This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to participate in the IMPACT! Youth Sustainability Leadership Conference . The conference aims to help young leaders "take their next strategic step for action: to deepen their sustainability understanding, build their leadership skills, and develop or advance projects and initiatives for meaningful change." The conference demonstrated that there are no sustainable actions too big or too small: all are worthy, all are rad and all are important. Moreover, in addition to eating some delicious vegan food and meeting some other sustainably-minded individuals in the community, I got to share my zero waste journey with others. But perhaps most importantly, I learned about some other community-orientated sustainable initiatives and social entrepreneurship actions spearheaded by some very cool folks all over the city. From ethical energy to ethical brunch, here are some sustainable actions percolating across the 613, and perhaps how you ...

WTF!?!?! I just finished reading the article "Katimavik Cuts..." from the Huffington Post ( click here to read ). I don't normally take many political stances but this is just too extraordinary to not talk about. The next federal budget could dictate the existence of the Katimavik program! If you know anything about our office you will know that Katimavik volunteers are the backbone of our operations. They literally make this place work. Without them.... actually I don't even want to think about that right now. Every time a new group of Katimavik volunteers start working for us, I give them the same speech. I tell them that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" (thank you mister Thomas Edison). I tell them that anyone can have a good idea but making good ideas happen is what makes Katimavik so special. And "persperate" they do. Our participants are crucial to several of our programs. This past year we had Katimavik manage our Dum...

Absolutely amazing! I just had to talk about these four Kamloops, BC-based youth who have chosen to take the challenge of living waste free for one whole year. Inspirés par le projet Clean Bin (The clean bin project: http://www.cleanbinmovie.com/ ), ils se sont promis de vivre sans magasinage, articles matériels, ni le luxe des emballages jetables. How many of you (at the age of 18) would have thought that living waste-free for a year was possible? Ça ne m’aurait même pas traversé l’esprit à 18 ans! Almost a year ago, Marie-Pierre and I pledged to live waste-free for two months, which was a wonderful learning experience. Je planifie déjà mon prochain défi de vivre sans déchets lors de la compétition RecycloManie 2012 (devrais-je prolongée mon défi à 10-12 semaines?) Anyone interested in joining me? (I am just saying if these four champs can do it for a year; what’s one or two months?) Check out their blog at: http://nottrashyreport.blogspot.com and encourage them to keep going. V...