These protesters want you to reduce, repair and rewear
Also: What scientists say about 'No-Mow May'
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This week:
- These protesters want you to reduce, repair and rewear
- The Big Picture: The kids aren't all right
- Not mowing this May? Here's what the science says
These protesters want you to reduce, repair and rewear
There's no chanting, marching or waving of signs at this protest.
Dressed in colourful vintage, thrifted and hand-knitted clothing, about a dozen women and one man sit on folding chairs around wooden tables strewn with yarn, scissors and scraps of fabric in the basement of a Toronto cafe.
They're holding needles and thread, and some have embroidery hoops in their laps as they repair ripped seams, patch up holes and replace buttons on old clothes.
In doing so, they're protesting the environmental damage caused by fast fashion — and finding a solution.
Sarah Jay is the executive director of Fashion Revolution Canada, the group that co-organized a series of Toronto events for Mend In Public Day in late April.
The event bills itself as a "beacon of change in a world inundated with fashion waste," and Jay says it's celebrated around the world.
"I think fashion's impacts are so big and they're so vast, but when we all get together and change and shift our habits, every little bit helps," she said.
In the lower level of the Maker Bean Cafe, Jacquie Jeffery is embroidering a patch of fabric. She is a founder of the Toronto Vintage Society and helped organize this event.
She said buying vintage doesn't just preserve a historical piece of clothing. "We're also saving ourselves from having to buy fast fashion and having to then donate that fast fashion back when it doesn't last for us."
She said many people don't realize that even when they donate old clothing to thrift shops, much of it gets sent to other countries. "It ends up in the oceans, it ends up in landfills."
Joy Tan, mending nearby, knows Jeffery from another hobby — they're part of the same scooter club. They collect patches on different adventures that they sew on to their matching onesies.
Tan says sewing is a great hobby for a fast-paced high-tech world. "Whenever there's an excuse for me to just sit down, get off my phone and actually do something, analog versus digital is always really relaxing and gratifying."
A few blocks away at an event space on College St., Ana Ibarra welcomes people to another Mend In Public event.
She organizes monthly clothing swaps and workshops on things like visible mending — passing on skills her grandmother taught her. She's concerned not just about the environmental impacts of fast fashion, but labour conditions in the industry.
"I am trying to teach people they can repair the clothing," she said.
Charlotte Durnford-Dionne is among the volunteers helping less experienced menders around the table learn the techniques needed to mend materials with a needle and thread.
She got into mending during the pandemic, after developing an interest in sustainable fashion but finding she couldn't afford to buy new clothing made from materials like linen.
She came to realize that "the most sustainable clothing is the clothing you already own, and mending is a gateway to keeping the clothing you already own and finding a newfound … sense of ownership."
She adds that while YouTube is a great resource for learning mending, "events like this are so nice because it's just easier to learn things with your hand if you have someone else that knows how to do it."
Listen to the audio version of this piece
"We do have to find the ways and places that we can find joy and creativity and where we can feel empowered. And Mend in Public Day is exactly that."
—Hayley Reid-Ginis and Emily Chung
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Check out our podcast and radio show. In one of our newest episodes: Drilling into the ground isn't the only way to source metals for clean energy. You can also get them from cast-off phones, laptops and TVs. It's called urban mining. We speak with Maria Holuszko at the University of B.C.'s Urban Mining Innovation Centre about developing more efficient techniques for harvesting the gold, copper and other materials in old electronics. And Craig Wisehart of the Electronic Products Recycling Association takes us to a depot to find out how to drop off your old stuff and where it goes.
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Reader Feedback
Last week, Inayat Singh wrote about mandating solar panels on the millions of new homes that Canada wants to build.
Margaret Holm wrote that there were other opportunities for decarbonizing new homes: "A far more important requirement for new homes in Canada would be for all the new buildings to use heat pumps and electrical appliances rather than gas furnaces and stoves."
Other readers also pointed out that new homes could incorporate energy upgrades beyond solar panels. Marcella Patenaude wrote: "In the same ways that installing solar panels at construction time makes sense, installing the infrastructure for ground source heat pumps makes sense economically with huge benefits to the environment."
Similarly, Randal Hadland wrote about how other upgrades to home would reduce the load on solar: "When a house is designed and built to use as little outside energy as possible, through insulation, passive solar heating, weather proofing generally, the size of the solar array can be considerably smaller than a 7.5 kW collector."
Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca. (And feel free to send photos, too!)
The Big Picture: The kids won't be all right
The five-year-olds of today will experience many more climate extremes like heatwaves, floods and wildfires than previous generations, suggests new research led by Canadian scientist Luke Grant. This graph looks at different warming scenarios, and calculates the percentage of Canadian kids born in 2020 who will see unprecedented climate exposures — in other words, exposed to the kind of climatic event that would have a one-in-10,000 chance of happening in a world without climate change.
Using heatwaves, the most reliable data to project according to Grant, people born in 1960 do not see a big change across any warming pathway.
But at 1.5 C, 43 per cent of the kids born in 2020 would see unprecedented exposures. In a world 2.5 C warmer, which our current policies put us on the path toward, it jumps to 76 per cent of Canadian kids. At 3.5 C, virtually every kid born that year will have an exposure to a heatwave of unprecedented levels — defined as more than three days at temperatures hotter than the upper limits during pre-industrial times for the same area.
To get a sense of what that might feel like, you can use our CBC climate dashboard to find the historic highs and low temperatures in your location. This week in Canada, the temperatures in southern Manitoba went over 30 C, breaking a record. That, sustained for days, could be considered an unprecedented exposure.
— Anand Ram
Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web
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Some cities have a "greenbelt" around them where development is restricted to keep sprawl in check and protect resources such as drinking water. Now two Ontario politicians are proposing a similar idea to protect farmland – a "foodbelt."
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Electric trolley buses are making a comeback in cities around the world. CleanTechnica looks at which cities – and why they're choosing this retro transit technology.
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Do men or women have a higher carbon footprint? And by how much? These researchers have calculated the answer – at least for people living in France.
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Hawaii is adding a new tourist tax to fund climate- and environment-related projects such as restoring coral reefs and removing invasive species. In this video, CBC's Johanna Wagstaffe takes a closer look, and asks Canadians how they would feel about paying the tax.
Not mowing this May? Here's what scientists say
To mow or not to mow — that is the question, starting in May.
And a Moncton researcher hopes that for the sake of biodiversity, the answer for many homeowners will be not to mow.
The annual "No-Mow May" initiative has gained popularity over the past several years as a way to increase the food supply for pollinators, such as bees and butterflies.
But there are critics as well. They cite concerns about weed growth, potential pest problems and lawn health.
Gaétan Moreau, a professor of insectology at the Université de Moncton, is a No-Mow May supporter and has helped one New Brunswick city put the movement's claims to the test. Now he's written a report on what effects not mowing has on biodiversity.
"I've been talking for a few years now about No-Mow May all over the place, and Alexandre Truchon-Savard from Dieppe called me one day … and said, 'Would you like to test No-Mow May here in Dieppe?'" Moreau said.
Truchon-Savard, the City of Dieppe's director of environment, said the idea came after a change to the municipal bylaw on lawn height.
As of last year, he said, there is no longer a requirement that lawns on private property not exceed a certain height, as long as the grass doesn't interfere with public spaces or signage.
To test the No-Mow May rationale, Dieppe identified some municipal areas that have always been mowed but aren't necessarily used a lot.
They picked six spots and applied three different treatments. They let one section grow, kept one section mowed and replaced one section with a mix of wildflowers.
This is where Moreau came in. He said because they would need to trap pollinators in order to count them, they instead chose to study resident organisms such as ground beetles, which live above ground, and invertebrates that were under the ground.
Testing the abundance of these organisms allowed Moreau to identify whether the area was a good habitat, which would in turn help pollinators.
Over the summer, he said, the unmowed area had a positive impact on below-ground organisms.
But the area replaced by flowers showed the biggest improvement, with beetles even moving to those areas.
For Moreau, this proved that No-Mow May can be beneficial.
"When you stop mowing, you're giving a break to this ecosystem," he said.
But not everyone is thrilled about the catchy concept of No-Mow May. For Sara Stricker of the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, the expansion of No-Mow May throughout North America was a red flag for fellow grass experts.
She would rather not pin the effort to a particular month, given how weather and other factors affect the growth of lawns.
"We don't do anything based on a calendar," she said. "We don't time our management based on what month it is."
For the last few years, she's been doing a research project based on No-Mow May, letting a plot of land grow for the month unrestricted.
Two years ago, there was heat but not much rainfall, which led to the grass growing 35 centimetres tall. The next year, there was much more rain and more heat, leading to 108-centimetre grass, along with ticks.
Eric Lyons, an associate professor of plant agriculture at the University of Guelph, said most of the grass species that make for good lawns require constant lawn mowing.
"If you want to use your lawn in June and July, it's important to mow it in May, so that those species do not get weak and do not basically shade each other out, get very thin and then not be able to withstand the use that we want to use our lawns for," he said.
Jordan Phelps, a Bee City Canada co-ordinator based in Ontario, said some concerns with No-Mow May and letting your lawn run wild include the potential spread of invasive species.
Phelps said it's important to consider that No-Mow May originated in the United Kingdom, where a lot of plants that occur naturally on yards are native, but in North America, this isn't necessarily the case.
He said it's also important to be thinking outside May, because a lot of pollinators emerge in April, and are really active in June.
But he believes that having the initiative is an important way to spread awareness and encourage support for pollinators in the longer term.
"It's kind of a way to get people in the door so that they're interested in learning more and more about pollinators," Phelps said. "They can then kind of take further action and ideally just have less grass overall and use some of that space for planting native plants."
— Hannah Rudderham
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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty
