Confused about where trash goes? This workshop feels you
CBC
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This week:
Puzzling over pieces of garbage, fashion designer Kendra Francis questions herself.
"Did I do this right?"
She's one of a few participants at this Ecoblitz event, put on at the University of Guelph-Humber in northeast Toronto. Faced with four categories — paper, recycling, waste (landfill) or organics — Francis had to sort the following:
Quickly, the doubts go beyond the game in front of her.
"Do I do this right on a daily basis? And I think I do not," acknowledges Francis, "Because that means what I do at home, where I think I'm doing the right thing, is not always the right thing."
(The correct answers depend on the recycling system where you live. In Toronto, the coffee cup lid can be recycled, the sleeve can go into paper, the soiled paper bag can go into organics — and the rest are headed to landfill.)
But the point, according to the event's host, Zamani Ra, isn't to get it right.
"We actually like it when people make mistakes," said Ra, environmental educator and founder of education non-profit CEED Canada. She usually puts these events on for people in low-income housing communities, and says residents there often feel the same nervousness about getting it right. Which is why keeping the mood light is important.
"Once you make the mistake, everybody has a laugh," Ra explained. "And then on the wings of that humour, we course-correct. We let people know where things should go, why they should go there."
Ra, who lives in a low-income community, says this non-judgemental approach — centering joy, as she puts it — can inspire authentic and culturally relevant environmental solutions from within the community. But given the history of being ignored or overlooked when it comes to environmental issues, breaking through is tough.
"A lot of folks, you know, trying to get them to come out to do the workshops, it gets really challenging because of the fact that they're not interested in doing what you're asking because they don't see change," Ra explained recently on an episode of CBC Radio's What on Earth with Laura Lynch.
Buffy Sainte-Marie has been stripped of her Canadian music awards.
Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but it lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart.
With the Liberal Party of Canada poised to choose its new leader this weekend, some say the party under Trudeau gave more attention to Indigenous issues than previous governments.
A fluttering butterfly makes most people smile with delight — a reaction that makes them special among insects.
In a small auditorium at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, about a half-dozen cancer patients sit, getting tips on how to deal with hair loss during chemotherapy. It's not an unusual workshop for cancer patients — except that every patient in the room is under 40.
Charles Racette was arranging his father's funeral when he learned his father was not considered a member of Little Black Bear First Nation.
Measles is a respiratory disease caused by a highly contagious virus that's more infectious than influenza, chickenpox or COVID-19.
The chief of the only First Nation to fully own a mining company in Manitoba says he wants the provincial and federal governments to recognize his community's role in boosting critical mineral exploration as a global race to secure those materials heats up.
WARNING: This story mentions suicide.
The chief of the only First Nation to fully own a mining company in Manitoba says he wants the provincial and federal governments to recognize his community's role in boosting critical mineral exploration as a global race to secure those materials heats up.
A new documentary available free on YouTube celebrates a Great Lakes industry that the filmmaker says often flies under the radar, even among those who live on the lakes.
New observations of a small asteroid discovered in December have led astronomers to conclude that the chances of it striking Earth are almost zero, after earlier data had indicated a higher risk of a collision with this space rock about 40 to 90 metres wide.
Palliative care has an image problem.