GC 2020
44 results found
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Educate consumers about soft water detergent usage
Vancouver's water is softer (contains few or no calcium or magnesium ions) than water in other areas. Softer water requires less detergent when washing clothes or dishes to achieve the same cleaning effect. Residents should be made aware of this to reduce the amount of detergent used and flushed down the drain every day. Consumer education can be achieved by information sheets in libraries and community centres and/or through mandatory product labelling (e.g. information on detergent containers or stickers on new washing machines).
0 votesMetro Vancovuer has an education program for this issue.
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elevated covered bike lanes
BISU: bike super hwy! elevated, covered bike routes that connect all municipalities and are 4-lanes wide and lit up at night. designed by architects from europe, or frank gehry. will set the standard for the car-less phase of human evolution... sponsored by companies that create contemporary self-powered vehicles suitable for the Bicycle Super Highway.
31 votesAn interesting concept, but extremely expensive, challenging to integrate into neighbourhoods and difficult to ensure flexibility to serve as broad a range of users as possible.
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Make some supermarkets only local food!
You can bulid super markets only offering local food, and organic food, and for extra make the roof solar power and cover the roof's edge with vines and cool plants! Who is with me?!
23 votesThis is a business decision that would be under the discretion of the owner
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Use alley ways as bike trails/lanes
Cyclists often fear vehicle traffic. Why not utilize wide uncluttered alley ways as bike lanes or routes for cyclists to travel on. The minimal vehicle traffic in alley ways is already slow moving. If a few of these bike trails are established in a few city wide corridors it could drastically increase downtown cycling. Instead of taking up more road way, just use the unused alley ways!
28 votesThe Greenest City team does support the idea to make make laneways and alleys more pedestrian (and bike) friendly environments, while maintaining essential functions (e.g. access for loading, parking and waste collection). Having said that, laneways aren’t ideal as designated bike routes for a number of reasons; perhaps most significantly, they don’t allow for safe (signalled or otherwise) crossings from one block to the next.
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Sewage Treatment options
There are efective natural ways to treat grey and sewage waters without dumping them into our enviroment without anything but primary treatment. One idea I read used water hyacinth to pureify the water, as the sewage runs though the ponds with the water hyacinth, the plant absorbes all of the waste products as well as any impurities, the result is pure water, yes you have to invest in holding ponds, but as the Hyacinth grow they consume CO2 reduing that green house gas, in fact the plants in the study I read were mulched and used to produce the gas…
20 votes -
Ban Smoking in All buildings and Public Spaces
The only exception would be open spaces on private properties.
16 votesSmoking is governed under Bylaw #9535. City of Vancouver has no jurisdiction over the use of personal barbeques.
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Trust & Beauty in Water
Rainwater collection should be mandatory on all commercial and community builidng with a filtered system that feeds the water to taps or fountains at street level. These should be designed and maintained so they are attractive to passersby, thereby the quality of the water won't be questioned. FREE, CLEAN, POTABLE WATER!
31 votesThis would pose serious water quality issues due to the potential for contaminants.
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Provide rental property owners with small tax break if they provide garden plots
The city could provide a small tax break (or waive a percentage of the business license fee perhaps?) to rental property owners if they allowed residents to create garden plots. This would be particularly helpful for residents in the West End, where demand far exceed capacity.
47 votesA number of apartments provide renters with garden plots already as this improves local neighbourhood, security, and public health.
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City Employees Are City Residents
If unable to mandate that city employees reside in the City of Vancouver, create incentives for its employees to live in the City that they get paid to make better. Including teachers, police and firefighters. Besides recyling tax dollars, it will encourage employee buy-in to the health and vitality of Vancouver, and shrink the collective footprint of City staff commuters.
7 votesThe City of Vancouver is working toward creating complete communities throughout the city so that all residents can work, live and play within walking distance of each other, and that people can afford to live in the community in which they work. The City can’t mandate where staff choose to live.
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Green Light District #2
In verdant solidarity with greenest city objectives, city streetlight covers should be adjusted to cast a green glow, a night-time reminder of our greenestcity status.
1 vote -
Green Light District #1
Create green light district, a place where you can go and, for a small fee, rent a vehicle, and drive it knowing that you safely do it without stopping or fear of being ostracized. I would suggest a re-purposed marine drive or great northern way. The go-zone would help frustrated drivers satisfy driver freedom urges, and in the process, unwind the tension on our roads, and ultimately, make cycling safer too.
1 vote -
Grave Maize
Plant Chilliwack corn in mountainview cemetery. This large dead space in the middle of the city already supports an underground economy. Cornrows would fit nicely between the tomb, ensuring Vancouver’s children of the corn will have locally produced superfood. And we don’t have to burn all that nasty fossil fuel to get the maize in from The Wack. Triple Sweeeet.
7 votes -
build a landmark green building Art Gallery
a vibrant art community brings a cultured and an educated population. Vancouver is still a bit of a wild west cowboy town with little in terms of arts
we need a new art gallery. make it bold, make it spetacular, build it along the water, make it the city's next landmark. not like the library that is lost in the surrounding. we have the luxury of a waterfront - think Sydney Opera.16 votesWhile this idea is too specific to be included in the plan, the draft Greenest City Action Plan does discuss the construction of demonstration projects that can be case studies for the industry to learn from.
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Subsidise local small and family farms
The farmers market is great! But ridiculously expensive, making it a trendy outing for the elite - rather than a truly useful lifestyle choice available to all. Most people don't know that the reason the GMO / hormoned up / poisoned with antibiotics and mostly imported farm food you can get at Safeway is so cheep is because big factory farms are for the most part subsidized by our governments. If local and regional farmers were subsidized in such a way, an over-all better quality of food would be more readily available - and more people would make the choice…
44 votesDirect subsidies unlikely; however the City can support local farms through a local food procurement policy, which is addressed in the draft Greenest City Action Plan.
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Education is key, subsidize trainings in Permaculture Design Courses
Bring leaders from the Permaculture feild to Vancouver. Support people to take such courses like the one that UBC farm just kicked off.
http://permaculturedesignubcfarm2010.eventbrite.com/
Train children, School farms.
I'm going to Southern Oregon to take this course in two weeks,
http://www.restorationfarm.org/Restoration_Farm/Courses.html
would be nice to have such leaders come here and train. Often in the trainings a portion of the training will be spent transforming a peice of land into a ecological sustainable edible garden.
I am confident that we could become the greenest city, but to do that we will need millions of people working together.
Build healthy soil.
5 votesPermaculture and other landscape programs are available to the community are offered by various non-profits and community food groups.
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smoke-free housing
Create incentives and initiatives to encourage and support lung-friendly, affordable multi-unit housing (rentals, co-ops, and condos), which would include bans on smoking, barbecues, toxic scented laundry products, and other common, difficult-to-avoid domestic pollutants so that people with respiratory disabilities can finally have a safe place to live. No one should have to choose between having their health and having a home.
19 votesSmoking is governed under Bylaw #9535, City of Vancouver has no jurisdiction over the use of personal barbeques.
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Covered cycling routes
The need for an efficient and safe network of cycling routes is a given, but what about the rain? The problem is how to get people out of their cars and on to their bikes/electric scooters during the long and wet winter months. I would propose running a covered cycling route along every tenth street. A tastefully designed rain canopy could be built wide enough to shelter two lanes of bike traffic. (Half of the street could be left uncovered, and restricted to local cars.) It seldom rains hard enough here to discourage a cyclist on a three-minute jaunt, but…
15 votesThis would be extremely costly to implement. Yes, cycling traffic does go down on rainy days but many people have demonstrated a willingness to ride in inclement weather. Cyclists in European cities continue to cycle in all types of weather. It just requires a change of mindset.
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Vancouver Horse Network
Let's reintegrate horses into our transportation plan! Imagine it - stables on each block, dedicated horse lanes, manure turned into valuable compost, natural exercise and healthy thigh muscles, job creation, reduced car use, animal therapy... there would be so many advantages! Bring back the horses, I say!!
10 votes -
Start using salt water rather than fresh water for sewage systems.
Instead of flushing with fresh water we could be retrofitting and designing sewage systems to utilize brackish water. 30% of the world’s population lives near coastlines and everywhere we flush our most precious commodity, fresh water, down the toilet. Making this change to the City’s public washroom facilities, for instance, would make Vancouver a truly innovative, leading city. Salt water sewage treatment has now been recently been studied and successfully engineered at the Centre for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Texas, so it can be done.
23 votesSalt water is very corrosive and would cause piping to deteriorate very quickly. Plans are underway to allow the use of non-potable freshwater for flushing more easily.
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Sustainability is not possible in an environment of economic growth
The best way we can keep our ecological footprint from taxing more and more of the the planet .... is to stop growing our ecological footprint. Economic growth must stop. Lose the illusion, you simply cannot flaunt supposed "sustainability" PR in a city whose economy depends on perpetual economic growth, this is an oxymoron.
12 votesThis is very important context in which to think about our greenest city work, however it is difficult to figure out how to integrate this into a 10 year greenest city action plan in one municipality. This idea has been shared with our green economy working group as well.
