Category Archives: Healthy Communities

Composting at 100 per cent at Food Forest

It’s the end of the lunch rush and Food Forest Cafe is buzzing with conversation, so Adam Deck and Katie Tuma suggest we do our interview out back.

Turns out they were speaking literally. We head outside to an open area behind the Water St. restaurant. Three mismatched chairs, which I later learn likely came from a thrift store, are waiting for us.

Next to the chairs are a few orange, five-gallon pails. Katie says there would usually be a lot more. The pails hold food scraps that farmers and gardeners pick up and use for compost, returning the pails later. During an average week Food Forest gives away 18 pails of the stuff, or 90 gallons.

Deck waves toward a brick wall that separates the courtyard area behind this section of Hunter St. buildings from those along Water St.

On the other side of the wall is a large dumpster bin that other restaurants in the block share and pay to have hauled away.

“Because we’re a plant-based restaurant 100 per cent of our food waste can be composted,” Deck says. “So, at the end of the week we have less than one garbage bag.”

That’s less garbage than most households produce. It goes to the curb for pickup by the city, a big cost saving for them and a load off the landfill site.

Food Forest is vegan and gluten free. It’s no coincidence that the plant-based nature of their menu produce minimal garbage. Deck and Tuma are health and ecology advocates first and restaurateurs second.

They met while studying ecological restoration at Fleming College in Lindsay. Inspired by what they were learning. they looked for a way to make a difference on their own. A vegan restaurant run on strict environmental principles was a natural outlet.

Tuma describes their relationship as “partners in life and in the restaurant.”

Food Forest opened three years ago in a smaller George St. location just north of downtown. A year ago they expanded to the 32-seat Hunter St. site, where they have 10 employees.

The restaurant’s fun, quirky feel fits its clientele and its owners’ personalities, but it was put together with intent.

Pine boards used during the interior renovation are all recovered scrap, most of it sourced from Deck’s father, who owns Deck Transport, a third-generation local trucking firm.

“We also do a lot of thrifting,” Tuma says. “Most of our small pots and cups and teapots are from the thrift store. . . . We aren’t really fans of buying all new.”

When possible they go beyond re-use to “don’t use.”

They don’t give out cutlery as part of their busy take-out business. Take-out containers are made from cane juice pulp, not paper, but they would rather you not use them at all. They charge 25 cents per container and encourage customers to bring their own instead.

“After doing a couple hundred of those orders that saves a lot of waste,” Deck says.

“And gets the conversation going,” Tuma adds. “We have really strict policies – our non-straw in house policy; we don’t give out take-out cutlery – things like that those create conversations, which makes some people uncomfortable but it allows us to explain why we’re doing it and that causes them to think about things in a different way.” They buy their organic vegetables locally whenever possible – Jenny Ross of Earth Nook Farm is their main local provider – and manage the entire business with a mindset of being sustainable, waste free and low carbon.

But the key element, they say, is serving only plant-based food.

“In regards to climate change, wth animal agriculture, especially the intense factory farming that goes on, the greenhouse gas emissions are more than all transportation combined,” Tuma says.

They see no endpoint to their sustainable journey.

“It shouldn’t just stop at a green promise or something like that,” Tuma says. “We kind of assess what we can improve on and how we can get the community involved. It’s fun … fun having that role.”

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner.  By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, June 18, 2016.

2015 Report Card

The 2015 Report Card is now available; it is Sustainable Peterborough’s 4th Report Card! It highlights just a sampling of our numerous collective accomplishments. For a full listing of all the sustainable successes reported by our partner organizations, please visit our Sustainable Activities Database.

If you would like a few paper copies of the Report Card, please contact us.

No trees were harmed in the printing of our Report Card. The 2015 Report Card was printed on FSC certified 100% recycled paper, using vegetable inks!

 

Peterborough Renovates Program – Funding Now Available for 2016

The Peterborough Renovates Program provides financial assistance for low to moderate income homeowners in the City and County of Peterborough for necessary home repairs and upgrades, including energy efficiency and accessibility projects, to assist people to remain in safe and healthy homes. Some types of building repairs that may be eligible under this program are: fire and life safety related; heating systems, windows, exterior doors, roofs, septic systems, and accessibility projects.

This program, which is one of several housing programs offered by the City of Peterborough, supported by the City’s 10 Year Housing & Homelessness Plan, provides funding to qualified applicants in the form of forgivable loans and/or grants. Applications will be accepted until fall 2019, and will be processed as funding is available. Funds have been provided by the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario.

Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region is the delivery agent on behalf of the City of Peterborough for applicants from the City and County. For information please contact Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region by telephone (705) 750-1456, toll free at 1-855-750-1456 or by email .

The Peterborough Renovates Program 2016 Backgrounder, included below, provides a summary of the program requirements. This information is also available online with the City of Peterborough as well as with Habitat for Humanity at the following websites: www.peterborough.ca AND www.habitatpeterborough.ca.

Going to EcoSchool

Even from the outside Holy Cross Secondary School doesn’t seem like a typical high school. Once a medical supply factory, the building was “repurposed” in the late 1990s as a school and the Catholic school board’s head office.

Think of it as a large-scale example of recycling – a view that meshes nicely with a bone deep emphasis on environmental responsibility that makes Holy Cross anything but typical on the inside.

Julia Taylor and Mike Halloran are science teachers who help cultivate that green vision. They teach environmental science, organize an Eco School club and appear to function as the school’s environmental conscience at the staff level.

Their enthusiasm has spread across the school community. As a result, Holy Cross has qualified for platinum designation by the Ontario EcoSchools program.

EcoSchools success is based on school-wide commitment. Points are awarded for performance in each of a variety of categories and the total number of points earned translates to bronze, silver, gold or platinum status.

Holy Cross has been an EcoSchool for six years. Five straight years of gold certification qualified the school to apply for the platinum level when it was introduced for the first time last year.

There are nearly 1,800 registered EcoSchools in the province. Holy Cross is one of about 70 designated platinum.

Kyle Morton had a direct hand in that success. A Grade 12 student, Morton spent the fall term working on the EcoSchools certification application and other green projects as his co-op placement.

Morton and Grade 10 students Jose Uy and Emmanuel Pinto are members of the Holy Cross Eco School club. During a late afternoon interview in the empty school cafeteria they talk about some of the projects they’re involved in.

Morton steps out to retrieve one of their composting mini-bins. Attached to the sides of large blue recycling barrels that sit in the cafeteria during lunch periods, the mini-bins are wrapped in green construction paper and emblazoned with the Eco School club name. Students who are already recycling paper and plastic toss food scraps into the mini-bins.

Cafeteria composting is one result of an ongoing waste audit overseen by two Trent University environmental science majors. During the audit Jose and Emmanuel were garbage pickers – mining the school’s garbage for organic waste. A weigh-in of their collected treasure showed that composting would make a difference and the green bin project was born.

It’s one of many the school has taken on. A $1,000 grant from Toyota (students wrote the grant application) paid for 10 native shade trees that were planted behind the bleachers next to the track and athletics field. Water fountains that refill personal drinking bottles and record the number of disposal bottles saved are expected to arrive soon.

There is a butterfly garden on the property and a green roof garden accessible from a second floor hallway. Coming soon: a beehive for the green roof that Taylor said will “have a huge educational component. That leads into our pollinators and importance of pollinators and plants on the property.”

But the project with the biggest impact is a community garden developed in partnership with Calvary Church and the Peterborough Community Garden Network. It is located on the church property next door to Holy Cross.

Special education students collect compost that fertilizes the garden. A construction class built the garden shed. Students start seedlings in the school greenhouse and dozens more are involved in spring planting. Kawartha Food Share and various food banks reap some of the harvest.

Taylor and Halloran estimate that as many as 180 students – nearly a third of the entire school population – are involved in some way.

They say the real benefit of the Eco School approach will come as students inspired by something like the garden project develop a life-long interest in environmental stewardship.

“I kind of see what we are doing as planting seeds,” Taylor explains. “You eventually hope that some of the kids … who hadn’t given that a thought before, maybe it’s something they’ll consider down the road.”

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner.  By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, March 14, 2016.

Energy efficient in the hockey rink of the future

WARSAW – We haven’t met him yet and Brian Millett has already told a joke.

“I’ll be ready to go as soon as I comb my hair,” he says from somewhere back in the Douro-Dummer Township office.

He walks through the door, smiling. He couldn’t be any balder.

Millett manages the township’s recreation facilities. He’s about to lead a tour of the Warsaw Community Centre for a look at some energy efficiency upgrades.

Dave Clifford, the township’s chief administrative officer, has been outlining Douro-Dummer’s progress on an energy management plan, work that began in 2010.

Reducing electricity use is the most effective way for the township to cut energy costs. Five years into the program annual electricity costs have been cut to just under $190,000, a saving of about $30,000

Using 2009 as a baseline, the township set cost reduction targets of 8% by 2014 and 16% by 2018. Clifford says they easily beat the first target and are approaching the second one, two years ahead of schedule.

Energy reduction has since been rolled into a bigger project – cutting back overall greenhouse gas emissions and making Douro-Dummer a greener community.

In that regard, the township is part of a Greater Peterborough Area initiative known as Sustainable Peterborough. The group is developing a Climate Change Action Plan that calculates total carbon emissions – public and private ­- and sets reduction targets. Sustainable Peterborough promotes, oversees and provides technical support to municipalities and has begun working with the private sector.

On the energy side, Douro-Dummer did an audit that identified its two arenas, Douro Community Centre and Warsaw Community Centre, as prime targets for savings.

A few minutes after we meet, Millett is sitting in his pickup truck outside the Warsaw centre, eager to show us what has changed.

Metal halide bulbs that cast a dim, yellowish light were replaced with brighter, high efficiency fluorescent tubes. They use substantially less electricity, even with two extra lights added over each goal area.

A high-efficiency dehumidifier installed in 2014 runs less often, keeps temperatures stable so the ice-making plant is also more efficient and put an end to the white layer of frost that coated two uninsulated interior walls on cold winter days.

Millett is equally enthusiastic about the upgraded soft drink machine. The old one ran 24 hours a day. This one has has a sensor that shuts off the fan once the temperature is sufficiently cool. Every little bit helps.

Those are among dozens of projects, large and small, in the township’s action plan. Solar panels have been installed where possible and as of November all street lights use LED bulbs.

Some potential improvements will take time. Organic waste pickup could make bi-weekly garbage collection possible, Clifford says, cutting emissions from garbage trucks in half.

One innovation targets township residents who were adding to the cost of recycling by tossing beer and liquor bottles in their blue boxes. Now they can separate out those bottles on their own at transfer stations. The bottles are returned and all deposit money is donated to the United Way – $1,800 since the program began last May.

“It seems like a small thing, but it’s something people can contribute to and it’s going to a good cause,” he says. “It’s kind of a little initiative that I think will grow.”

This is the first of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner.  By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, February 27, 2016.