Earth Week at the Oshawa Centre

Earth Week Fair:     Boost Your Eco

April 20 to 26

Monday to Friday: 5pm to 9pm

Saturday & Sunday: 2pm to 6pm

There’s no better place to learn how to make a positive change for our environment. After all, last year alone Oshawa Centre recycled 1,175 metric tonnes of waste… enough to cover a football field 23.5 metres deep! So we’re proud to present this event in conjunction with the community and the Community Repurposing Competition. Why not enter your idea? Or simply discover the latest about gardening, conservation and garbage reduction. Either way, you win!

Watch the video

‘Count Me In’ press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Count Me In: Oshawa Conservation Fair.

Oshawa, ON — May 23, 2009 —

Learning simple ways to save energy have huge results, it reduces your carbon footprint, and contributes to a cleaner and greener planet. The Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities (FBSC) is hosting its 2nd Annual Energy Conservation Community Fair, and invite everyone to come and learn ways to preserve the environment, conserve energy and save money. The Fair is a free public event.

FBSC, in partnership with the City of Oshawa and the Oshawa Power & Utilities Corporation (OPUC), this year’s Fair offers conservation tips, an interactive garden show for children, Eco-team puppet show and singing. Other vendors include Smart Commute, Callrich Eco-Services, E-Bike Association, Envirosponsible, Enbridge, Tranquility Home Heating, Earth Heat, Ontario ICF, UOIT-Faculty of Science, Dauhaus, and Classic Windows & Doors.

Inorganic Marketing offers green job opportunities, and Call2 Recycle will take old computers and cell phones.

The Energy Conservation Community Fair on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the Legends Centre, located at 1661 Harmony Road North in the Leisure Room. The Fair is between 10:00 a.m to 4:00 .p.m. Joan Kerr says, “ Last year’s Energy Conservation Fair, held in February was one of the coldest days of the year. The exciting thing is that over 700 people attended. We are looking for similar numbers this year. A video summarizing tips from the vendors can be watched at http://www.fbsc.org/?page_id=470 is a wealth of shared knowledge”.

Count Me In is a part of Energy Conservation Week, visit their website at http://www.energyconservationweek.ca . FBSC Event listing

The Conservation Fair includes:

• Kids learn about eco-gardening

• Eco-team Puppet Show

• Reduce and recycle

• Green Employment opportunities

• Energy and water conservation

• Colouring Books, Stickers, etc

“I am inspired by how people are becoming more proactive in their decisions by reducing their carbon footprint by reducing their energy consumption and we are really looking forward to a successful event”. says Joan Kerr, Director General, FBSC.

For more information, please contact:

Joan Kerr

905-434-6655

Cell: 905-442-2167

http://www.fbsc.org

http://oshawareconservationfair.wordpress.co

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FBSC received this good news on Earth Day!

Hi FBSC!

Congratulations! Your presentation ‘Earth Day Tips’ is currently being showcased on the ‘News & Politics’ page on SlideShare.

Oshawa Earthday Tips

View more presentations from Glenn Mcknight.

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- the SlideShare team

It’s an Earth Day birthday

Earth Day in Oshawa was information, fun and shared experience.  Suzanne Elston’s birthday is April 22nd.  Well, what do you do with birthdays? You have cake.

Suzanne Elston, Lindsey Hill and Joan Kerr blow out the candles.

Earth Day Canada 2009

Try any or all of these:  Challenge yourself, you will save money and feel really wonderful about the being green.

Food Bill to outlaw backyard garden

Will New Food Safety Bills Really Outlaw Backyard Gardening and End Farmers’ Markets?

By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet. Posted April 6, 2009.

There’s been a lot of hype about a few new food bills. And while most of it is conspiracy theory there are some reasons to be alarmed.

My inbox has been pummeled in recent weeks by a barrage of emails warning me of the evils of HR 875, a bill currently working its way through Congress. Sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn), the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 was one of several bills introduced in the wake of the peanut butter-borne salmonella outbreak. Each of these bills ostensibly seeks to improve food safety with increased regulation.

Critics, paranoid and level-headed alike, point to the disproportionate burden that increased regulation places on small farmers, and many wonder if the banner of food safety is being used as a Trojan horse to create a more favorable business climate for corporate agriculture.

“If [HR 875] passes, say goodbye to organic produce, your Local Farmer’s market and very possibly, the GARDEN IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD!!!!!” announced one email.”

Another warned that HR 875 would result in “…criminalization of seed banking, prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers.”

And of course, no serious foodie conspiracy theory would be complete without Monsanto as the architect: “DeLauro’s husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto!” claim nearly all of these emails.

Stanley Greenberg is indeed the CEO of a polling firm that did, indeed, contract with Monsanto. But it’s no more true to say he works for Monsanto than it is to say he works for Nelson Mandela – who was also a former client of his firm, according to factcheck.org, which did a detailed dissection of one of the viral emails.

These emails seem to have been propagated largely by well-intentioned foodies, after having originated from a cadre of conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul supporters with too much time on their hands.

“There is a perfectly legitimate conversation to be had about how we can have food safety regulation without jeopardizing small farms and local food systems,” says Patty Lovera, Assistant director of Food and Water Watch. “But it’s hard to have a rational conversation via forwarded emails. It’s not happening in a way that’s going to change the policy.”

Lovera says HR 875 won’t regulate seed-saving, backyard gardens, or farmers markets. It would, however, split the Food and Drug Administration into separate bodies, one for food and one for drugs. This is a move that Food and Water Watch would support. But unfortunately, she says, it’s likely to kill the bill, because splitting the FDA might be too daunting a task for lawmakers to take on right now.

Another bill that’s more likely to make it to a vote, Lovera says, is HR 759. While this bill, “the Food And Drug Administration Globalization Act,” has drawn relatively little attention, she thinks it would be more likely to cause big problems for small farmers.

HR 759 would extend traceability recordkeeping requirements that currently apply only to food processors to farms and restaurants – and require that recordkeeping be done electronically, placing a disproportionate burden, in terms of time and money, on small farmers. The bill would also establish production standards for fruits and vegetables, which are called “Good Agricultural Practices.”

Agriculture practices designed to improve food safety and address environmental, economic, and social sustainability, might sound like a good idea, Lovera says. But as written, the Good Agriculture Practices are mostly relevant to large, corporate farms – which are the source of most farm-related economic, social, environmental, and safety problems to begin with.

All of these bills, ostensibly, are efforts to make factory-farmed food safer so we can avoid E.coli in spinach, downer cattle in school lunches, feathers in chicken patties, and other food-borne horror stories we’ve grown all-too used to hearing about. But if these regulations are extended to the small, family farms where the problems aren’t coming from, it’s more than just a legislative overextension. It’s a tilting of the playing field grossly in favor of corporate agriculture. And on this point, we all should be paranoid.

“What people don’t realize is that if any of these bills pass, we lose. All we will have left is industrial food,” says Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, which is dedicated to promoting and preserving unregulated direct farmer-to-consumer trade, and fostering the availability of locally grown or home-produced food products.

One of Stockton’s top priorities is stopping the controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Implemented by USDA in 2003 without congressional approval, NAIS is a federal registry program for livestock and for the premises where animals live or visit. The stated purpose of the system is to aid state and federal government response to outbreaks of animal disease.

“NAIS is a safety net for the corporate livestock industry,” Stockton told me. “They’re the ones with the practices that are creating problems for human and animal health, and they’re the ones who need NAIS to cover their backs when something goes wrong. The main threats to food safety are centralized production, processing and long distance transportation.”

Food and Water Watch shares Stockton’s distaste for NAIS. According ot its web page: “The current plan to create a federal animal identification system ignores existing state animal health programs, puts too much emphasis on privatizing the data collection (forcing small farmers to submit data about their operations to trade associations they don’t support), and essentially forces small farmers and ranchers to pay for a safety net for agribusiness.”

But, says Lovera, the bills currently under consideration are aimed at the FDA, and NAIS is a USDA program. While she sees a lot of problems with many of the current bills, strengthening NAIS isn’t one of them.

Stockton doesn’t buy it. If any of them pass, she says, it would ratify NAIS, and strengthen USDA’s ability to make it mandatory for all livestock, including your flock of backyard chickens.

So lawmakers, if you’re listening, and you want these protestors, ballistic and level-headed alike, to chill out, here is how to get them off your backs: exempt local food systems from the current bills. Include specific language in the bills that will guarantee that small family farms, backyard gardens, personal livestock, farmers markets, and all forms of food self-sufficiency and farmer-direct purchasing are protected. Because the right to buy milk from your neighbor or grow your own food is as inalienable as the right to bear arms. And if you threaten to take away this right, you’re going to face a backlash that will make the NRA seem like a bunch of flower-waving Hare Krishnas.