Reduce the Juice

August 12, 2011

Well, it’s that time of the year again.  I always hate this part of the summer.  We end up saying bye to one another and move on with our separate lives, completely depressing.  I must say, the students this summer completely dominated the outdoors.  They braved the hot hot heat that everyone was melting away in, and then managed to avoid any big storms from this past week.  The weather was rather kind to us this summer, barely any rain!  Of course, that tends to go negatively for the environment… so it’s a win-lose situation.

Today we had our wrap up party.  It’s the annual “summer/work is over, peace out” party that we have every year.  It’s also Philippe’s last day with us!  We will miss him and his French accent.  The rest of the crew have another two days of events to power through; Woodstock Revisited on Saturday, and Square2Square on Sunday.  Then we will get all of our final pledges (and what a fantastic number of pledges we’ve gotten so far!), calculate the carbon savings, and announce to the world how awesome people can be when they are knowledgeable and willing to try new things!

I’ll be adding a final project journal sometime next week as a final hurrah, but till then, keep reducing your juice and educating people on climate change!

Peace out!
Megawatt Michelle

August 1, 2011

This week we went to my favorite place, Victoria Park. At this park, I don’t know why, I always get a lot of pledges each time we go there.  Also, on Thursday after spending the afternoon at Waterloo Town Square, Elliot, David and I went to subway, like we always do. After, we went to the Union street area to do some door-to-door and educate the residents. This neighbourhood was a little bit strange because a lot of the houses were built around the 1850s, so there were definitely some cool houses. The people who live in these houses were very nice and we managed to get a lot of these people to do pledges and surveys. Then, on Sunday, I went to Canada’s Wonderland with my YMCA group. On this date, Pitbull, Lil jon, Tini Thempa, and Alicia Reid were there to do a concert.

But then it was back to reality… On August 5 at Waterloo Park, don’t ask me why, but there were so many French people there and I got pledges and surveys from them. On Friday again, we did a workshop and two people came to talk about different things happening, such as the chemical industry in Sarnia. It was definitely an eye opening discussion.

This week will be my last week with Reduce the Juice. At this point I really enjoyed my time with the team.  In the future I’ll try to teach my mother about saving energy and all the things that I learned this summer.

Photovoltaic Philippe

August 5, 2011

This week was marked by new adventures and well, very interesting finds. We’ve had another exciting, fun-filled week of reducing the juice! Thankfully, this week was not nearly as humid and hot as the week before. We chilled out at Waterloo Town Square, University Plaza, and of course, our favorite location of the week: Waterloo Park. Since it is the summer exam period, all the university students were hard at work studying for their final exams. At times, University plaza seemed to be rather deserted! Since Waterloo Park is only a few minutes away, it became our location of the week- where we’d go when the day grew longer and longer. We also started reducing the juice in a new neighborhood this week. You will find us knocking doors and reducing juice in the area behind Grand River Hospital; where all the houses are older and quite remarkable. I feel that the team has a certain attachment to the neighborhood- it has a certain charm about it that we just can’t get enough of. It is not because of the houses, nor the big trees; but rather, the CATS! On one day, we saw more than three cats! Being the cat-lovers that we are, what else could we do, but submit to their cute, little cuddliness and pet them like no tomorrow!? Every day was a new adventure! Speaking of adventure, one rainy day, while Elliott and I we’re door knocking, we came across a very peculiar house. There was a path way, which led to a very old, rustic door. But behind that, there was nothing but trees. The house was simply a path and a front door. How peculiar. It sure made Elliott happy however! That is definitely not something you find every day! Cheers for now!

Bio-Diesel David

July 22, 2011

Despite the extreme heat the RTJ crew was out in full force to educate people on climate change! We spent lots of time in both Waterloo and Victoria Park; where people were enjoying the outdoors and trying to stay cool at either Lion’s Lagoon or the splash-pad. We even our trailer out to Victoria Park on Wednesday and gave out free solar powered sno-cones to help people keep cool and hydrated. Thursday was 47°C with the humidity so we opted to stay indoors for the morning and input all of the data that we have collected thus far. After that we headed back out to Waterloo Park to talk to the people attending “Music and Movies in the Park”. Saturday we went to the Kitchener farmers market where, amidst the smells of baked goods and frying bacon, we managed a whopping 33 pledges for the day!!! The summer is already half way over for us, but we look forward to continuing our climate crusade!!!

Electrical Elliot

 

July 15, 2011

It is the week of July 11^th, our first week of door-to-door, but also the first time of the summer that we talked to people about preserving the environment. Don’t forget that this week is very hot and we drink a lot of  water regulary. For the rest of the week, we are going to spend our time at Victoria park. My favorite thing about this week, vas being at Victoria Park because they had the Rib festival, and all day I was smelling this awesome “Odeur De Rib”

La semaine du 11 juillet, etait notre premiere semaine de porte-a-porte, mais aussi la premiere semaine que nous parlons au gens sur la prevention de l’envirronement. N’oublions pas, que cette semaine etait tres chaude, alors nous avons pas eux le choix de boire beaucoup d’eau regulierement. Pour conclure cette belle semaine, nous somme aller passer la journee au Victoria Park. De plus, Durant cette semaine j’ai beaucoup aimer lorsque nous avons passer la journee dans le Parck Victoria, car il avait le Festival de Rib. De plus,  ont n’a passer la journee a sentir la bonne odeure de rib.

Bye for now!
Photovoltaic Philippe

 

July 8, 2011

HELLO awesome people!

Reduce the Juice is off to another fantastic summer season after an intense week of training! We learned, we laughed, we cheered- who knew training could be so fun? With a handful of wonderful environmental global citizens coming in from all across the region to share with us their insight, we learned about various global issues and how the community is taking action against them.

We learned about the effects of climate change and air pollution from Public Health Planner Peter Ellis. Did you know that air pollution contributed to about 2000 hospitalizations related to various cardiovascular and respiratory problems from acute exposure to pollutants over the years 2002 to 2006? Glen from CREW came in once again to talk to us about ways to reduce household consumption and energy costs. We learned about transportation alternatives from John Hill from the Region’s Transportation Demand Management department as well as Matthew Piggott from Grand River CarShare. We also learned about hydro and electricity from Jeff Quint from Waterloo North Hydro, who talked to us about the OPA’s (Ontario Power Authority) “saveONenergy” initiative to raise awareness about energy consumption and to give customers a competitive edge in the energy market. Dan from the water department taught us about the region’s water sources, water treatment, and various programs, such as the Water Efficiency Program. Did you know that more than 120 tests are done on tap water while only 4 tests are done for bottled water? Mike from Sustainable Waterloo also came in to talk about the business aspect of the environment- balancing environmental sustainability with growth. Finally, we were given a review of proper bike safety from Colleen Cooper from CANBike. We even learned how to patch a tire from Scott from Recycled Cycles; who referred to elevators as “vertical cars”. Now that is pretty awesome!

Personally, I am a huge fan of fieldtrips. We were given a wonderful opportunity to tour the REEP house in Downtown Kitchener. Julian, our tour guide, showed us some neat technology – proving that anyone can live in an environmental, minimal-impact home! But good things always have to come to an end. We finished the week with yet another fieldtrip- to the landfill! It was definitely one of the most exciting and informative fieldtrips I had ever embarked on. Kathleen gave us a tour of the facilities and taught us some very interesting facts. Did you know that daily, the region of Waterloo has 900 tons of garbage that goes directly into the landfill? We also learned about alternative energies, such as the use of landfill gases to provide energy.

But how can I forget about our fantastic group leaders Sara and Michelle? They gave multiple presentations on various environmental topics; from climate change to Eco driving. We had great laughs during an activity where we dressed up in Sara’s “Ewok” costume and measured tire pressures! In the midst of those weary early mornings, Michelle showed us some pretty epic videos of… stuff! In the end, my brain feels a lot like our earth. Just like the trapped heat from climate change, my head has been filled with a plethora of information that is just aching to get out. I can’t wait for next week! Let us change the world; one light bulb, one flush, one bottle, one step at a time.

See you soon!
Bio-Diesel David

 

June 1st, 2011

Welcome to the Reduce the Juice, Summer 2011 project!  Your wonderful team leader (that’s me, Michelle) is back at it again with a few more tasks at hand this year!  Wow does it feel great to be back at this job reducing energy use and teaching people to be more eco-friendly.  So far the project is shaping up to be a great one!  We have a tonne of events planned for the summer that we can’t wait to attend!  This is our FOURTH, that’s right, count em, summer back in the Waterloo region, we just love this place so much that we don’t want to leave!  Not to mention the amount of potential to make great changes with all the sharp minds in this region!

Sara is back again this year doing a lot more of the behind the scenes things that keep the projects running, thanks Sara!  Her and I will be seen around town with four new student campaigners this summer, who we will be hiring shortly from WCI (Waterloo Collegiate Institute, for those of you not from around here).  Our team of campaigners is always an amazing group of kids whose passion for environmental rights is clearly evident!

We can’t wait to be out in the community!  Make sure to follow us on twitter (@reducethejuice) where I’ll be updating our whereabouts everyday to keep you all in the loop!

Check back soon for updates!

p.s. We’ll be at ECOfest at the Doon Heritage Museum THIS SATURDAY (June 4th), so come and be part of the fun!

Signing off for now,
MegaWatt Michelle