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How can we reach our 2020
Greenest City Targets?

GC 2020

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178 results found

  1. Ban garburetors - they waste water and put waste in water

    Change the building code to ban garburetors. Organic material shouldn't use drinking water to be conveyed to the sewage plant for treatment, it should go in a composter

    26 votes
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  2. 24 votes
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  3. Create a "Greenest Block in the City" award - winner gets a kickass prize!

    Modelled after Greenest Block in Brooklyn, where every block in Brooklyn competes to have the best gardens and grow the most food - friends in Brooklyn go nuts for this - lots of fun - winning block gets a great prize like street improvements from city - see"http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/08/presenting_the.php

    24 votes
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  4. Cultural Sustainability Ambassadors

    Vancouver has one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in Canada. Each cultural population responds to municipally-led sustainability challenges or requirements differently. In some ways, different immigrant populations have more sustainable living knowledge and experience than the mainstream Vancouver culture, in some ways they have less.

    The City needs to engage different cultural communities uniquely, determining which approaches work best for which cultures to ensure the uptake of sustainability initiatives -which approaches will be meaningful to which communities.

    Examples of this include identify existing social leaders in cultural communities (ethnic, income, age, ability, gender, etc.) and support them in order…

    24 votes
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  5. Create local food distribution system

    We have a back/front yard garden that grows primarily produce. Some years, like this one, the yield is pretty meager. But other years, like last summer, we have WAY more produce than we can possibly use, even with constant canning.

    I typically start giving away the extra to unsuspecting friends and neighbours, but I would love to have a way to sell it.

    Most back-yard gardeners don't produce enough produce to go to the trouble of selling it, but if there was an easy way to sell the excess into a system that could then combine it with the produce…

    24 votes
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  6. Attractive Sidewalks *

    Beautify pedestrian ways to attract more walking, with:
    - rainbow / sparkly sidewalks in high traffic areas
    - sidewalk canopies: tree overhangs, resident-owned PV
    - incentives for merchants to beautify their sidewalk area
    - neighbourhood identity expressed by residents' design for sidewalks
    - textured pavement to define pedestrian areas, or neighbourhoods
    - "pedestrianscape" that allows the pedestrian to explore a delightful journey as the travel past varied points of interest along their walk
    - sidewalk cafes, laneways pubs / cafes / restaurants
    - separate lanes for pedestrian, wheeled traffic: rollerblading & skateboarding, bikes, cars
    - buffers between separate lanes of…

    23 votes
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    The quality and attractiveness of the pedestrian experience is a primary consideration in public realm planning and design. However, there is an opportunity to be more creative in the design of specific elements, such as sidewalk materials, and incentives/requirements for pedestrian-oriented building design and facade improvements.

  7. Solar Water Heaters on roofs

    Change the building code to allow solar water heaters on residential roofs,

    23 votes
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  8. Ban all and any fireworks!!

    [Idea submitted via email by Michael Csupak]

    I encourage you to educate yourselves about pyrotechnics.

    The “Festival of Lights” I believe it is called is a large scale pollution, initially the atmosphere, we all breathe the air, then the particles will settle in our waters we drink and the fish lives in and in the soil we grow our food in and so on. The chemicals used in the fireworks are poisonous and some cases are RADIOACTIVE. A very good scientific study was produced by the University of Vienna, sighting much of the specifics.

    Concentrations of similar explosives used by…

    22 votes
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  9. 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 votes
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    Eco 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

  10. Reuse centres in every neighbourhood and at Waste Disposal Sites and Transfer Stations

    Hornby Island does it, so can we! The idea is simple - create a designated place for people to drop off useful items for other people to take home, for free. Yes, it requires a little bit of management to make sure our community spaces don't get over run with old computers, but this can be a great way for people to get stuff they need, and to reduce waste going to landfill.

    Fernwood, in Victoria, has a little gazebo in their neighbourhood square to drop stuff off. Montreal has the legendary ongoing, city wide, garage sale. And Hornby Island…

    20 votes
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  11. Grants for passive houses and buildings

    The term Passive house (Passivhaus in German) refers to the rigorous, voluntary, Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint.[1] It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling.[2][3] A similar standard, MINERGIE-P, is used in Switzerland.[4] The standard is not confined only to residential properties; several office buildings, schools, kindergartens and a supermarket have also been constructed to the standard.

    20 votes
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  12. Municipal Control of Blanket Speed Limits

    Limit motor vehicle speeds in the metro core to 40 km/h.
    Place a 30 km/h speed limit on all local residential and collector streets.
    Speed reduction is essential to ensure the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

    19 votes
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    This is a policy direction that was adopted in the 1997 Transportation Plan. Staff have since been in discussion with provincial officials about legislative changes to support municipal control over blanket speed limits. Unfortunately those changes have not yet been adopted by the province.

  13. Create a Separated Bike Lane on Commercial Drive

    Commercial Drive is a destination shopping street in Vancouver's east side. It is already a popular route for cyclists, but there is currently no cycling facility provided.

    The current route network lacks sufficient safe links to shopping destinations. A new separated bike route on Commercial Drive would address this issue and encourage new cyclists. As cyclist traffic increases, local businesses could also benefit from new the new street traffic.

    19 votes
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    The city’s new 10-year cycling program master plan will soon be in development, and hopefully completed within the next year. A big part of the work ahead is to identify where separated bike lanes might be appropriate.

    Lessons learned from the downtown trial will be an important input into the plan. The results so far support evidence elsewhere that separated bike lanes are a great way to make cycling more attractive on busy streets.

    For more information, visit http://vancouver.ca/cycling .

  14. Enable home and building owners to retrofit existing buildings for energy efficiency

    Instead of building it all from scratch, let's fix what we already have... Low hanging fruit here. Maybe we need to tie retrofits to property tax bills to create the right incentives.

    18 votes
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  15. Heat pumps not electric baseboards in all new homes!

    Electric baseboard heat is the single largest use of electricity for most condos. They are egregious wastes of electricity and provide inferior heating characteristics. Virtually all are installed with manual thermostats which wastes much more energy. If programmable heat pumps were required as the building code standard electricity consumption could be reduced dramatically, and heat pumps also have the ability of providing air conditioning during our global warming summer heat waves.

    18 votes
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  16. 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 votes
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  17. Utilize responsive upzoning

    De-regulate neighbourhood zoning to allow an intelligent mix of services, work and residential opportunities. Permit networking and sharing of services to balance heat with cooling, production with consumption and waste with resource.

    16 votes
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    Zoning and other bylaws, codes, and guidelines that determine the scale and form of new development, are often re-examined through community, central area, and city-wide planning initiatives (e.g. Cambie Corridor, Neighbourhood Centres) and typically with the intent to ‘upzone’ and be more responsive to changing community needs and preferences.

  18. Cool roofs to combat the "heat island" impact, and save energy and reduce emissions

    From July 22 "Science News" (everything old SHOULD be new again...)

    Global model confirms: Cool roofs can offset carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate global warming

    Light-colored roofs and pavements would help in 2 ways. First, the "urban heat island" effect would be mitigated. Second, by reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space, the whole globe would, on average, become a bit cooler. In terms of CO2 emissions, an offset of two years worth of emissions could be attained. Provided of course, such a huge amount of light-colored stuff can be produced and installed in a carbon-neutral manner.

    Can light-colored rooftops…

    16 votes
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  19. Create a Senior Citizen's Sustainability Advisory Panel to mobile seniors knowledge on sustainabilty

    Not sure that more degrees/planners is gonna make much difference...need solutions now...I say learn from the Cuban urban food production experience - they turned to the knowledge of all the seniors in Havana who knew how to grow food as most grew up in rural areas prior to revolution and then migrated to cities. WIthin 6 months, local seniors were teaching ourses at universities while the food geneticists and experts were in teh classroom learning how to do things without oil/fertilizer. There are many seniors in Vancouver who know how to grow food, fix machinery and make the most of…

    16 votes
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  20. 15 votes
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