currently offering a $75 rebate for residents who purchase a Energy Star rated high efficiency washing machine. This is an attempt to encourage people to “preserve the environment.” The city’s environmental plan, “The Way We Green,” is the driving force behind this program, offering information on how adjustments in our [...]

So, after a bit of a hiatus, I am back blogging for the Green Pad. It took some cajoling, but here I am. Last night my friend and I attended a play at the Citadel Theatre. I noticed that in the washrooms they have a “green” form of paper towel that uses 80% less water [...]

On a recent vacation to Mexico, my husband and I took an excursion to an eco-reserve, one of the few places left in Mexico where the hotel industry has not gobbled up the beautiful coastline. Driving in a convoy of jeeps, we had tour guides explaining the ecology of the area as we stopped to [...]

Can you keep a secret? I’m a bit reluctant to tell you this, because I work at a place where a lot of people have embraced the Christian mandate for creation care, and I’m kind of embarrassed about what they might think of me. Well, okay, here goes – I’m flying to Mexico at the [...]

I am grateful for the ability to smell the fall leaves accumulating on the frosty ground, thankful for the trees that shelter us from the heat of the summer sun and the leaves that find their winter home, sheltering the undergrowth from the harsh Alberta winters. I am grateful for the ability to see the [...]

While driving to work one bleak winter day back in 2007 I happened to hear an interview on my favourite radio station (CBC 740) that surprised and startled me. The featured lunch hour guest that day was the president of a small company called Energy Alberta. Energy Alberta (since acquired by Bruce Power of Ontario) [...]

The other evening I was watching a show based out of the UK, hosted by Jamie Oliver about the conditions in which egg-laying hens are raised, ranging from battery cages to free-range. The treatment of the chickens in battery cages was appalling, all in the name of giving consumers what they demand, the lowest prices [...]

While the science of global warming is mostly settled, the controversy among the press, the general public and our political leaders can be expected to continue until people see the new technology having many benefits in addition to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For one thing, cyclical phenomenon such as volcanic eruptions, La Nina [...]

“willful waste, makes woeful want (traced back to 1576) those who waste will want; the less we waste ,the less we lack in the future; if one is not wasteful then one will not be needy” The expression ‘waste-not, want-not’ has had an over-shadowing influence on the way I have lived my daily life. This [...]

Thursday, June 11, 2009, The Edmonton Journal printed Doug Flood’s Letter to the Editor. It was titled Milk Container Deposit Scheme Costly – Just Ask a Grade 5 Student. Doug explains how the new program instituted by the Alberta government allowing consumers to refund their milk container deposits at bottle depots will “…generate 22,000 tonnes [...]