Personal Imperative

When you’re depressed, anxious or overwhelmed, even the most accessible resources can feel a million miles away. Young people are more prone to dealing with the aforementioned issues, since they’re under constant pressure and tend to feel a lot of social pressure to just ”deal”. Sam Fiorella lost his son Lucas to depression in October 2014. He chose to honour his son’s memory by getting together with two partners to create the Friendship Bench.

Of the many activities one could do to celebrate Earth Day this year, The Master Shift, could possibly be one of the most immediately tangible. This non-profit initiative is campaigning to have everyone who participates in the movement to plant a single tree on April 22nd, 2015. Their Facebook page already has almost a million “likes”, so it’s encouraging to imagine all those people (and countless more) planting a tree.

We have much work to do to live within planetary boundaries, it is possible and indeed, critical for humanity.

While most of us know this on a gut level, some interesting research by Gilovich at Cornell University, confirms that even though we think that buying a physical object will make us happy because it will last longer, it is really experiences like going to art exhibits, doing outdoors activities, learning a new skill, or traveling.

This video describes one man's way to pay back to community. How many more small steps could be taken to build better communities, pay it forward.

As a very wintry weekend approaches in the East, and there is less sunlight in the West, it becomes important to find ways to fight off seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Without taking away from the recent tragedies in France, there is always another violent, negative, or sensationalist news story around the corner; they pop up on our news feeds, invade our television screens, and dominate our forums.

We recently led an e-Dialogue on waste management in Canada as part of our Solutions Agenda research project. Some interesting nuggets of gold, maybe we need to reframe the issue and reorient our values, is it waste or is it lost productive capacity. Are landfills really stranded assets?

If your soul is weary, watch this, there are so many different pathways to travel.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to dine beside a totally self-sustaining garden, in an urban environment? One where the outer walls are covered in plant life, in a building that has no permanent footprint? Such was the vision of Dutch-born florist, artist, builder and environmentalist Joost Bakker. He recruited Chef Matt Stone, and they founded the Greenhouse in Perth, Western Australia. It is an innovative restaurant design, described in their own words as "completely waste free from the ground up".

In spite of some of the dire reports in the press, there are many individuals, researchers, artists and business leaders working hard  for change. Two examples are Gregory Kloehn, an artist from Oakland, California and researchers from Ryerson University. Kloen had a life changing interaction with a member of the homeless community, which led him to start turning unwanted building materials into micro-homes for those in need of shelter.