The city of Toronto paid tribute to bicycle friendly business in Toronto with their 1st annual Bicycle Friendly Business Awards.  Each business received a ‘golden spoke’ award. Here are some of the winners…

Bicycle Skill Development Award

Charlie’s Freewheels trains at-risk youth in bicycle mechanics and safety by combining hands-on practice, cooperative work, discussion and mentoring. Young people learn a marketable skill while also honing their problem solving abilities and building self-esteem. This is a fabulous program that we should all support.

Best Bike Parking Award

MEC has ample parking for bikes. Forgot your lock? Get a loner lock from the store while you shop. The parking includes a covered area and is monitored. It’s no fun to come out of a shop and find your bike is gone so MEC is doing everything they can to keep your bike safe while you shop. If you work at MEC, you get an indoor bike parking room, which includes lockers and tools.

Bicycle-Friendliest Suburban Business Award

Smart Commute NTV provides workplace-based support such as carpool-matching and workplace incentives to work, cycle and take transit. They won for their incredible projects supporting the York University cycling community, co-hosting event with Sunnybrook Hospital and promoting cycling to children and the community.

Bicycle Commuter Award

The Ontario College of Art & Design has a bicycle friendly campus with plans to add another 200 bicycle parking spots. Along with their bicycle -friendly infrastructure, they also manage social programs such as Bike to School Day to encourage cycling in the community.

Check out all the winners at 2009 Bicycle Friendly Business Awards

There has been some interesting news that I have been following lately.

Firstly, UBC came out with a study which revealed that Hybrid rebates are ineffective. According to this study, the majority of people who purchase hybrids were going to purchase them anyway so the rebate did not act as an incentive, but instead are “subsidizing planned purchases“. The study further claims that the rebates spend an average of $195.00 per tonne of carbon saved. There are other technologies and green jobs which are less expensive and could have the same or greater environmental impact, that the government  could invest in instead. The study went so far as to say, the rebates could be viewed as another form of bailout for the limping auto industry in North America.

Just around the same time this study came out, the Ontario goverment committed $17 million to Mississauga-based Electrovaya, a company that makes lithium-ion  battery packs and is working toward producing components for electric cars for a number of international companies. 240 new jobs will come about for this community as well. This money goes directly to a Canadian company working on new technologies, rather to any car company through consumer rebates. Is this what the UBC study was talking about?

Finally, GM has announced Volt, their new rechargeable electric car with fuel consumption of about 1.0 litre per 100 km of city driving (yet to be proven officially). That makes the Volt four times as efficient as the Toyota Prius, which is currently the most efficient car sold in Canada. That is quite a jump in efficiency.  It will cost $40,000 before the provincial rebate, which in Ontario could be as high as $10,000.

The rate of movement seems to have picked up and no longer are companies secretly crushing electric cars. I haven’t yet seen the new documentary, Revenge of the Electric Car; instead I am watching it in real time.

Lipstick has been around in one form or another for about 5000 years. Back then some of it was toxic. In that regard, not much has changed. However, one thing has changed. Five thousand years ago, the packaging wasn’t promoted as eco-friendly, delivery wasn’t touted as green, and the makers didn’t donate money to their favourite charity. These promotional campaigns are new. Although I appreciate the efforts of companies to work on all of the issues including packaging, shipping and community involvement, I believe that we should start with the product itself.

In that spirit, I have reviewed 8 lipsticks based on ingredients, location, and retail price. I will also try to mention if they are involved in regulatory campaigns such as the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, but may not get it all since there are so many options in this area.

To be consistent, I have used the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database to evaluate ingredients. I have looked up each ingredient individually to find it’s rating. I will indicate the number of ingredients in each lipstick brand that have been rated 3 or more which is considered moderate or high hazards in the database.

As for location, some of these companies are international in scope and some are Canadian-born. All of them have offices somewhere in Canada, and it is their Canadian office location that I have listed. Not all of them make their products in Canada.

The retail price, in the end, is often the deciding factor and the prices listed here are exclusive of taxes and shipping, where applicable. We all understand the need to spend carefully. However, I hope the prices listed here allow us all to rethink the myth that has evolved that “Green is too expensive” and “It’s not easy being green.”  These slogans are really just promotional campaigns and don’t reflect reality.

And we start on the east coast of our beautiful country…

Cosmic Tree in Dartmouth, N.S.  makes a lipstick that did not have any ingredients of concern. Instead they make all natural, artisan crafted, vegan lipsticks. They have four shades all of which you can find on their website along with the ingredients. They cost $12.50 for 4 grams. If you believe that you should be buying local and you live in the Maritimes, then this is your lipstick. They are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics.

Pure + Simple is currently reformulating their lipsticks to make them smoother and creamier. Until that is done, this Toronto, Ontario company still offers their four lip glosses at their four locations at a cost of $19.95 for 4ml. Although I couldn’t find the ingredients listed on their website, a quick call and an email later, I can tell you that the ingredients in these lip glosses check out. Pure + Simple are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics.

Plant Love lipstick by Cargo had a total of 8 ingredients that had ratings of 3 or more in the Skin Deep database. Another disappointment with this product was the one month it took them to respond to my request for an ingredients list. When the response came, it simple directed me to the website, where I had already looked. I did eventually find the ingredients without the help of their customer service centre. You can find their head office in Toronto, Ontario and you can pick up their lipstick for $20.00 for 0.14 oz.

Arbonne is an international company so the product is definitely not made in Canada, but they do have offices in Mississauga, Ontario. They are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, which means that they follow the European Union’s ingredient restrictions, a good thing. Nevertheless, their About Face Sheer Shine had 4 ingredients that had ratings of 3 or more in the Skin Deep database. I did not find their ingredients listed on their Canadian website. However, when I emailed for an ingredients list, I was impressed not only with their rapid response but also the excellent set up they used for the list. They listed out the ingredients, what it was derived from such as plant, mineral or science and they listed the purpose of adding this ingredient into the product such as conditioner, colour and so on.

Suncoat Organic Lip Shimmer had one ingredient that earned a rating of 3 or more in the Skin Deep database. Besides that they have an excellent website that makes it easy to find the information you want. They have six colours to choose from with each costing $8.99 for 4.5 ml. Located in Guelph, Ontario, they are also signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics.

Pure Anada lipsticks are free of suspect ingredients. This company makes its home in Morden, Manitoba, and has a large array of colours to choose from, more so than any others I looked at for this review. For $12.00 you get a 3 gram lipstick. The website is chock full of excellent information for consumers who want to know more about what they are buying.  They are signers of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics.

Organic Beauty Plus is located in Lethbridge, Alberta but the products are originally from Australia, where each product has been certified independently for its organic content which is either 70% plus or 95% plus, depending on the content of ingredients that can’t be certified such as minerals, since they are not organic matter to begin with. The website has lots of consumer information and when I contacted them with a question, they were more than happy to oblige. One thing I really liked was being able to click on each ingredient to get more information. Organic Beauty Plus lip crème comes in six colours at a price of $28.95 for 5 grams

Dragonfly Dreaming doesn’t really have a lipstick per se, but if you want to keep your lips in tip top shape while adding a hint of colour, this may be the answer. Located in Cobble Hill, BC all of the ingredients of Hint o’ Tint check out in the Skin Deep database. When I called to ask about the ingredients, I was impressed with the product knowledge of the owner, who could very easily answer questions and took the time to explain things. They have also signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics. You can purchase 10 ml of their Hint o’ Tint for $4.50.

I am sure that I have missed some fabulous Canadian companies, but then that is what the comments section is about. No matter what you put to your lips, enjoy it.

After I woke this morning and grabbed a cornmeal muffin for breakfast, I sat down to discover there was more controversy surrounding biofuels. Does using biofuel necessitate taking food out of the mouths of the hungry? Is it a sustainable solution to our current need for new sources of energy?

The article I read referred to a report from the World Bank that stated the production of biofuels had driven up food prices by 75%. Later in the article, it stated that because Canada produces 70% of our own food, we have not been affected. Regardless of how safe Canadians might feel today, we do need to address the issue. People are being affected now, and they don’t earn what we earn.

I grew up on a farm and used to be responsible for collecting the eggs every morning. On the farm, nothing was wasted: we used every inch of land; composted leftovers; tapped trees; conserved water. Waste not, want not.

If we choose to use rich agricultural land to plant low-yield energy crops such as corn, then we are not choosing a sustainable energy source and we are taking a source of food from our food stores.

However, if we harvest the corn and take it to market to feed people and then use the waste to make ethanol, then we are being smart about food and energy production. The same could be done for wheat and other crops that have unused agriculture waste.

If we choose to cut down great swaths of rainforest to plant crops to develop biofuels then we are creating more problems. Those trees are our source of oxygen. They are great healers and we need them.

However, we can produce biofuel using high-yield energy crops such as sugar cane (OK, not in Canada) or switch grass planted on agricultural land that already exists and is not suitable for food crops. This would be a sustainable solution.

I learned a lot growing up on a farm. Should we put all our eggs in one basket and act like biofuel is the answer? No, but produced in a sustainable manner, it is part of the solution. So, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Biofuel production boosts food prices by 75%, report suggests

If you live in B.C. you probably received a cheque for $100.00 (or more) in the mail this week. This cheque is the government’s climate action dividend and is really meant to offset the first ever revenue-neutral carbon tax slated to come into effect July 1st (Happy Birthday Canada!) and to be collected at the pump.

Gas is slated to increase by 2.4 cents per litre because of the tax and apart from the other latest price increases related to the cost of a barrel. Here are some other numbers to put it into perspective.

According to an Angus Reid poll taken in March 2007

• 19% of Canadians drive 25,000 km or more in one year,
• 45% of Canadians drive between 10,000 and 25,000 km in one year,
• 35% of Canadians drive less than 10,000 km per year.

So if the average British Columbian drives between 10,000 and 25,000 km a year it will take the average driver two years to use the climate action dividend to offset the new tax. This is based on a mid-sized car that consumes 11 litres per 100km of city driving. To be clear, if that were your car, you could drive about 37,800 kms or about 18,900 km each year for two years before you started paying your 2.4 cents per litre at the pump.

What are British Columbians really going to do with that cash? Here are some other suggestions…

According to the BC Government you could choose to buy energy-efficient light bulbs, shop locally for produce, or purchase eco-friendly upgrades in your home. No matter what you do, they suggest your decision can make a big difference.

The Tyee has started a Green Your Campbell Cash campaign. As they point out B.C. now has a collective $440 million to do with what they wish. The Tyee has made it possible for people to commit their $100.00 to a good cause, submit worthy projects and vote on their favourites. As stated on the site, it “is intended to showcase B.C.-based climate change projects.”

The provincial NDP suggests you give it to them. Why? To fight the carbon tax slated to start July 1st. They have launched an axe the tax campaign.

How are you going to use your cold hard green cash? No matter what you do with it - refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle before you consume. B.C. enjoy your green.

The Canadian government is considering using a $250 million dollar fund - meant to assist in the development of environmentally friendly and fuel efficient vehicles – to entice GM to continue providing jobs in Oshawa, Ontario.

The loss of 2600 jobs could be devastating to the community as for each job provided by GM, there are other jobs created by those families when they buy food, shelter, clothing, entertainment and so on. To just let those jobs disappear will have a rippling effect on the entire community, which would be economically devastating for the region. However, let’s ponder the following…

• GM is a large company and has had the opportunity to become a leader in new technologies and take a new direction in the auto industry. Instead, they have chosen to put their heads in the sand and turn a blind eye to the inevitable changes to come. There are many companies ahead of them, including Canadian firms such as ZENN Motor Company.
• They are choosing to move operations to Mexico where labour is cheap, and worker’s rights are not as strong as in Canada. Will they be paying a living wage in Mexico? How will we know?
• The government should seriously question their commitment to new sustainable automotive technologies.
• They have taken a loan from the Ontario government for $175 million, which included an agreement to maintain minimum job levels. They are now reneging on that and the Ontario government has said that they will TRY to recover some of that loan based on this. The federal government’s reaction is to offer up to another $250 million. I think the government should look at GM’s track record before offering more money.
• $250 million dollars invested in 2600 new jobs or in retraining GM workers for new car manufacturing technologies works out to about $100,000.00 each. More than enough. Some workers may even opt to retrain for new industries where there is a real need for skilled workers. Retraining workers and creating new jobs that are in line with the future trends and technologies will last longer than and be a better investment than filling in the holes of a sinking ship.
• The plant is slated to close sometime in 2009. There is time for the workers to retrain and for the government to encourage more forward-looking companies and technologies.
• I’d like to know GM’s responsibility to employees that are laid off. Is there anything in the agreement about severance pay or retraining allowances for workers who are laid off? Maybe GM should finance retraining rather than our government. Has the union been forward thinking in this area? Have they negotiated something in their contract?

So instead of delaying the inevitable - the loss of traditional jobs as the auto industry undergoes a transformation - why don’t we look to the future. Out of what may appear to be devastating economical circumstances, we should be looking for opportunities to support Canadian companies that are on the forefront and helping families that depend on the auto industry to transition with the industry or get out now while getting out could be a good thing.

Read the related article on CBC: Ottawa may use green fund to help GM: Flaherty

Where do you think the auto industry is going in the next few years? How can today’s auto worker prepare for the road ahead?