www.vancouver21.com

The city of Vancouver, the BC government and a Las Vegas company are working together to create a casino and hotel complex to help pay off the $563 Million dollars needed to install a retractable roof and some interior work to be done at BC Place.

The proposed mega gambling and entertainment site is located at Yaletown and adjacent to the BC Place stadium. The deal is almost as good as go, although there will be a public hearing later for zoning development. Yet there are some design issues that have to be ironed out.

The city government doesn’t like the initial design that Paragon Gaming had put forth.

Paragon, a Vegas company, owns the Edgewater Casino on the BC Place land and the license for the casino will expire in mid-2013. So Paragon is anxious to move forward with the project in time for Edgewater to movie into. And PacCo, the crown corporation that owns the land and arranged a deal with Paragon, promised to try and expedite the zoning process with the city.

The new casino complex will have three times the casino space for Edgewater to expand into or about 100,000 sq ft. However, any delay by the city would mean a lost of cash for Paragon. And here is Vancouver who wants green too but it ain’t about money.

City planning director Brent Toderian indicated this a great chance for Vancouver to build a ‘green urban casino’. Toderian also cited the new Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC) that housed the international press for the 2010 Olympics as a fine example of what Vancouver is looking for.

The waterfront structure has work spaces in the centre of the building while corridors and hallways circled around the outer edges of the building with floor to ceiling windows providing an unobtrusive harbour view of the great city of Vancouver.

I think the city probably would like it even more if Paragon can come up with some innovative ideas that have environmental values in them. For example, the VCC has a 6-acre living roof with local plants growing on it to mediate the temperature of the building so it can have a cooler summer and warmer winter and it helps in rainwater reuse as well. This together with some other features like an undersea habitat to sustain coral and other ocean lives earned the VCC a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Canada Platinum rating.

The new casino which is scheduled to be finished by mid-2012 will generate $130 Million a year in gambling revenue for the province. The BC Place is actually provincial land managed by PavCo, a crown corporation, so how much influence Vancouver can have in this matter will help decide how green the casino complex will eventually be.

Right now, after the 2010 Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies, BC Place has one other show this year and that’s the Vancouver International Auto Show which is currently going on until Sunday April 04. Immediately after that, BC Place will close and renovation work will start in May this year to allow the retractable roof to be built.

BC Place will reopen again by mid-2011 in time for the Grey Cup games.

What surprises me the most is the easy acceptance of this casino/two hotel complex proposal in Vancouver. At least there is no public outcry just yet, unlike it had in the mid-1990s when a similar idea named the Seaport Centre was conceived. Perhaps Vancouver had indeed grown up. After the 2010 Olympics exercise that the city and its citizens had endured in the last few years, we realized what the pay-off of an event like that could mean to the city in terms of worldwide approval. Yes, we are now finally a world-class city that welds a certain power which other cities can only envy.

In the past, most Vancouverites focused on the negatives that such a gaming project can bring. Those adverse effects still exist for the critics, but citizens now seem more interested in the benefits and also expressed a quiet acknowledgement that if the city were to continue to prosper, it needs this kind of initiatives. So let’s get on with it instead of voting against it.

If that turns out to be true, I say that’s a welcoming change.

The 2010 Olympic promotional building poster at the Royal Centre or the RBC building on Georgia & Burrard is being taken down and will be recycled.

The giant poster was the largest of its kind in Canada measuring 380 ft tall x 111 ft wide and it featured 2010 Olympic Women’s Freestyle Skier Kristi Richards.

The material was made of Graphic Film manufactured by 3M Canada. Normally such a material cannot be recycled, but 3M has developed a way to do that. However, the job has to be done outside Canada.

It takes about seven days to remove the poster and the workers started the job last week, so by today, it should be pretty well done. The material will then be shipped to a recycling plant in New Jersey to be ground up and used as a binding agent in limestone tiles.

The company, Mannington, a flooring manufacturer developed the first known way of recycling post-use adhesive-backed graphic materials.

So the 2010 Olympics had been a catalyst that encouraged a firm like 3M to look for ways to reduce the environmental impact of its commercial waste.

I noticed one of the seaplanes I photographed recently had a sign that read ‘Fly Carbon Neutral’.

Actually, it doesn’t mean that the plane was using any sort of leading-edge combustible like one made from algae. All planes fly on ‘dirty’ jet fuel. What they mean by ‘Fly Carbon Neutral’ is that they help you find a way to offset the carbon emission for you since you fly with them.

Sometimes the airline company gives you a choice such as planting trees or contribute to a company that engages in reducing carbon footprints.

Whichever way, you paid extra to gain a better conscience. Not a lot mind you. If you fly a private jet, this extra expense is generally less than 1% of your ticket cost. Flying commercial airlines, you pay a higher percentage since the tickets price is lower.

Environmental Leader, a research firm that specializes in green matters, thinks it does and has figures to back it up.

Some highlights from their report: Green Marketing: What Works; What Doesn’t – A Marketing Study of Practitioners

•80% of the company asked expect to spend more on green marketing
•4 times as many marketers said green marketing was more effective than those who said it was less effective
•The internet was both the most popular medium employed, and also the one that marketers found the most effective
•Nearly half said decision-makers hold green marketing in high regard

$475 a copy. Available at http://alturl.com/nu3r

Post 2010 Games, Vancouver and BC are eager partners in hoping to turn the green business sector into a potent multi-billion dollar industry.

The west coast of Canada with its beautiful scenery, gentle and harmonious cities and…mountain pine beetles-infected forests is very much into promoting the use of eco-friendly technology and hopes to attract investments to the region. Hey, don’t laugh at all those deadwoods, they can still be a great source of clean energy production and if harvested in time, the woods are still rigid and stable enough to support large buildings.

Vancouver, the birthplace of Greenpeace, has always been proud of its own history in environmental protection. With the 2010 Games, the city has taken another giant step in that direction. The Vancouver Games is widely perceived as the greenest Olympics in the history of the Games.

The 30-ft tall 2010 Olympic rings that floated in Vancouver’s Coal Harbor were powered by a “made-in-Canada” hydrogen fuel cell technology. Fuel cells are a leading-edge clean power source. When hydrogen is fed into fuel cells, the only emission is water (H2O) vapor.

Speaking of H2O, actually, the BC Hydrogen Highway branded its hydrogen fuel cell technology as H2i.

Hydrogen fuel cells are not only clean, they can also be used in remote locations as a source of safe, reliable and quiet electrical power. Those attributes provided a perfect way to make the iconic Olympic rings glow at night out in the ocean at Vancouver’s world famous Stanley Park.

BC is a leader in fuel cell technology and the province intends to apply hydrogen power to public transportation. There is a demonstration of sorts for a hydrogen fuel cell transit bus at the BC Pavilion during the 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Games.

Ford, Chevy, Mercedes-Benz etc. all have automobile designs that use hydrogen fuel cells. Though they are not ready for prime time yet. The hydrogen fuel cell technology is still too expensive for cars and refueling stations (or infrastructures) are not yet in place.

But that didn’t stop the car-makers from lending help to VANOC, the Vancouver organizers, for use in its daily operation. GM supplied eight hydrogen fuel cells cars for use during the 2010 Games. The company hopes to commercialize the cars in five years time.

Although even by 2015, the only vehicles available would likely be government and commercial fleets with their own refueling infrastructures.

There are also twenty hydrogen fuel cell buses in use in Whistler. They reduce greenhouse gases by more than 60% compared to diesel buses.

Large companies like Walmart & Coca-Cola are using hydrogen powered forklift trucks for their distribution centers.

With broad industry support and an agreeable provincial government, the city of Vancouver may just have the potential to fulfill its role as a major player in the world’s green economy future.

No doubt that the Sustainable Product Index is a Walmart’s long term goal. Short term, the company is taking some immediately actionable initiatives.

Besides, encouraging suppliers to drop PVC packaging, Walmart would also install efficient LED lighting that can eliminate 35 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually. The giant consumer goods seller also plans to educate consumers about compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), and hopes to sell hundreds of millions of them. The result would be saving the equivalent output of several coal-fired power plants which pollute the environment.

Working with BP and SunPower, Walmart is actively putting solar panels on the roofs of its own stores in California and Hawaii to generate power for its own store operation.

So what can we do as a consumer? As individuals, how can we take part in reducing  our own carbon footprint?

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says that we can accomplish a great deal by simply making some small changes in our daily habits. The NRDC is an environmental action group in the U.S. aiming at reducing global warming and create a clean energy future.

Beyond finding ways to slow climate change, the NRDC urged Americans to do a number of things.

First of all, the United States is the world’s second largest emitter of global warming pollution, pumping 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) each year. But by paying attention to home energy use, transportation, food consumption and waste, Americans can help reduce one billion tons of carbon pollution.

That’s a 15% reduction which can be done at little or no cost. Nor will it severely affect our lifestyle. It isn’t hard to do at all, says NRDC.

Specific recommendations include reducing unwanted catalog subscriptions, decreasing vehicle idling, using a programmable thermostat would help cut down greenhouse gas emission also. Other recommended practices are  replace lightbulbs with CFLs, set computers to hibernate mode, turn off unused lights often and eat poultry instead of red meat two days a week.

Such changes will not only reduce carbon emissions, but will save on home energy, transportation and food costs as well.

All is swell, but Americans are a nation of people of extravagance and waste. So how does NRDC actually plan to convince people to cut back?

NRDC seems to believe that the key to accomplish that is for people to realize that they aren’t doing this alone but others are doing it with them as well. Collectively, everyone’s contributions will aggregate and together we would make a difference. 

Not quite scientific and it relies on quite a bit of a herd mentality.

Will it work?

NRDC thinks so and they are working with the Garrison Institute’s Climate Mind and Behavior symposium group to shift public behavior on a large scale. They think that the opportunity exists right now to apply their principles and insights in a concerted manner which will get people to adopt them faster.

Participants in the symposium were asked to form social groups to sketch out community projects and network them with building managers. All designed to actualize and accelerate the massive potential for positive climate impacts through individual choices and behavior shifts.

Certainly quite complex but it seems to have what it takes to handle a problem which ties into our very own existence. 

The environmental cause requires a critical mass.

We have probably moved pass the early-adaptor stage. However, a little education is still necessary for sustainability to progressively advancing to mainstream practices.

I think the best thing is when it comes down to a very individual level, each and everyone of us can make a contribution for a better world tomorrow.