Green Drinks is a monthly meeting of people interested in sustainability and the environment, and is usually free of themes or agendas. This week, however, there’s a special focus on Metro Vancouver’s ‘Zero Waste Challenge.’

Change is a-comin’ for New West’s garbage pickup. Sadly, it’s not text-message reminders on garbage day (I always forget!). Starting next year, New Westminster will begin replacing our aging fleet of garbage trucks with automated trash pickup – and potentially also begin integrating a kitchen waste collection program.
Trash, and what to do with it, is of great concern right now in the Lower Mainland as a whole. It’s not just a question of whether to bury it, burn it, or truck it to the United States. It’s a question of how …

Our family is not as green as we’d like to be, but little by little we’re trying to change our habits. We’ve dug up our front garden and filled it with herbs, lettuce, strawberries, brussels sprouts, tomatoes and beans. We try to turn off the lights in empty rooms and don’t run the tap when brushing. We compost and we recycle. And now, we have a clothesline.  
A few weeks ago, Will came home with a couple of metal poles salvaged from a discarded chain link fence on the …

 
New Westminster is working on a new sustainable development plan for our downtown area thanks to a $136,000 grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities‘ Green Municipal Fund. 
The plan will guide development in a proactive manner by identifying policies and implementation strategies to ensure sustainable growth of the downtown as a high quality, liveable, transit-oriented regional town centre.
The plan will:

Review land use/zoning policies
Research innovative ways to provide public open space
Foster adaptive reuse of heritage resources
Identify options to mitigate the noise, air quality and connectivity issues relating to the regional goods movement …

In my mailbox today, I got a little piece of paper that appears to be junk mail. Upon further inspection, it was a blurb from the Metro Vancouver letting me know they are seeking to amend their solid waste plan, by exporting our garbage to the United States. The Cache Creek landfill, long one of the Lower Mainland’s dumping grounds, is closing down in 2010 and the powers that be apparently went, “Huh. Well. What are we going to do wih all that garbage?”
So they have two proposals they want …