This is so lovely to read! I totally share your experience–when I started sharing stuff on Instagram I really wasn't sure what kind of response I would get, but people were way more engaged and supportive than I expected, on and offline! This has encouraged me to continue to be a bit more active on social media with this stuff.

Your note about the power of hope is so important (and a reminder I need). Quite a number of courses have seriously bummed me out to the point that I don't want to think about the material outside of class. The focus on hope and action here has been super helpful!

You have brought so much richness to our class discussions, Clare, thank you for sharing! A constant asking of questions is certainly a great way to investigate topics more thoroughly, that's something I'll also take away from this class.

Sarah, I love your push towards difficult conversations. I have wrestled with the idea that our campaign perhaps takes away space on social media for other causes, and perhaps also plays a role in making social media spaces more negative (or at least more focused on the problems in the world and not friends/happy things). Certainly something I'll continue to consider!

I really like your closing thoughts Megan. No matter what degree of change we make, we will have to adapt and creatively persevere through whatever climate uncertainties lie ahead.

I really like your line "we can return to wild ways by living in harmony with Nature", very well said! I do have a bit of concern about 'steeping back from urban development' – do you mean this literally or metaphorically? Given that our entire economic paradigm is growth dependant–if urban development stops than suburban and/or rural development might increase, like a game of house-building wack a mole. And from a land use perspective, those non-urban developmental practices might be even worse. That said, any way we can promote biodiversity is something to consider and strive for! :)

Thanks for sharing these! I hope that in the future, if we can move away from embalming and cremation, we might be able to see not just our ashes turned into reefs and fertilizer, but our bodies themselves. There is so much nitrogen and phosphorus and carbon in our bodies that gets burnt into GHGs, which is a complete shame when these compounds could be kept out of the atmosphere and serve to support further life.

I can imagine there are many clinical applications of fecal transplants that are super promising, thanks for bringing this up! Feels very applicable to what @Clare Price said in class as well. I did a little bit of research on the situations in which FMT can be performed and it seems like it's pretty limited right now? Though this isn't something we all need in our lives, it is certainly something that could be expanded to improve medical care!

These are great ideas. I'd add that buildings and parks can be designed in ways that accommodate birds and wildlife: for example, many skyscrapers in downtown Toronto and other dense areas of the city have nest boxes for peregrine falcons built into their upper stories: this has really helped those populations. Peregrines are thankfully doing quite well in the city! I could imagine that we could build fox/coyote dens in low traffic areas of parks that minimize human-wildlife conflict. There are some MASSIVE coyotes living in Jericho right now that I frequently run into on my way to NoFrills (but only after dark), and if we could accommodate more of them, we could deal with the rabbits more effectively!

Thanks for the kind words! I don't think I said this strongly enough in my post but this stuff is important, so enforcement of regulation is going to be a huge part of the game too.

Hi Maia! Thanks for raising this. Single use plastics (SUPs) in health care are a HUGE source, but relative to the total waste stream, they are a small fish. I can imagine that some sort of non-binding policy to encourage hospitals to de-list SUPs from their purchasing catalogues could make leaps without targeting the public healthcare system with packaging and disposal taxes on top of the price gouging they already suffer from medical-product manufacturers.

Halloween is a great example of tons of single use plastic in food packaging. You also present a really important problem without a clear solution yet–handing out candies in a germ-free way demands some sort of high quality packaging, but the only commercial options are all plastic! Hopefully we can see cellulose candy wrappers or something similar soon.

You are so right that this is a big deal, that we need to move on quickly–the UN has estimated ~2050 as the threshold where plastic will overtake fish presence in the oceans globally. COVID certainly was a step back for single use products, as the disposable nature of so many things in the medical industry was, to some extent, necessary. I do want to note that there are lots of places have banned easy-to-eliminate single use plastic bags, cutlery, etc.–there is reason to be hopeful! Kenya (2017) and Rwanda (2019) have been pioneers in plastic bans. Zimbabwe, Canada, and parts of the US (NY, CA, HA) have followed suit. The UK and EU are making similar legislative moves and many countries have also banned plastic microbeads. The question is how we stand up to lobbying and extend these bans from bags and bottles to all containers, multiple (unnecessary) layers of packaging, and so on–I wonder if a blanket packaging tax (per g of plastic used) could be applied along with other import taxes?

"Hope grows in a plastic field" is such a wonderfully poetic title! I also think you raise a really valid and important point about enforcement of environmental legislation. Do you have any ideas on how the government could facilitate that? The Office of the Auditor General of Canada has a Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, and I wonder if there could be a subcommittee or something like this that is permanently established to police green washing (if we have the legislation to do so)?

You raise great points about the level of support our government provides to those "who they themselves ordered to war". While all my poppy-talk may still detract from the way that Canada's veteran affairs portfolio is handled, I want to consider that the poppy isn't necessarily a political symbol in that regard: many wear it not to demand political action but instead to honour and remember those who gave their lives either in service of ideals they believed, or in service of a government that ordered them to. So, thinking about the disposal nature of poppies and what that means for the symbol of remembrance, I did a little digging into poppies in Canada. Here are some cool things I found. This CBC Op-Ed notes that The Royal Canadian Legion is actually the sole distributor of poppies/donations and seems to have some sort of legal monopoly on the symbol. The article references the Legion first fighting against and then embracing sealskin poppies in Iqaluit, and also references a complicated stance they took against pins that won't fall off. Interestingly, the British Royal Legion sells poppies that are meant to be reused and are quite beautiful! Something to learn from the British Legion, I think.

Great infographic! Consuming more than 20% of my body weight in plastic is certainly terrifying. Do you know if BC will expand their plastic bans over time? Straws and grocery bags are great but make up a tiny portion of the waste in my garbage can.

I wonder if @Kai Chan might be interested in briefly discussing the Ocean Cleanup Project in class? I feel like I've heard a fair bit of controversy around that project, its resource use and efficacy, and would love to hear from people with more familiarity!

I've been thinking about a similar thing. I have an uncle who owns a small business and he's always talked about how his mission is to (1) provide opportunities for the people that work there, (2) to provide a service that's needed, and (3) stay financially afloat so they can keep doing that. Obviously that company has no shareholder responsibility, but it raises an interesting question of how some companies can function in anti-capitalist ways within a capitalist society...I can't imagine this is the dominant conversation in Sauder, so I am curious what the analysis of the purpose of the capitalist structure they study is!

The idea that Patagonia is bringing this sort of activism into the physical space of its stores is really interesting–there must be some sort of commentary here about the stage of consumerism being co-opted to reject certain types of industrialization. Despite that these are the brands we want to support, the price tag of their clothing turns many away, and I want to think more about what could encourage more companies to act like Patagonia besides us having to spend just so much money on their products.

IAA2019 is sure to increase transparency through its new reporting requirements, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the progress this bill makes in mandating that Indigenous knowledge and stakeholders have sway in the process. I would further call, however, for these ideas to be extended to other level of governments and other federal environmental processes. If I remember correctly, projects on provincial "Crown" land, and those under the jurisdiction of the NEB are exempt from IAA2019? If that's correct, this legislation is woefully small in its scope for addressing corporate transparency in extraction industries–but please correct me if it has wider impacts than I think!