GC 2020
657 results found
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Gardens on apartment property
Most 3-storey walk-up apartment buildings have boring empty front lawns. These lawns could be replaced either with garden plots for the inhabitants, or with landscaping of native plantings to provide habitat for birds and insects. Create a system so that if the people in that specific building weren't interested in gardening, their plot would be assigned to other neighbourhood gardeners. (Since you wouldn't want to replace boring lawns with even more boring empty plots of earth/weeds.)
81 votesSeveral private apts and co-ops already have gardens. This is done at the discretion of the land-owner.
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Stop automated sprinklers
I've seen automated sprinklers spraying while it's raining! Encourage people to choose plants that will thrive knowing that summers are dry periods. Or at least accept less-than-perfect lawns for a couple months of the year. I notice this mostly around condos that just have small strips of grass. They should replace the lawn completely with alternate groundcover - nobody uses it as a lawn anyway.
15 votesSprinkling regulation enforcement is
part of Draft Greenest City Action Plan. -
Coordinate waste management truck routes
To reduce vehicle emissions, waste management companies for apartment/condos should be coordinated by route / area. I see several different private garbage trucks drive down the same alleys every day. There is a lot of redundancy and extra traffic to collect garbage when several different companies have bins in the same city block. If only one company were responsible for a whole area, their trucks could travel more efficiently, and the number of miles driven by garbage trucks overall in the city would be reduced
17 votes -
Bike subsidies for low income individuals and families.
It's not always cheap to get a good bike, especially if you have a large household or want to use it for more than just cruising. Having subsidies would encourage more people to take that first step to leaving the car behind.
20 votesThis is a laudable idea, but one that is challenging for the city to undertake. It may be more appropriately handled at a provincial or federal level. The cost of bikes pales in comparison to the cost of cars, so other solutions that increase opportunities for affordable housing nearer people’s places of work will make it easier for residents to give up at least one family car and invest those significant savings in other modes of transportation.
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Assess all green business/economy ideas by eco-equity indicators
At the Pecha Kucha night sponsored by the City of Vancouver to launch this website, Kevin Millsip described the importance of striving for an eco-equitable future: one in which our cities are not only green but just in its ways of providing for people of all incomes, races, and education levels. Let's build a dimension of equity into the green economy we want — healthy, sustainable and inclusive.
21 votesEco equity is addressed through focus on generating job creation opportunities for full spectrum of workers, from high skilled to those with barriers to employment. This is an idea that is included in the Draft Greenest City Action Plan
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46 votes
Requires support from the provincial and federal governments. The draft Greenest City plan will advocate for new sources of funding for improved transit (e.g. congestion pricing, vehicle levies).
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Encourage urban food production
Urban vegetable gardens and container planting can go a long way towards reducing our food miles and our dependence on imports.
Successful projects in Mexico and Cuba show us that we can produce a lot of food in the city proper, so why don't we?
669 votesThe draft Greenest City Action Plan will discuss this in a variety of ways.
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Revitalize the False Creek Flats
False Creek used to end all the way out before Clark Drive as tidal flats 100 years ago, before the construction of a bulkhead near Quebec street to keep the tide back. These tidal flats formed an important estuary system for the salmon-spawning creeks which flowed into False Creek and is essential in bringing back any of these lost streams and the salmon they support.
Deconstruct the bulkhead and allow the tide to wash in and out through a series of tidal canals. The canals could lead to estuary parks where streams like Brewery Creek and China Creek could pour…
70 votes -
Close downtown to traffic like London, expand Park & Ride to compensate
If Downtown were a car-free zone on weekdays, like London, and if Park&Ride were more available including parking getting a free transit daypass more people would use it, and there'd be less cars driving around downtown.
92 votesSome interesting ideas here.
First, a bit of clarification: London doesn’t prohibit cars from entering the city centre; rather it imposes a fee to discourage their use. This is commonly called congestion charging and it can serve multiple purposes: first, it reduces motor vehicle congestion so that the people who really need to drive (e.g. goods movement, taxis, and essential service vehicles) can get around without getting stuck in gridlock; second, it provides a potential revenue source which can be directed to support improvements to more sustainable modes (public transit, active transportation).
Congestion pricing is an interesting idea for Vancouver — both as a means to reduce congestion and to generate revenue to improve transit service. It might make more sense to think about it at the regional (rather than city centre or municipal) level, though, given that it would affect travel patterns across the metropolitan area. It would also…
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Make Longboarding a Legitimate Transportation Alternative
A lot of Vancouverites already commute safely by longboard, skateboards modified for stability at speed. The City should embrace and legitimize this choice of transportation and allow longboarders to be treated like cyclists on the road.
23 votes -
Installing a 50 kw Wind Turbine @ Vanier Park to power the MoV, PSC & MM to showcase wind energy
Vanier Park's ideal location for wind and reducing the GHG's for Vancouver's 3 major museums would not only be beneficial environmentally but would be a major attraction to the public.
17 votesGreat idea. The Vancouver Park Board has examined opportunities for small wind energy generation at locations further west like Jericho.
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Require businesses to be responsible for their own waste
Businesses that create large amounts of waste, and in particular those that encourage littering, such as fast food restaurants, should be responsible for reducing their waste - and for cleaning up what is littered onto City streets. While it is indeed the customers that are littering - it's still the businesses practice of creating large volumes of disposable trash that is the source. If they were responsible for cleaning it up and paying higher costs for its disposal, then they might reduce the amount of waste they produce. Only when it becomes more costly for businesses to create waste than…
234 votes -
Promote electric taxicabs with tax and license fee incentives
One way to get people out of their cars is to make taxis more available and less expensive. And Vancouver's taxi fleets can be made greener by encouraging a shift to Electric Vehicles.
18 votes -
Mandatory 25¢ fee for plastic shopping bags
Encourage shoppers to bring their own bags, and create a shift in retail practices, by requiring a payment for every disposable shopping bag.
334 votes -
Provide online tools to help people educate their friends, family, and networks about green actions
The Sierra Club develop presentation tools for Ottawa's curbside organics collection program. People can use these to give 10-minute presentations in their community to educate others to "do the right thing". Similar tools could be developed for backyard composting, waste reduction, commuter cycling, energy conservation, , etc. Think Toastmasters with a mission.
2 votesVancouver has a One Day campaign and other on-line tools, as do many other organisations in the community. That said new tools will also be developed to support the Greenest City process: http://vancouver.ca/oneday/
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Provide recycled paper bins, not bags, to encourage paper recycling
Currently the bags get blown away in the wind, fall over. It's quite hard to keep them around. Bins for paper, similar to blue bins, would be much better
8 votes -
Granville bike/walking corridor
Granville street was happily car free for years. Cars fluidly use Seymore and Howe for accessing the Granville St. bridge. Let's eliminate the road and parking on Granville St. and replace it with a two way bike path, gardens/parks, public gathering areas and outdoor eating. Having an alternative transportation area in the core of our city will be a strong symbol of our goals.
5 votesThe Rediscover Granville program was a big success in 2009, and the City will be looking to continue and build upon this work in future years. More broadly, the draft Greenest City plan will include directions to explore pedestrian-only and pedestrian-priority streets in the downtown core. Potential locations will be identified at a later date (e.g. as part of the transportation plan update).
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Label local/green building materials.
I would choose local/green building materials if there were some system of assurance. I would prefer to buy BC wood/materials for my house.
7 votesThe City is supportive of building materials labeling however not in our jurisdiction to implement this.
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Mobile bike mechanics on the bike routes: create licensing and locations
Use the model Beijing has for bike repair people. There are bike repair carts along the major bike routes in Beijing. These carts can do most minor repairs on the spot and help you get to work. If you break down along the way, you can give them a call on your cellphone and they'll bike over and fix you up. It would be nice to have designated locations along major bike routes and business licenses for this type of entrepreneur.
12 votes -
Develop a directory and/or application that helps consumers choose sustainable products and services
Imagine just selecting the 'green directory' app and being able to find sustainable businesses in the local area? Or finding a product in store and being able to look it up immediately to find out what it's sustainable qualifications are? There are a lot of people out there actively seeking out sustainable products and services, but there are a lot more who are engaged and interested - but just not sure where to start. People are creatures of habit, to motivate them to make changes you need to make it EASY for them to do so! I'm not saying it's…
11 votesThere are multiple green building product and services directories that already exist in Vancouver. www.sustainablebuildingcentre.com and www.metrovancouver.com/buildsmart
