GC 2020
657 results found
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Allow an abundance of transportation alternatives
Where are all the taxis? Cab licences are artificially capped by the City and transit is a monopoly. In many cities around the globe, commuters are offered a range of options including share-taxis, jitneys, pedicabs, shuttles, and executive buses. Like telephone and airline services have shown, de-regulation improves service, increases use and reduces cost.
15 votes -
Green school/Demonstration Centre
The two biggest barriers I see for people choosing to ignore green principles and continue in a throw away mentality is 1) Education 2) Ease of change. People need to understand and it has to be cheep and easy to do---guess what, It is!!!!!! Lectures, pamphlets, workshops--these are all good things--but seriously lets stop yapping and just start doing and showing. There is no better way of understanding what and how things can be done then by actually doing it. By sight, by touch and by participating.
Lets build a demonstration centre on a vacant lot which aims to discover…15 votesA key strategy to meet the 2020 targets is education. The Draft Greenest City Action Plan indicates the City’s intention to support and encourage educational and training opportunities.
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Make public transportation truly PUBLIC again
Translink is a private company doing a public service. Public transportation would be better for the people, and greener for the city, if it was run by the people/city instead of by this company who has not much more than profits on the brain.
42 votes -
9 votes
The majority of existing brown and greyfields in Vancouver fall under existing redevelopment plans.
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Expand the Current Blue Box Recycling Program and Offer it to Local Businesses
In many of my former workplaces, there has been little to no recycling of plastics, metals, glass and other recyclable materials for there was no collection program in place. Businesses should be required to pay to sign up for a blue box program that is connected to the residential one, and they could receive greater fee rebates the more recyclable materials they divert from the landfills.
21 votes -
Celebrate Sufficiency
Over-consumption is at the heart of many of our environmental problems. One way to induce a reduction in consumption is to celebrate our sufficiency. Sufficiency, in this case, refers to a sense of completeness or wholeness. If we feel complete, there is less of an inclination to fill our faces with stuff we don't really need.
7 votesThis idea will be considered in the framing of the ongoing engagement work on the greenest city.
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Solar/Electric Powered Buses
Get more solar or electric powered buses to lower vehicle exhaust and decrease Greenhouse gases
12 votes -
Increase overnight rates for energy consumption in offices
Every night thousands of lights, computers, printers and other office equipment are left on needlessly in empty office buildings across the city.
By imposing a tariff on this sort of waste, business might be forced to evaluate their policies and work to reduce energy waste.
Of course, some equipment must be left on – servers, refrigerators etc. – so the tariff would need to scale and offer exemptions for critical equipment.
BC Hydro estimate that 40% of employees in B.C. leave their computers on after working hours and this wastes 500 gigawatt-hours of electricity (http://www.bchydro.com/powersmart/technology_tips/managing_energy_costs/computer_power_management.html?WT.mc_id=b-10-08_computers)
82 votesBC Hydro and other energy utilities make rate proposals to the BC Utilities Commission who are the regulator for energy rates. For more info check out: www.bcuc.com
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Community-led, City-funded Neighbourhood Beautification!
Dedicate a City fund to neighbourhood beautification led by citizens. The city becomes more beautiful and residents have ownership over spaces in their neighbourhoods. A win-win approach with resilient outcomes.
Projects could include: developing park spaces, recreation spaces, depaving, constructing community gardens, building simple community space infrastructure, creating public art, etc.
Citizens would approach the City department with requests for beautification projects in their neighbourhoods providing project details and numbers of volunteers available. The City would assess the project for cost and effectiveness. If approved, the City would provide skilled supervisors, tools, a project schedule and infrastructure funding. The citizens…
14 votes -
planting
What is with the crazy lead photo on the Talk Green to Us page?
Is that a cement mixer spewing ready to eat crops (I see tomatoes ripe) into a box over pavement while a crew...does what?Realism about growing local food will get us there, having deep respectful collaboration with regional farmers, and a reciprocal relationship with the resources (nutrients as well as food) in the surrounding, protected, and arable lands.
5 votes -
Expand current blue box recycling
Expand what can be recycled in the blue-box containers (eg: tetra-paks, plastic bags / wrappers / film, and other plastic types)
Personally, I would prefer to see a reduction in the use of plastic shopping bags. But in the mean time...it would be great to be able to recycle them effortlessly & easily.
15 votes -
2000W society
To be the best, look around at the competition (friendly competition -- the other green cities of the world), and make sure you're at least matching the best policies out there.
For instance a number of cities in Switzerland have put 2000 W mandates in their charter. A "2000 W society" is a nice framing of the common objective of averaging less than 2kW per person. A 1 t (ie per year, per person, of CO2e GHGs in this case) society might be more climate relevant.8 votes -
Ban any EPR material from being commingled in single stream totes. Specificaly packaging materials!
Ban any EPR material from being commingled in single stream totes. Specificaly packaging materials!
5 votes -
Celebrate water! Rain water, river water, ocean water -- let's treat it like we love it!
Some ideas for celebrating water might include...
- Making beautiful rain-powered water sculptures as public art
- "Daylighting" our lost creeks
- Creating new "creeks" (swales) and ponds to manage our stormwater
- Making sure our rivers and ponds and coastlines stay/get clean enough to swim in and fish in and play in again
What are your ideas?
16 votesWhere possible, streams are being daylighted http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/cityplans/stillcreek/index.htm, swales and infiltration bulges are being installed http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/design/green.htm, rainwater is incorporated into public art at the Marine Drive Skytrain Station
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Require all properties to capture rainwater/manage rainwater runoff on-site
In a city like ours, we should not be letting valuable rainwater sheet off the sidewalks and streets all winter, while we use drinking water to flush our toilets!
While this ventures into the territory of the provincial building code, the City of Vancouver can show leadership in requiring all buildings to capture and manage rainwater run-off on-site (e.g. through rainwater cisterns, stormwater planters, rain gardens, bioswales, etc.). There are many policy precedents for this in Germany, and excellent examples of beautiful rainwater management in Portland.
Reducing stormwater runoff will reduce incidents of sewage overflow (combined sewer overflow events) into…
19 votesThis is captured in rezoning requirements. The City has also developed a Waterwise Landscape Guide http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/guidelines/W005.pdf
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Improve sewage treatment
Currently, the treatment plants of Iona and Lions Gate are only primary and yet to be upgraded. Secondary treatment is the Canadian standard for cities, and when Vancouver reaches that we'll just be average. A Greenest City would have tertiary treatment of its sewage, and should be a primary goal. Innovative technologies should be explored and developed in Vancouver on a larger scale to set an example, and to market to other cities globally. One example is a Solar Aquatics system (http://www.ecological-engineering.com/solaraquatics.html), as demonstrated in Bear River, Nova Scotia.
20 votes -
Change traffic laws on bikeways
Now that we are investing in improving our (already mostly amazing) separated bikeways, it's time to change the laws on them to reflect the reality that riding a bike is different from driving a car, and the rules of the road were made for cars. I am tired of explaining to people who have never ridden a bike in the city why it's not feasible to stop at every stop sign, esp when they are quiet 4 way stops, at the bottom of a hill, etc. There seems to be a backlash among drivers that cyclists are out of control…
52 votesThe City recently began implementing 30-km/h speed limits on local street bikeways.
Other measures may require changes to provincial legislation. In these cases, the City’s role will be to advocate for appropriate changes to the legislative framework around cycling.
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Switch all municipal buildings off fossil fuels
Half of all greenhouse gases dumped in the city of Vancouver come from burning natural gas in buildings. The amount is unchanged in 20 years. City government should lead the way by fuel switching all buildings it controls to use much cleaner BC electricity. Almost 60% of energy used in buildings is climate damaging fossil fuels. We need leadership from the top to highlight the need to change this.
9 votes -
Promote car pooling and/or ride sharing programs
There are a number of car pooling and/or ride sharing programs in Vancouver but they are not being used by very many people. If the City of Vancouver promoted them, they could reduce a very significant number of car trips.
Some examples include: carpool.ca; ride-share.com; ride-club.ca; car-pool.ca; erideshare.com; carpoolingnetwork.com; and shareyourride.net.
8 votes -
Create a new area in Playland for human powered amusement rides
The City of Vancouver owns Hastings Park and is creating a master plan for the Park, the PNE, and Playland. The current version of the plan calls for an expansion of Playland, which goes against the Greenest City Goal, unless... a new section of rides was created that were completely human powered. It Vancouver approved it, it would be the first truly green amusement park in the world.
There are many examples of individual human powered amusement park rides but nowhere in the world have they been assembled together to create a green amusement park.
16 votesVery interesting idea. The planners for Hastings Park have looked at these type of amusement parks. Thanks for your interesting idea. We will share it with our project team. In our research we have run across something similar to your suggestion: check out Cyclecide http://www.cyclecide.com based out of San Francisco, operates the countries one and only pedal-powered carnival midway. Check out http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_profile_bicycle_rodeo.html
