The Earth Club Factory and Thoughts for Earth Day

Its important that on Earth Day we should take stock of how we impact our environment and the foot print we all leave behind. The advent of thousands of green businesses has had a great impact on the choices we make. I can simply share a few wisdoms I have gained and some things to watch for in the future.

Firstly my wisdom's.
Getting more for less. This means you save money.

Appropriate technologies are simply that, appropriate. Alas, sometime business will take a fundamentally simple idea and make it quite complicated and mystify if it, probably improve it and make it quite efficient but he price will and justifiably so, be lots. Personally I am fascinated with low tech solutions for sustainable ideas. Passive solar, heat recovery from secondary hot water, proper windows shading and solar reflectors, rain harvesting and the list goes on and on. I believe the internet and especially the Do It Yourself prefix to anything will open a wealth of information that provides help for your backyard appropriate technology projects.

Be concerned about food security and grow food. This will save you money.

The reason I moved to the valley was the abundance of like minded people and boy do we like to grow. But I believe there is a huge missed opportunity in terms of indoor gardening, consider we already heat our homes and fill it exotic house plants. I love the idea of the indoor square foot garden and green walls producing food and herbs for your kitchen all year long. Do not forget your food dehydrators and preserving your food.

Buy local, buy bulk, eat local, shop local and thanks for shopping small business.

Be concerned with the carbon footprint of your consumables. Buying snow peas from China is maybe over the top. Source locally made alternatives for food and consumables and understand that the world would be a better place if money wasn't the bottom line. Support the local farmers markets, cheese producers, butchers and other local farms.

Sustainability should be a top down solution. Government federal provincial and municipal governments need to clearly be leaders and policies should support green initiatives. Cause this will create and save us money

In Germany a grid tie solar system, (to feed power into the grid) is sold to the grid at a premium. Imagine buying power at 10 cents or selling to the grid for 12 cents. This will make you money. Estimates I got at the Globe Clean Energy Conference I was at in March estimates a 30 % yearly growth in Clean Energy Industries. This will make our country our people and businesses money. Read the Comox Valley Sustainability plan and you will see opportunities abound. Vancouver is implementing a minimum Leeds Gold standard in their building codes. In Austria if you buy a house that is a power hog your mill rate reflects that, and you pay more property taxes, but each house is for free given an energy audit at the time of a sale, and huge incentive packages are give to buyers to make the necessary changes and those costs are eligible for financing within the mortgage. And this will save you money. So where the heck is the Canadian and BC leadership. We could do so much more.

Finally whats in the future. Sustainability is mostly a urban issues. I live in the country, I have two pellet stoves, on-demand hot water heat, wood heat, gardens, greenhouse, my own well, propane stoves, generators and it all goes to hell in a hand-basket I will be OK. Imaging a city like New York without power and water for a month. Cities need to liveable, energy efficient, build up public transit, they need green spaces, public gardens plots, secured water, fewer cars and the ability to have the butcher the baker and the candlestick maker on every corner. Cities need to be livable and the suburb mentality as a wasteland of 5000 sq ft monster houses and totally dependent on cars is gone the way of the doe-doe bird. Innovative multi-use zoning strategies create work and living in the same location. Utilities need integrated smart grids that understand the needs of power use and encourage and reward small scale power consumption. Recognize that most of the heroes in sustainability are city applications. If cities are smart we have more time, a better quality of life, a connection to the environment and our place in it and more time to deal with the real things in our life, our loved ones.

The Earth Club Factory is a small store with big dream, built on the principals of biodegradable, sustainable, appropriate technology, organics and fair trade.

Sheldon Rempel
Earth Club Factory

2703 I Kilpatrick Rd Courtenay BC
250 338 7910