Sasha on the Street

With the upcoming municipal elections I’ve been thinking a lot about the governance that affects me. Well I guess really thinking about how little affect I have or my elected officials really have on change. The other day I was thinking about how the system could be better, at the municipal, provincial and federal level. [...]

This morning I was inspired by a friend of mine after he sent me an article from the New York Times on passive home construction. Last week  I attended the IIDEX Green Building Festival at the Direct Energy Centre, hoping to be inspired for my dream home. Here are some of the highlights: LEED for [...]

On March 17th Blue Mountain Resort is hosting it’s Keep Winter Cool Campaign. Keep Winter Cool aims to raise awareness about the potential effects of climate change and encourage skiers and snowboarders to start taking steps to reduce their own environmental impact. I’ll be there with the My Sustainable Canada team hopefully enjoying another epic [...]

To continue from the other day, our warming climate will drastically change how we design highway infrastructure. Cindy Burbank then took over the presentation. Her presentation highlighted 5 main topics Climate change science, sources and trends The importance of climate change to the state DOTs Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from transportation Climate adaptation for [...]

Build a house, a commercial, any space with an environmental conscious. Think of the life cycle costs (LCC), the benefit-cost ratio. Balance the economic costs with the social and environmental costs. All of this embodies what a LEED certified building is supposed to be. Recently friends of mine considered having their home designated as LEED [...]

Triple Bottom Line Accounting. The notion is that you account for the economic profits, the environmental impact, and the social costs and benefits; People, Planet, Profit. This was borne out of the idea that we need to do a better job at protecting our natural environments; simply exploiting them for economic gain was going to [...]

It’s back to school. Some students are changing courses, adjusting schedules, even changing majors – and I fall into all of those categories. My undergraduate engineering program was in structural (civil) engineering. I studied structures, concrete, steel, wood, wind … anything and everything to do with structural engineering. Although I never thought I would work [...]

It’s that time of the year when students are scrambling to pick their courses for the year (myself included). What courses do they take that both inspire them and open up doors for their future working careers? When looking at the courses available this morning I was required to request permission from the instructor to [...]

A day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. Shouldn’t everyday be Earth day? It is a day to remind us that we abuse its environment and we should have more respect for it. We’re on a slow learning curve but we’re getting there. The History of Earth Day Earth day began [...]

I had an interesting presentation tonight, delivered by Amir Shalaby of The Ontario Power Authority, it was all about energy and its future in Ontario. The presentation covered a breadth of topics from demand to supply, from current use to projected use, from non-renewable to renewable energy sources. What really stuck with me is the [...]