Think Globally Act Locally | The Power Of R

We live in one of the most beautiful regions of the world; full of natural resources, wealth and opportunity. Rethinking our day to day routines and actions is difficult because we aren’t required to think about basic essentials like food and water on an hourly basis. On April 30th however, my belly was grumbling and food was at the forefront of my mind. I joined about 25 students from GP Vanier in the 30 Hour Famine in support of World Vision. The day was remarkable in more ways than one.  

I was invited to speak at the event by Sylva Wiedeman. Sylva is the student government minister of social justice and the environment, and she is now sharing in the success of raising $1845 with her friends. “I saw the amount of money we raised I was very humbled,” Wiedeman told me, “as we got hungrier and hungrier many of us became much closer and just super stoked about all the money we could donate to World Vision.” This kind of energy, passion and excitement is what, I believe, makes good people. They define their own goals, change their behaviors and revel in their defined successes. Many of the young adults at this fundraiser felt their own flavor of success on Friday and that puts a smile on my face.  

Earth Day was a real production for me this year. I had the unique pleasure of delivering a keynote presentation for over one thousand people at Mark R. Islfeld Secondary School. It was an intense morning but everything went well. The presentation wove together the relationships between marketing, consumerism, and our personal definitions of success.  Big business tells us what to think, how to act, and what to buy to become who we think -  they think - we should be. "What a headache." In my experience, defining my success is about values and has nothing to do with what I buy, how much money I have, or even who I'm with.

After the presentation at Isfeld  I was zipped over to GP Vanier Secondary to deliver three back to back  1 hour presentations that essentially mirrored my keynote from the morning. There were discussions with students that lasted until the end of the day and then teachers until dinner time. Everyone was really charged up about the  material in the presentation which makes me happy to know that it struck a chord with most people.

GP Vanier was given a grant of $5000 for their Earth Day celebration. The day brought a keynote from Spirit Bear activist Simon Jackson, and dozens of speakers from environmental clubs, associations and action groups in the Comox Valley. There was an incredible lunch put on with 100% local food. Nothing says Earth Day like a twenty-mile diet and it was really tasty.

When I returned home from Cairo last year I began to see my world differently.  After witnessing the diligent activity of thousands of people harvesting, sorting and recycling garbage in Mokattam Village, or “Garbage City” as it is known around the world, it was hard not to be inspired every time I looked at a recycling box. Cairo is one of the fastest growing cities in the world with an estimated 15 to 20 million people. It produces a significant amount of waste that is collected each day by residents of Garbage City in donkey carts and run down trucks. The people of Mokattam have been doing this line of work for over 100 years. They recycle 80% of the waste stream by sorting the garbage into compost, saleable plastics, metals and fiber products like paper and wood. This incredible operation doesn’t cost Cairo a single cent and it’s arguably the most successful recycling program in the world. Now it’s all about to end because Cairo wants to be seen as a modern city.

Cairo is buying contracts with multinational companies to dispose of the waste in trucks that forces the master recyclers of Mokattam to find a new line of work. This backward story follows three boys through a complex, disheartening, and inspiring documentary of hope for the world’s future. It leaves you facing tough questions like: why would any city want to pay for garbage trucks when it has an entire suburb economy living on what Mokattam calls “a precious resource” and “a way of life?” There is a lesson in this documentary that the world needs to see to believe and there are messages we all need to enact before collectively burying our future with our waste.

Thanks to the initiative of World Community Development Education Society, the BC Council for International Cooperation, and The Power Of R, we were able to present an exclusive screening of Garbage Dreams to hundreds of Comox Valley students at Sid Williams Theatre in February 2010. I had the honour of speaking at the event, introducing the film and leading a Q&A discussion after the screening.

Garbage Dreams is a remarkable film that captures the essence of life in Mokattam Village and dives headlong into the politics of solid waste in Cairo and Europe. This special screening, that opened the annual World Community Film Festival, was an eye opening success. It sparked conversations for weeks after the event in schools and it gave every attending student a new appreciation for the value of what we throw away on a daily basis. Garbage is not garbage at all; it’s a renewable resource that is incredibly lucrative if it is handled properly.

Garbage Dreams continues to win dozens of independent film awards and it can be seen on PBS April 27th or by purchasing a membership to the extensive World Community Video Library at the Freakin Coffee Shop in TinTown.  To find out more about the film visit http://www.garbagedreams.com/

Shannon Tran of Vanier Secondary wanted to do something special with her grade 8 math class the two days before final exams. So she called me up and we started designing a review package of algebra, rates and ratios, volumes, areas, fractions, percentages, integers, graph interpolation, and probability of events. I studied hydrology at BCIT and I was excited to actually put my education to work.

Ms. Tran and I designed a math review package that worked through the applied math in the Regional District’s hydrological cycle. Applied learning is the best way to learn and connecting math curriculum with the outside world is very valuable for the students. I love to bring our amazing and precious resources to life in the classroom.

Students calculated rainfall volumes over certain months of 2009, percentages of ground absorption, lake volumes using different prisms, fresh water usage fractions, fresh water intake rates, chlorination ratios, reservoir volumes, household use probabilities, and finally, backyard rain barrel volumes and projections. Each stage in the review had a lesson about our fresh water and carried the message of how valuable it is at every stage of the hydrological cycle.

Collecting and keeping water clean is a very expensive process. When we use water inefficiently, we need to spend more tax dollars to build reservoirs (millions of dollars), pump stations, and water treatment facilities. In the Comox and Strathcona Regional Districts we use extremely high volumes of fresh water in the driest summers… hmmm… Why, you ask? Because we’re crazy about watering our lawns, in fact, we use the most water per capita in the world… THE WORLD! If we have to be the best at something it would be better to be efficient and happy, right? A simple solution to the problem just takes a little bit of math.

To further the learning, the presentation has been offered as a cultural math activity to share with GP Vanier's partner school in India! This multicultural resource sharing is a very exciting component of the project. Lessons from India obviously demonstrate a much different picture of water use and efficiency. Implementing low-tech solutions from developing communities around the world is a great way for Canadians to be more efficient with our own fresh water.  One of those valuable technologies is as old as human history itself; the rain barrel.

Rain barrels that connect to your gutters are a great solution for garden watering. It rains on Central Vancouver Island approximately 3 meters every year – multiply that by the surface area of your home’s roof and voila, we’ve just calculated how much free water we can make. Now that we know what we’re missing out on, it’s time to take action. It only takes a little bit of math to see exactly how we can make the world a better place.