Get Started

Here are some great places to put your effort – they are high impact and they’re taking off in Vancouver!

Share Reuse Repair

Help move away from a throwaway mentality – by supporting the mindset and infrastructure for share, reuse and repair in the city. There’s a movement well underway!

  • Join The Thingery! It’s a community owned lending library of things in a modified shipping container…and they’re looking for 150 members per location: Grandview-Woodlands, Hastings-Sunrise, North Vancouver, or start one near you.
  • Are you a small, medium or large businesses interested in turning your waste into a resource for others? Check out the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme, active in the Vancouver region: it’s a model used around the world.
  • Frameworq holds clothing repair and swap events. In 2017, they (co-)hosted 24 Fix Its…with about 500 “fixers stitching and darning away hundreds of their beloved clothing.”
  • What is the sharing economy? and how can cities make it more sustainable? There are lots of examples from around the world in this report.

Green your Neighbourhood

Join forces with your neighbours to build community, reduce your footprint and create new local assets.

  • Green Bloc Neighbourhoods are one great support – with a toolkit to help neighbourhoods get started. Follow the journey of Dunbar-Southlands, South Cambie, the West End and Kensington-Cedar Cottage, as they receive hands-on support from the Green Bloc Neighbourhood Project Team, including:
    • Measuring their household ecological footprint
    • Developing neighbourhood action plans, and
    • Delivering neighbourhood enhancing, and footprint-reducing, projects in their communities

Reduce Wasted Food

Food is the top footprint area for Vancouver – and we waste a lot of it. Luckily, it’s also easy to turn this around…

  • The Love Food Hate Waste campaign helps point the way: “By storing our food so it stays fresh, using up our leftovers and planning our meals better, together we can make a big difference.”
  • If you’re a business, join FoodMesh, a b2b marketplace for surplus food. Its platform intelligently matches discounted and donated food to a verified network of businesses and charities in a safe and efficient way.

Live a Zero Waste Lifestyle

We can live well with a lot less waste – reduced packaging and fewer disposables. It’s getting easier than ever to make the shift.

  • Check out NADA, Vancouver’s first zero waste grocery store at the corner of Fraser and Broadway! “Just fill up your containers (or use ours if you forget yours!) and buy as little or as much as you need.” More fun, less wasteful.
  • To help on your own zero waste journey, join the Facebook group Zero Waste Vancouver. It’s a community that shares local resources (including where to repair things or buy in bulk!), events, tips and tricks.

 

There are lots of other areas to take action and join with others:

  • Explore what you can do on high impact areas like transportation and housing.
  • Enjoy the power of many by linking to those in your workplace, school or neighbourhood.
  • Take a broader lens, such as supporting people in life transition moments – like when they move house or retire.

Here are places to find resources for your work:

  • Fundraise for your own idea at the WayBlaze crowdsourcing platform, like Nada has done for the first zero waste grocery store in Vancouver!
  • Apply for project grants, e.g., Vancouver’s Greenest City Grants.
  • Take your neighbourhood to the next level through the Vancouver Foundations grants.
  • Bring on an intern to support your work – and employ the next generation of leadership.
  • Start up an enterprise: green economy projects have been incubated through Groundswell and RADIUS.
  • Get an injection of investment through competitions.