Eco-friendly
Couple doing cross-country road trip in an electric car
A couple from Gibsons, British Columbia, is driving across Canada in an electric car with hopes of teaching people ways to solve the waste problem that plagues society today.
“Just because the municipality gave you a wheelie cart for your compost and recyclables, ask yourself what is the carbon footprint savings if you have to have these trucks pick it up and cart it places?” asked Buddy Boyd, who has worked in waste management for 40-years, from driving garbage trucks to management positions.
“We are trying to educate people to see we are the solution, be the solution. So shop differently, refuse a straw, bring a reusable cup to Starbucks. Collectively, we can really make a difference as opposed to waiting for someone to come and fix the mess we made.”
Fifteen years ago, Boyd started Gibsons Recycling with his partner, Barbara Hetherington, who shares his passion about saving the environment. The company has won awards because of its focus on ecofriendly practices. Currently, the company has two electric trucks they use for their curbside pickups and these are charged through energy created by solar panels.
Now they are driving across the country and you can follow them at www.boltacrosscanada.com. They are doing it in their Chevrolet Bolt, a 100 per cent electric car that was named Motor Trend’s 2017 Car of the Year. It gets 238 miles (383 km) when fully charged and, depending on the level of charger, can be full in anywhere from 30 minutes to 10 hours.
The only charger they could find on Cape Breton Island was at the Ultramar at the Membertou Market. They find chargers using an app developed by Sun Country, who put in charging stations across the country.
However, the trip isn’t just about the low carbon footprint of electric cars. It’s also a way for the couple to teach people how to have zero waste and reduce their personal carbon footprint.
“Everywhere we go, we aren’t going to soil or sully the communities we are visiting by filling the recycle bins or putting our food scraps in the garbage. Even our dog’s poop bags are flushable,” Boyd explained while charging their car before heading over to Newfoundland on Wednesday.
Hetherington added: “Road trips usually create lots of waste. You go to communities and you don’t know the recycling rules or where the recycling
facilities are . . . even at hotels you don’t know what you can leave to be recycled.
“We have reduced our waste substantially. First by composting and secondly by using reusables.”
The couple will go into a roadside restaurant, with their own reusable mugs for drinks and silicon bags for food waste so they can compost it along the way. Since most places will have individual packages of cream and jam, they will bring in their own, to further cut down the waste they leave behind.
“We go in and tell the people working at the restaurants, that we are doing this . . . we are trying to make no waste for you, and they have been wonderful,” said Hetherington.
They have a portable composting machine with them. The size of a bread maker, the device dehydrates the food waste, then grinds it, leaving behind compost that looks like
fluffy dirt with a pleasant smell. Since starting the trip on July 1, the couple has eight cups of compost from two weeks of restaurant
meals.
“Whatever we are compositing and collecting on the trip, we will take back and put on our garden,” said Boyd.
“We will have truly Canadian soil, from every province,” Hetherington added with a little laugh.
The couple, whose first date included a trip to a waste facility where Boyd wanted to show Hetherington the piles of jeans discarded by a company that was encouraging people to trade in their old jeans for a discount on new ones, is truly connected by a vision of a waste-free world. It’s a vision they feel is essential to the survival of life as we know it.
“What we are doing to the atmosphere, through internal combustion engines, is a ticking time bomb,” Boyd said.
“But it’s more than just eliminating tail pipe emissions, it’s about getting rid of waste too.” Hetherington agrees. “You don’t have to make major lifestyle changes. It can be simple. For example, when you go to a restaurant, ask for no straw. If everybody did that, that is billions of straws that don’t end up in landfills or our oceans,” she explained.
The couple, which helped found Zero Waste Canada, a non-profit dedicated to reducing waste nationally, also suggest changing shopping habits, buying from local farmers and composting at home. They say if everyone makes changes like these, it will make a difference.
“People are collectively like grains of sand. A grain of sand alone is nothing. But combined they make our beaches,” explained Boyd.
“We are the grains of sand and collectively we can make the shifts we need to make, to have zero waste and eliminate tail pipe emissions.”