The Albertan way....

So I hate to rag on the Albertans (considering 50% of those who work there are actually from Newfoundland.. but... I'm feeling as though many places in Alberta may be.. shall I say.. lagging in certain green areas as per the rest of the country. I just finished working 25 days in the Alberta Oil Sands, approximately 1 and a half hours south of Ft McMurray. I unfortunately could not blog while I was away because I had an iPad and the internet was painfully slow.

I did, however, develop a "tolerance" for the environmental ignorance that is still happening everywhere. I did what I could. I brought my own Steel Water bottle (they only have 500ml bottles of water for everyone else... so think of how many of those you would drink in a day). I was drinking about 2L a day so I figured I saved about 100 plastic bottles from the landfill (did I mention there is virtually no recycling? On my site there wasn't anyway...) I also brought my own coffee mug so I saved another 25+ STYROFOAM cups... yup its still out there apparently.  When power became live in most dorms (they are building an expansion camp) all the light switches were already in the on position. Every time I went into a room I turned off all 4 lights. I figure I turned off about 400+ lights in my time out there.

I tried my hardest to convince my crew of 4 guys to take only 1 very spacious truck to site everyday (over 40 min each way) but lost that battle... instead we would drive bumper to bumper to and from site in 2 or more quad cab trucks. One day there were 8 of us on site and 5 trucks.  I secretly turned off trucks I would see idling for 15, 20... even 45 minutes on a +5C day...

Anyway this is turning into a bit of a rant but believe it or not I'm trying to make a point. And that point is this.... you can't always worry about what everyone else is doing, or NOT doing to help the environment. Your best line of defence is leading by example and hopefully a few more will follow. I would have gained no points being the "nagger" on site although people were aware of my efforts to reduce my waste where I could. A few guys have told me they are going to bring their own coffee mug in next time and I've convinced a few guys to make the 3 minute walk to the lunchroom instead of driving. You know what they say.. Rome wasn't built in a day!