About this project
Project Introduction
Sustainability is a multifaceted issue that is being engaged with by more and more interested groups all the time. For the purposes of this project, our group defined sustainability as processes and practices that may be carried out and practiced over an indefinite period of time with minimal detrimental effect to areas such as the environment, natural resources, human resources, accompanied by net benefit to social development. In essence, a way of life that is sustainable indefinitely does not externalize costs to other people or environments.
Sustainability has implications in a diverse range of areas, several of which we decided to explore in detail: local food sustainability; sustainable power generation; sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan; and digital media sustainability research at the University of Saskatchewan. Success of sustainability education or advocacy through communications is now strongly influenced by how well the social movement or advocacy campaign can engage new media, whether the sustainability issues be related to economics, food, energy, waste, transportation, a city, campus, and even studying how people engage or communicate about sustainability. Developing communications tools for sustainability, including graphic images, digital videos, and website design, is the focus of this project.
Movements for economic, social, and environmental justice, as with all revolutionary movements, are utilizing the means of communication available to them at their moment in time. The instantaneous, globalized connection of web 2.0 and social media benefits sustainability issues that require rapid responses, including issue based political lobbying, garnering public support for flash mob style protests, and responding to natural disasters. New media provides a growing cultural terrain in which movements for sustainability are developing.
Food Sustainability
There are real economic, environmental, and social justice implications to the availability of local, affordable produce. Food is a basic need that is fundamental to health, our economy, and our relationship to the environment we live in. A trending alternative to industrialized agriculture is locally produced food. This sustainable system encourages local production, distribution and consumption of food. It is concerned with long term preservation and conservation of the integrity of the environment. Locally sourced food is better for consumers and for the environment because reduces transportation costs and carbon emissions, and it requires less packaging due to a shorter distance of travel--which may also result in a better quality product with a fresher taste. Consuming local food also benefits the community. It aids in the formation of relationships between growers and consumers as it strengthens and supports the local economy.
The Saskatoon Food Coalition has developed a "Saskatoon Food Charter" outlining the steps needed to ensure food security and sustainability within our city. Following up on this charter, Toward Implementation of the Saskatoon Food Charter: A Report by Rachel Engler-Stringer and Justin Harder outlines specific suggestions of ways to implement the Saskatoon Food Charter. Partners in this initiative include CHEP Good Food Inc., The Saskatchewan Health Region, among others. Publications such as these will form a good foundation for research on sustainable food initiatives in Saskatoon.
CHEP, supported in part by Loras disposal, has recently developed the Good Food Junction at Station 20 West, which is a food co-operative that provides reasonably priced food to Riversdale, a core neighborhood in Saskatoon. The Good Food Junction has a heavy emphasis on local and affordable food and sources bread from a local bakery. Steep Hill Food Co-op on Broadway is another food co-operative that shares many of the same goals as the Good Food Junction. Both of these co-ops allow members to work a few hours in exchange for extra discounts on products. There are also numerous restaurants which serve local food such as Weczeria, The Willows, Soulieo, Truffles Bistro, The Hollows and Calories. Urban gardening projects support sustainable food production as well. There are 24 community gardens within the city that promote gardening and composting, as well as provide information on healthy eating and nutrition, and preserve making (both canning and jam).
Due to the wide range of initiatives and information about food sustainability and security in Saskatoon, our project will need to be very specific about what it will accomplish and focus on. There is an opportunity to do research about what of the food charter is being implemented and what still needs work. If this is the direction a project takes, a few main areas of the food charter could be examined in terms of how effectively the goals have been accomplished in Saskatoon.
One key areas is food sustainability in relation to health and welfare in Saskatoon. An interview could be conducted with someone from the Health Region to discuss the importance of this because food sustainability and access to food affect health directly. The Health Region has been active in the development of the food charter, but there may also be issues with how well it has been implemented. Some of these problems could be discussed in candid manner, which would be very informative. Issues such as food waste, transportation of food, and the affordability of food could be presented in this way, and restaurants/markets that support affordable and local food could be discussed, with an explanation of why what they are doing works.
Another key area is food waste. According to the "Spending Patterns In Canada" outlined by Statistics Canada, in 2007 the median total income for all census families in Saskatoon was $72,970 and the average household spent $6,425 (11%) on food. At the same time, it is estimated that Canadian households wasted 29% of their food, equivalent to $1,863. Based on an Saskatoon household average of 2.4 members, each Saskatoonian spends just over $64 per person/month in food waste.
Local Sustainable Power Generation
Power generation in current times has become a persistent need in order to maintain current living conditions while addressing needs such as heating systems in colder climates. This dependence on energy is no different in Saskatoon. At the same time as humanity’s need for power generation is increasing, so too is the collective environmental consciousness surrounding the methods used to generate power. Many groups are calling for the development of cleaner power generation initiatives, along with the implementation of these “green” methods and their substitution of the more traditional and historically environmentally harmful methods of power generation.
There has been recent development within Saskatoon that will lead to a new source of sustainable energy generation. Saskatoon City Council gave approval to a project that involves collecting methane gas and using that gas to fuel a power plant (Cbc.ca, 2013). The project is set to take place at the Saskatoon landfill to collect the methane from the organic waste that decomposes in the area. The plan also involves selling power that is generated from the methane to SaskPower which is projected to bring back as much as $8.4 million in revenue for the City of Saskatoon after the cost of building the infrastructure for the system (Cbc.ca, 2013). Kevin Hudson of Saskatoon Light and Power is quoted in a news article on cbc.ca as saying that this project will eliminate 45,000 tons of emissions annually (Cbc.ca, 2013).
It may also be interesting to look into the experience that the city of Regina had with a similar project. They took on a methane power generation project in 2007, but were unable to continue the initiative due to economic feasibility issues. At the time of the CBC article, the City of Regina said it would likely be flaring off the methane gas that it had collected (Cbc.ca, 2013). It may be interesting to look at the emissions that are given off from the flaring off of the methane, as a project that began as a sustainability project may not be so sustainable after abandonment. The City of Saskatoon website also outlines several other sustainable energy generation projects: proposed hydropower generation, a turboexpander project, and a continuation of the wind turbine project (City of Saskatoon, 2013). Other community members have also added their voice to the area of sustainable energy generation, with ideas such as using a community cooperative funding model in order to build a wind farm (Hamilton, 2013).
Engagement through the University of Saskatchewan
The University of Saskatchewan plays a major role in the Saskatoon community. The relationship between the University and Saskatoon can be viewed as a community within a community. This relationship is important as the University provides jobs for 3,666 faculty and staff as well as an education to a fluctuating number of around 21,000 students. As this community within a community takes a role in the economical sustainability of the city by providing jobs and education for members in the Saskatoon community, it also takes role in the environmental sustainability of the city by contributing to the Saskatoon’s energy usage and waste output. Statistics Canada’s 2011 census states that Saskatoon’s population is made up of 222,189 individuals, 164,150 are 18 and older. This means that 15% of the community members of Saskatoon that are old enough, work and learn at the University of Saskatchewan. The University has numerous entities that are searching for avenues to implement more sustainable practices at the University and across the province. Some of these entities are: the School of Environment and Sustainability, the Sustainability Education Research Institute, the University of Saskatchewan Student Union (USSU), Residence, and Facilities Management Division.
By investigating how people can get involved in a community that is working hard at being increasingly more sustainable we can try to emulate the same methods in other areas of Saskatoon to increase Saskatoon’s overall participation in sustainability. The only way that sustainability can be successful is if members of communities and society work together to become more sustainable as a community. One area to look more closely is the ways that people in both communities, the University of Saskatchewan community and the Saskatoon community, can get involved and create greater awareness by either promoting sustainability or becoming more sustainable themselves.
Digital Media Sustainability Research at the University of Saskatchewan
In 2012, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada committed funding for a multi-year study at the University of Saskatchewan called the ‘Digital Media Project: Youth Making Place’ (DMP). The study has become a community-based action research and teaching project developed in collaboration with local community organizations. The research component of the project is interdisciplinary, drawing on theory and empirical research from the fields of sociology, geography, and education, to examine youth narratives in relation to sustainability, identity, and place. The research has implications for educational policy and solidarity at global, national, and regional levels.
The Digital Media Project has run 4 camps, 3 in Saskatoon and 1 in Beauval with English River First Nation. Each group participated in a series of workshops in which they gained map-making, photography, and video skills. Workshop topics include mapping one’s communities, travel through local and global space, learning photovoice as a political tool, photographing one’s important places, and photographing community issues including in relation to sustainability issues. Participating youth created final photovoice and video projects in which they developed an overall narrative about who they are in relation to local and global places and sustainability.
The aim now is to share the work of the Digital Media Project with the community via online engagement. There are over 20 participant created videos, 30 photovoices, 13 geographic information system maps, hundreds of photos, hours of video recording of the project itself, and curriculum to share with educators. The development of an engaging “what is DMP” video, website content, and a greater social media presence is needed to better communicate about Digital Media Project to young people, educators, academics, activists, artists and web-surfers.
Project Development Moving Forward
It is clear that if today’s sustainability education aims to inspire more positive human relationships, then mass mobilization is an imperative to effect our economic, social, and ecological relationships in more just and life affirming ways. But with 7 billion humans on the planet, 200,000 people in Saskatoon, and 20,000 people on campus, how can we communicate and organize ourselves to effectively respond to the challenge of sustainability? The project in this course of developing new media, engages with communication tools that some are calling “the biggest shift in society since the Industrial Revolution” (Qualman, 2013).
In the 2012 book, Beautiful Trouble, 10 social movement organizations assemble what they call “a toolbox for revolution” for communicating about sustainability issues. The organizations include on the ground organizers such as The Ruckus Society and The Yes Men, and resource based social movement communications organizations such as SmartMeme, the Centre of Artistic Activism, and AgitPop Communications. Collectively, the contributors of Beautiful Trouble advocate for numerous movement design principles. The following 5 principles are framing points for the education communications disseminated by modern social movements:
- Know the cultural terrain
- Consider the audience of the message
- Brand or be branded
- Think narratively and tell the story
- Balance art and messaging (Boyd, 2012).
In designing the interview questions about food, it is important for it to be informed by the Food Charter so that the message of the interview is consistent with the goals of our community. This way, it will inform the work that is already being done and reflect the values people in our community want to foster and see being acted out in Saskatoon. In structuring questions for content around sustainable power generation, it is imperative that the questions be situated with respect to local, provincial and broader communities with respect to what is already being done and what has been found to be effective or ineffective in other areas. Through a perspective educated within the area, the content generated from information gathered in both research and interviews may be combined in intelligent and useful ways.
The University of Saskatchewan plays an important role in the Saskatchewan community. The university is constantly discovering ways to increase their sustainability and engage their community. By interviewing sustainability leaders in the university on how the university recruits and engages people we can emulate this same process to other areas of Saskatoon to increase the cities overall engagement in sustainability. The digital media sustainability research section of the website will highlight the Digital Media Project with a professional, yet youthful aesthetic. Basic information about the project is also necessary, such as a spotlight on the digital creations of photovoices, videos, and maps, a resource sharing with the curriculum, contact and partner information, and potentially a discussion of the emerging sustainability issues.
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