planted city

From The Georgia Straight:

Hunter Moyes arrives at Harvest Community Foods (243 Union Street) laden with tiffins—round, stainless-steel food containers—that the grocery store/café will be selling as part of the Tiffin Project. The initiative is Moyes’s recently launched eco-baby, a bid to eliminate disposable restaurant takeout containers and to support local agriculture.

Moyes sits at one of the café’s outdoor tables and chats with earnest sincerity about how the project came about. As a chef, he was appalled at the number of disposable containers used for takeout and leftovers. He had his own tiffin that he was using as an alternative when he carried out, but wanted to find a way to spread the gospel to other consumers.

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The concept is simple: consumers buy tiffins from participating restaurants or from thetiffinproject.com/ and then get discounts on their food when they put the tiffins to use. The containers are $26, with $4 of that amount helping restaurants buy from local farms. Moyes will work with restaurants on an ingredient-by-ingredient basis, getting them to switch to a local producer by subsidizing the cost difference.

“Localizing food and agriculture is very in line with our values,” says Sarah Wagstaff, operations manager of the Noodle Box (1867 West 4th Avenue and 839 Homer Street), during a phone chat. The restaurant chain received an email from Moyes about nine months ago and immediately responded because they had been doing their own research for a similar concept. As well, since customers were already informally bringing in reusable containers, becoming tiffin-friendly just made sense.

“We go through 750,000 noodle boxes a year. That’s a huge amount,” says Wagstaff. While their containers are compostable, Wagstaff is eager to reduce this number by providing customers with an incentive to switch to the tiffins. They’ll get $2 off their first food bill with the purchase of a tiffin, and $1 thereafter.

Other establishments that have said yes include Nuba, the Waldorf Hotel, Edible Canada, Fable, the Stock Market, and Tacofino, and more are on the way. Moyes does concede that some restaurants may be hesitant about joining because, ultimately, liability rests with them when it comes to consumers bringing in outside containers. The Noodle Box runs the tiffins through its dishwasher before filling them up as an extra precaution.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Personal note: I’ve been taking glass and rubber lidded containers along with me when picking up take out from restaurants in my neighbourhood for several years now. Usually, the restaurants are cool with it, especially if I mention it over the phone when ordering. They’re saving money on packaging after all! But this project takes it to a whole new level. Really hope it succeeds!

Related:

• Carrotmob buycott to hit Vancouver’s Cascade Room’ (Vancouver Sun)

(Infographic source: The Tiffin Project)

From CBC:

The average gas mileage of new cars and trucks in the U.S. will have to nearly double by 2025 under regulations that were finalized Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The new rules will require the fleet of new cars and trucks to average 54.5 miles per U.S. gallon (4.3 litres/100 km) in 13 years, up from 28.6 mpg (8.22 l/100 km) at the end of last year.

The regulations will bring dramatic changes to the cars and trucks in U.S. showrooms and drive automakers to introduce new technology to make vehicles cleaner and more efficient.

The Obama administration says the changes will save families more than $1.7 trillion US in fuel costs and bring an average savings of $8,000 over the lifetime of a new vehicle sold in 2025. The standards also are the biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said.

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The 54.5 mpg standard came from the Obama administration’s quest to cut carbon dioxide emissions nearly in half by 2025. The gas mileage is what’s needed to make that cut.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic source: NRDC)

My two bits: Building cities and towns where getting around by foot, bike, and transit is both easy and enjoyable is obviously a big piece of the puzzle. But, given that tens of millions of people currently depend on cars for transport this is a significant development. It’s also encouraging to see Obama putting forward an firm, demand-side solution to reduce both fossil fuel energy consumption and climate change pollution.

A quote from the Forbes article, ‘Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year’.

Related:

~ Bicycling Magazine’s new ranking of ‘America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities’.

(Photo credit: Bicycling Magazine)

Infographic: Green Home Improvements That Pay You Back

(Source: One Block Off The Grid)

3D map shows the huge solar potential of New York City rooftops

From Sustainable CUNY:

The NYC Solar Map is an interactive online tool that allows users to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in New York City’s five boroughs by inputting an address. The map also highlights existing solar installations, displays real-time solar energy production citywide, and allows users to estimate the costs, incentives, and payback period for investing in solar.

Check out the solar map here.

(Video credit: Reuters)