A six-pack of grads make the grade when it comes to being green

Consensus Maker

Rebecca Reeves, ’04 BSc, (pictured above) has spent her whole career in one environmental position or another, working to conserve what’s left of Alberta’s wild heritage and natural environment. She’s currently the Parks Land-Use Framework Planner for the province of Alberta. And, she says, there’s one big difference now that she’s no longer working in the non-profit sector: “I don’t have to worry about fundraising for my own job anymore.”

Reeves worked for five years in the non-profit sector, most recently as the executive director of the Eagle Point-Blue Rapids Parks Council, a multi-stakeholder community organization that works cooperatively with Alberta Parks to plan, manage and fund two new protected areas near Drayton Valley, the first such arrangement with Alberta Parks.

In her new job, Reeves is helping to coordinate the engagement of the Alberta Department of Tourism, Parks and Recreation as it unites with other government departments in what is being called a new Provincial Land-Use Framework Initiative. This new land-use proposal includes creating seven regional plans that will encompass the current 500 provincial protected areas as well as look at creating new parks regions.

“My focus has always been parks, new parks and protecting the landscape,” she says, “so it doesn’t get better than this working in Alberta, and I’m very exciting about the possibilities.”

Reeves — a former seasonal conservation officer who was also the lead researcher and writer for an extensive 2007 study called The State of Alberta’s Parks & Protected Areas — also likes the idea that the approach to the Parks Land-Use Framework includes a cross-ministerial initiative where people will work collaboratively to come up with consensus decisions on a new approach to managing Alberta’s diverse landscape.

“I like the collaborative, interdisciplinary process as the way of moving forward,” says Reeves, who credits her environmental science professors at the U of A with taking the same approach and making “things so exciting and so applicable to what I’m doing now. My professors were really, really inspiring, just incredible people who were genuinely committed to not only teaching us, but connecting us to what was going on in Alberta and making personal commitments to ensuring what we were learning was not only applicable to the workforce, but also to our lives and our community. My professors really got me engaged in the community right away and helped me make connections that have lasted to this day.”

Green Queen

Lindsay Coulter, ’99 BSc, is “David Suzuki’s Queen of Green,” providing media commentary on everyday things the public can do to live more sustainably. Having once been called the “weasel woman” — when she worked in the boreal forests collaring critters — and then “the owl lady” — when she worked in the grasslands showing farmers and ranchers how to protect the endangered birds — Coulter looks on her new title as quite a promotion.

In addition to writing for Suzuki’s Nature Challenge newsletter and website, she makes frequent appearances on the Vancouver talk show, Urban Rush, showing viewers how to make such things as their own furniture polish, shampoo, even toothpaste, and she just finished recording a series of daily radio spots for the James Pattison Groups of radio stations. “It’s great to pass on information on issues that people want to learn about,” says Coulter, “especially translating the science jargon down to something everyday folks — like my parents — can act on.”

Coulter also practises what she preaches — including planning an environmentally friendly 2006 wedding to her partner Steven Coulter, ’04 MSc. She scrapped the paper invitations in favour of e-vites, bought organic flowers and recycled gold wedding bands, and even purchased carbon offsets for guests flying in from abroad.

But most of what Coulter advocates is on a smaller scale, echoing the mantra of David Suzuki, that “each person working towards a different world may seem powerless and insignificant, but all of them can add up to a force that can become irresistible.”

On the Suzuki Foundation website, the self-styled “green” answer to Martha Stewart gives video demonstrations in her tiny Vancouver kitchen on little things we can do at home to make a big difference, from making your own beeswax candles to cooking tasty (and sustainable) sablefish fillets. She’s even developed her own “micro” line of non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products called “Harm Less.” Right now, they’re only available out of her kitchen, but she’s happy to show you how to make your own.

Read Coulter’s tips for “green” living at www.queenofgreen.ca

Tree Hugger

Brandy Burdeniuk, ’06 BDes, is the co-founder of EcoAmmo, an Edmonton-based sustainable design firm. Before she teamed up with Stephani Carter to create EcoAmmo in 2007, Burdeniuk worked for three architectural firms, where she used her U of A degree in industrial design and developed her knowledge of green products and materials to help facilitate the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for new buildings. (Other members of the EcoAmmo team include Andrea Pelland, ’05 BA, and Arden Tse, ’95 BSc, ’99 BCom.)

“As an industrial designer, I am a trained problem solver,” says Burdeniuk. “And, as a company, EcoAmmo helps facilitate the LEED certification process and ensures that the vision of a green building is maintained all the way through the design and construction process.”

Burdeniuk — who teaches a course called “Green Design” in the U of A’s residential interiors program offered through the Faculty of Extension — is also a volunteer with MADE in Edmon­ton (where she first met Carter in 2006). MADE is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to heighten the public’s awareness and ability to appreciate art, design and architecture, and, in turn, increase the demand for good art and design in the local community.

As a small-business owner, Burdeniuk understands the necessity of finding that balance between environmental sustainability and financial practicality. “It’s important to consider the environment and your impact on it in all things you do,” she says. “However, as a new business owner, it is also important to choose solutions that are realistic and to not get overwhelmed. Our business-first attitude is really important to note, but it is beneficial for the environmental movement as well. Time and time again the best solutions I have seen are ones that are good for the environment and for business, making them more realistic as long-term solutions for a healthier planet.”

Visit www.ecoammo.com for more information.

Dirt Farmer

Eric Chen, ’95 BSc(Ag), owns and operates an organic farm called Peas on Earth that has been bringing certified organic vegetables to Edmonton-area farmers’ markets for the past 10 years. For Chen, organic farming isn’t some new fad, it’s an ancient concept — and a no-brainer at that. “For thousands of years, people survived without putting anything artificial into the land, so why should we be dependent on artificial input now?,” says Chen, who uses no herbicides or pesticides on his 24-hectare farm outside St. Albert. “I believe that Mother Nature has given us a balanced system, and I don’t think we can do better than that.”

Although Chen has only been running his own organic farm for the past 10 years, he’s been farming since his family arrived in Canada, via Laos, back in 1979. His first job was at a market garden, and since he first dug his hands into the “good ole black soil” at the age of 15, he’s been hooked. “My grandma was a farmer in China, and back then they didn’t use anything,” he explains. “She showed me how to farm — how she grew things in China — and seeing was believing.” His organic granny, he adds, lived to the ripe old age of 97.

His wife, Ruby Chen, ’95 BCom, took to farming a little more reluctantly than he did. She’s originally from Hong Kong and had no intention of being a farmer’s wife, but, “the fastest way to the heart is through the stomach,” as they say, and Chen eventually won her over to the idea through the quality and taste of the vegetables he grew. The couple — they met in “English 101” at the U of A — are about as close as you get to a live-work partnership, making excellent use of their U of A degrees: Eric does the farming; Ruby the sales and bookkeeping, and, more recently, she’s begun promoting organic food in several appearances on CTV. “I’m very proud of my Ruby,” says Chen.

Like all farming, organic farming is hard work. During the short but intense Alberta growing season, Chen is in the field 80 hours a week and at the farmers’ market by 5:00 a.m. on Saturdays. Of course, organic farmers have the added challenge of having to do it all without herbicides, pesticides or genetically engineered seed. And, as did many Alberta farmers, Chen took a beating this past season, with the combination of late frost and drought, and the cutworms, which disproportionally affected organic farmers, nearly wiping out his early harvests. Still, he’s firmly rooted in the organic movement: “I’m convinced we don’t need a whole lot of additives to grow great produce,” says Chen, “just rain, sunshine and the excellent Alberta soil.”

You can find Peas on Earth online at www.peasonearth.ca.

Captain Carbon

Only four years out of university, Brad Rabiey, ’05 BSc, has established the first and only full-cycle carbon offset company in Alberta. Through his company, The Carbon Farmer, individuals and businesses can purchase credits that offset their greenhouse emissions and, in return, Rabiey plants portions of his family’s farm in Manning, AB, with trees, which he commits to managing for the next 60 years. Over the life cycle of the forest, the trees store carbon in their branches, trunks and roots — an amount that can be independently calculated and sold as credits.

For instance, someone taking a round-trip flight from Edmonton to Toronto creates just over one tonne of emissions, but they could offset that amount by purchasing a single credit from The Carbon Farmer for $15. So far, Rabiey has sold 260 credits to everyone from newlyweds offsetting their destination wedding in Mexico to a California bed and breakfast looking to go carbon neutral. And in July, he announced a new partnership with Edmonton’s Fairmont Hotel Macdonald for a “Green Stay” package that runs through December 2009.

The idea to return portions of the family farm to the northern Alberta forest it once was came to Rabiey a few years ago when he and his wife, Rebecca, were trying to figure out what to do with the land that had been in his family for two generations. “We determined that we didn’t want to continue with more conventional farming, we wanted to find a way to do something more sustainable,” explains Rabiey. “And selling carbon offsets would return our farm to an environmentally sustainable production level and help address some of the issues the world is facing in terms of habitat loss and climate change.”

The first people he had to sell on the plan, though, were his parents. “It’s taken my dad a little while to come around to the idea,” says Rabiey. “He’s been a grain farmer his whole life. He helped pick the roots out of the soil when it was first cleared, so the concept of planting trees on land he helped clear has been challenging.” As a matter of fact, the 26-year-old had to plant most of the 3,000 trees currently in the ground by himself, but he named the forest “Dad’s Forest,” in honour of his father.

And Rabiey hasn’t turned his back on farming entirely. He has long-term plans to transition the rest of the farm to organic vegetable cultivation. But in the meantime, he’s got his hands full managing his forest of two-year-old lodgepole pines and working as a renewable energy consultant for the provincial government. “I really see the two jobs as interrelated,” he says. “I wanted to find a way to keep the farm and care for the land but also to have an impact on a larger environmental scale. So far I’ve managed to make it work. It’s all about finding a balance, after all.”

Visit www.thecarbonfarmer.ca to find out more about The Carbon Farmer. For more information about the Fairmont’s “Green Stay” visit www.fairmont.com/macdonald/HotelPackages/

Biker Chic

Claire Ellick, ’04 BSc(CivE), once described herself as a “bike ninja” who just happens, as she says, “to have the wonderful opportunity to combine my love of riding with my profession.” As an engineer for sustainable transportation for the City of Edmonton, Ellick does strategic planning and design to help facilitate a more bike-friendly environment in the City. She’s sort of the City’s “road warrior,” whose responsibilities lie with the on-road cycling crowd and not their off-road brethren, as she tries to make bicycle commuting over city streets a little more user-friendly. However, in truth, she’d rather be bouncing along a bumpy trail on her mountain bike. “Mountain biking has been my most constant favourite,” she says, “getting outside to enjoy the natural beauty we’re so lucky to have in this province.”

She first got hooked on cycling through competing in triathlons, where, she says, “I figured out pretty quickly that I’d rather be riding my bike than running, swimming or doing anything else. Cycling has always been one of my greatest passions, and it’s a bit of dream come true to be able to use my engineering degree as a conduit to having a tangible input into city policy as to how bikes are incorporated into the transportation mix in an urban environment.”

Globally, more people commute to work by bicycle than by automobile. In fact, hundreds of millions of citizens in China, India and a dozen countries in Europe use a bicycle to get to work. There are over 1.4 billion bicycles in use worldwide (compared to about 550-600 million automobiles, not counting trucks), and around 100 million bikes are now manufactured annually — more than double the number of cars.

“Cycling more and driving less is just common sense in so many ways,” says Ellick. “As well as being good for the environment, cycling saves money and time — and both those things when it comes to the waistline, as you don’t have to go to the gym to workout or pay for a membership. Now that’s a win, win scenario.”