When an airline decides to lower their prices, the first things to go out the window is usually food quality (or food period), and then service. In Westjet’s case, the first was scenario was true, and now any food on board must be purchased from a third party provider, beverages however remain complimentary. Westjet’s success in maintaining high quality service is really thanks to their core values as an organization. Humour replaces luxurious pampering, and that is seen through their genuine care and growth approach to staff and clients. It goes a long way to describe what individuals value, and it is not being treated like royalty, but treated like important individuals.

So what then could be next on the horizon for Westjet if they plan to stay the course as market leaders in the industry? Well in order to come full circle as an organization committed to triple bottom line results, Westjet must now complete the circle through their conscious impact on the community and environment in which they operate. Based on my observations, I have made three suggestions that could truly go a long way for an organization like Westjet.

1. Strive for zero-waste in flight and in the office.

Why should eating on a place be any different than eating in a restaurant or coffee shop? (other than the obvious lack of a take away option). The waste generated by plastic cups, tissues, wrapping/packaging, and disposable cutler to name a few, is an unnecessary burden to our landfills and recycling plants (that is if they do separate the recyclables). So would it be so difficult to design the services inflight like one would a coffee shop? An idea would be to give everyone a mug to use, and then return it at the end of the flight, echo on the cutlery for food or snacks served as well. I can only imagine long term benefits and savings for the company, the clients, and the environment!

2. Have alternative entertainment options.

I love inflight movies, especially when I have lots to choose from, however, in budget flights, the options are either an additional cost, or you don’t have any choice over the selection. In Westjet’s case, they have satellite TV, which does include movies at an additional cost, however the complimentary option leaves us spending half the journey flipping through uninteresting channels and spending half the time exposed to commercial products – something I do not like. It can be said that sometimes having options doesn’t always give you choice. So, thinking to myself that I must be an anomaly, I decided to walk up and down the aisle seeing what other people were watching. That is when it hit me, well over half the people were either trying to sleep or were reading either a book or a magazine. A fraction of the remaining were watching the inflight movie, and a few drones were flipping through the channels trying to find something suitable to entertain them. So my question is quite an obvious one to me, why not appeal to this demand? By providing a small book library of some classics, and top of the chart books, and variety of magazines, passengers can sign them out at the beginning of the flight, and return them upon landing. Why stop at just reading, why not have small board games that you can challenge your neighbour with, more often than not, people are starving for conversation or interactions yet our society assumes we all want our privacy, so why appeal to one and not the other? Have the option, it wouldn’t be that costly, but the value could be tremendous. I can tell you, one of the most stressful places to be is in a departure gate with 200+ strangers, not a single one saying a word.

3. Provide premium carbon offsetting service.

Like many avid travellers, I get quite disappointed whenever I take a carbon footprint calculation test. Living my life as sustainable minded as possible, I always do great until I get to the question about how many flights/distance do I take in a year – needless to say, my planets needed to support my lifestyle doubles. It is no myth that air travel is the worst producer of green house gases (GHG) for any individual. So why not offer a premium service for the eco-conscious traveller? It would involve a premium price, that would be put toward offsetting your emissions and growing the renewable energy industry. Travellers can then fly in the comfort that somewhere, their money is helping to put up solar panels or wind turbines to replace dirty non-renewable energy supply. This alone will send a strong message to the R&D labs of the airline industry to hurry up with their solar flight research, and to really expand to lead other airlines that will be heading in this direction.

The uncertain future of oil will undoubtedly force a lot of change, and we will likely see the end of cheap air travel in our very near future. Here is an interesting analysis of the state of the airline industry, and their search for oil alternatives. I am sure there are various other opportunities to green the airline industry, and that is why it needs a leader, like Westjet has demonstrated so well for us in the past.

I suppose some of the experiences I had will never leave me, some truths you cannot just sweep under a carpet. Now that I am back in Canada, the hardest part is trying to share those experiences I had in a way that help people understand these truths that I have seen: poverty, exploitation, corruption, dishonesty. I guess this feeling is shared by anyone in the field of sustainability. The question eludes me, while I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. The worst of all, for me, is falling on deaf ears to the ones that are supposed to be closest and most beloved to us: our family.

The conundrum, in which I have befallen, is where to cross the line when on one side of it you know you cannot tell another person what s/he is doing wrong and how to live their life, on the other hand you cannot stand idle watching while ignorance is harming innocent people (and the environment) thousands and millions of miles away.

What would you do if stuck in this situation, crying desperately to be heard, to share some tiny morsel of experience, that may trigger an awakening to just how damaging the majority of North Americans live.

I know, I’m being harsh, accusing, judging. I know, but what would you do? What would you do if you knew someone was doing something that unbenownst to them is harming others, often, many others.

“What makes you so much smarter than us” or “who are you to think you know whats best for us” are two phrases I hear in defense whenever I point out the pointless obessive purpose to an electronic pepper mill. I wish I had all the answers, no one has all the answers. I do have a lot of questions though, like these:

1. Why do we not question why places like Wal-mart can offer such ridiculously low prices? Can we not accept the reality that there are underpaid Chinese men and women (and often children) living and working in deplorable conditions to put together crappy products that are designed to be either broken, or unfashionable within 6 months. Not to mention the lives lost and sold into slavery over the extraction of cocoa for our chocolates, and diamonds for our dogs new burberry jacket?

2. Why we unquestioningly believe the FDA or our government would never approve any products that would be harmful to us, yet allow tobacco products in abundance, toxic chemicals to remain in shampoo, soaps, unrecyclable plastics to cover our produce, genetically modified fruits and vegetables that carry ridiculous “newest health wave trend setter” like pro-and pre-biotics (wtf?), animal meat that is so pumped with hormones (Bovine growth hormone), that our mother-to-be’s breast milk contains dioxin (read deadly manmade toxin, leads to cancer) and our children are hitting puberty earlier, and getting fatter and bulkier than anytime in recorded history.

3. Why we have to pay more for “healthy food”, since when did health become a choice? shouldn’t it be a given, like air or water?

4. Why do we allow companies to drill in our backyards, pollute our fresh water streams, and kill off communities and bio-diversity that has lived on the land for far longer than the English language has been around, just to turn around and sell us that which we used to get for free and in abundance: Water! Tap water vs bottled water has been proven (and again) to be a hoax, a self satisfying delusion that tastes oh so good with our pre-bionic, certified organic, high in calcium and omega-3, with 0 trans-fat and low cholestoral, diet, meals.

5. Why is it okay to bag our groceries in non-recyclable plastics produced from petrol, and drive SUVs in urban areas when we know that a large percentage of gasoline money goes to Saudi Arabia who uses a lot of that money to build madrassas all over the world, many of which teach a fundamentalist form of Islam, which only leads to more terrorism. Oh yea, not to mention that oil and gas production is a major cause of global warming (automobile emissions alone contribute to 30% of CO2 released into the atmosphere in the United States alone), and not to mention destruction to natural habitats; but as long as there is demand, the oil companies have an excuse to continue making money.

6. Why do we believe we can obtain quality of life or social stature by owning material things? We keep ourselves in sub-urban bubbles, ignorant of the thought about where our products come from, and most important, where it goes once we are done? Why do our politicians refer to us as consumers and not citizens? Why do we consider quality time to include the family sitting around watching TV, not communicating, not sharing, not caring – and we wonder why teen depression and suicide rates are rising? We have less leisure time than any society in recorded history, and our general effectiveness at work has dropped dramatically, mainly to do with the over-stimulation of advertisements trying to get our attention around every corner!

7. Why do we believe that drugs will cure our illnesses and not cause others? Why so much attention on treatment and not more on prevention? With staggering rising cancer and asthma rates in industrial nations, isn’t there more that can be done to keep us healthy? Why do pharma companies experiment on “psychological abnormalities” in children by diagnosing them with A.D.D.? More importantly why would doctors buy into this practice that is causing more harm than good to our childrens early stages of development?

How are we supposed to trust anything in a world so wrought in corruption, and so blind to the public eye?

So tell me, am I wrong to ask these questions? Should I just accept things as they are? Wait till someone else figures out a solution? (or invent something that could kill us all).

Is it true I don’t have a right to tell you how to live your life, when the media and society do so much of a better job at it than I do? Maybe I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, these questions should be more than enough to prompt you to ask your own questions and find out whatever it is you can do to jump off this crazy train speeding toward a cliff without breaks.

What’s that? You want solutions? I thought you didn’t want someone telling you how to live your life. Well I don’t have solutions for you, only experiences on how I try to live a little bit better. But you’ll have to contact me or comment to hear what I have to say, I’m sick of trying to get your attention. It’s your turn to do something now.

The scene began with Ale emerging from the kitchen with a plateful of delicious fruits; oranges, plums, kiwi and apples. Sustainability has been an issue on our tongues for the past month now as the My Choice! initiative rolls out.

Suddenly, the colourful plate of fruit before me draws my attention to its uniformity. Every fruit slice, identical to the next especially the seedless oranges. My curiosity overcoming me, I grab one of the uncut oranges an sure enough by hypothesis was correct:

I was sitting in Bangalore, India eating Oranges grown in Australia and my friends were eating apples grown in Washington.

The absurdity of my situation grew into a discussion about food transportation, genetically modified (gm) crops, pesticides and mono cultures.

So I related this story to my friend who had purchased the oranges:

“Imagine being born, to a city where every single person looked identical to you, acted like you, sounded like you when they spoke. How could you imagine yourself in such a community?” Well these are the communities of monocultures that we are growing around the world to feed our desire to have the ‘perfect’ apple or ‘perfect’ orange, completely oblivious to how, and what cost was made to get these ‘perfect’ products to us.

What joy could we have by biting into an orange that is of the same concentration of pulp and juice as the next. In fact, remember the last time you ate Mandarine oranges for Christmas holidays? How bland have they become? I remember my oranges being so much sweeter and juicer as a kid.

The conversation continued on to hair products. Shampoo. Recently, in my rare visit to a super store, I was persuaded to purchase an organic shampoo. It was about the same price as the usual Fructus product I usually buy. I thought; heck it’ll try it! To my amazement, it works great!

Now this particular morning, fully charged on a sustainability epiphany, I compared the ingredients of a fructus shampoo and the my new organic shampoo. Well, needless to say the fructus won the battle in terms of number of chemicals it uses, total of 23, 4 of which were chlorine related, and 1 was perfum. Whereas the organic shampoo had 5 natural extracts, 1 of which was purifed water.

The math is simple, but the question on my mind was why do we need conditioner? Where did it come from? And why are we dependent on it? The answer was triggered by a comment made by William McDonough in an address to Vanderbilt University. The chemicals found in shampoo may clean your hair stripping it of many essential nutrients necessary for its own growth, but it also drys the hair making it tangly and rough, which is why you need more conditioner to make it feel smooth and silky.

What a con.

moral of the story: buy organic (locally)

The religion boasts a very humanitarian approach to life; to serve humanity is to serve God, as some signs around the compound will tell you. This feat is proven in its entirety on the sheer volume of travelers, pilgrims and devotees that come through the gates. All throughout the day and night volunteers are working to sweep the premise, to clean the temple, and enacting their duty to service the people of this sanctuary.

Most noteworthy are the eating grounds provided here. The Langar Khanna (Blessed Food) is a completely systematized wheel of food for the people. No cost for entrance and all are welcome. Everyone eats together in lines on the floor so there is no distinction in class here. Thousands of people come through these gates everyday, and everyday they provide this service. It is all funded by the amount of donations and volunteers provided.

First, you get your metal dish, a metal bowl for drinking and a spoon. Then you, like hundreds others like you at this time, enter the large hall where everyone will sit in lines, cross legged. Volunteers then come by with spoonfuls of daal (lentils), rice, curd, or halva (a sweet flour mixture) in the mornings. All vegetarian options. Water is poured into the bowls for drinking and the food is eaten with small rotis (similar to pita bread). After you are done, you carry your plate outside, hand over the spoon to these men sitting in chairs, and then you pass your dish and bowl down an assembly line of volunteers who take the dirty plates in large trolleys over to the dish washing area where even more volunteers are ready to clean all the dishes that come their way. Then you move along to the side of the Langar Khanna and take another metal bowl for chai (tea with milk) and enjoy it amongst a crowd.

The real magic is in the process and the speed with which they can get you in, fed and out without having to wait in any queues longer than a minute . The food is another miracle in the making. Behind the Langar you will find enormous vats bigger than the biggest cauldrons you’ve ever seen, with, you guessed it, a volunteer at the ladle. A group of women are rolling the rotis and cooking them in light vegetable oil. All of this is then brought up to the main hall and given to the hungry guests. It is truly a mechanism of wonder how it works so effortlessly and so accurately without any hang ups. One feels so overjoyed with the system afterwards, you can’t help but be so impressed that you end up donating a fair amount!

That is not all the magic of this place, for people also sleep on the tiles in the hundreds, families huddled together, rich, poor, travelers, you name it.

This whole system really got me thinking about how such a system can be, and to some extent is, being implemented in Canada and other countries. The problem with the soup kitchens in Canada is that they are for the poor only, and thus get little support to sustain themselves. Imaging having such an impressive device in your home city. How would you get everyone to sit, rich and poor, pilgrim and traveler? Is this kind of system only imaginable in a religious context? One wonders if the hymns of the Langar Khannas walls are right: To serve humanity, is to serve God.

I, for one, see a huge benefit to even spending tax payers money on such a system, for what else do we spend our taxes for if not to help those in need. What if there was a large enough soup kitchen-cum-dormitory for travelers and poor people alike, powered by volunteers that use the service. Imagine driving down the street and a beggar at your window asking for money for food, and you proudly being able to point him in the direction of the Langar Khanna. If the poor people are given food, accommodation, and a clean space, then what then would they beg for? They can spend their free time learning a trade, getting off their feet. Special needs cases can be involved in addressing the poor who suffer from mental illness. I believe such a design could exist, and would love to work with anyone passionate enough about this to make it exist.

The best part in my eyes, is that such a system can also be 100% environmentally friendly. The structure can be build in such a way that it uses organic food grown from the compost of its own waste, electricity can be powered through solar panels, static absorption technology, biomass gasification, heat from the cauldrons can become thermal heaters to dry laundry and bring heat into the building.

One can only dream of such a perfect design and its possibility. There are probably hundreds of factors to consider in such a design, and those can be overcome. That’s enough excitement for one night.

Cheers

I had the pleasure of visiting Teri Gram estate today in Gurgaon, which is on the outskirts of Delhi. It is a project of The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) foundation, which began under the patronage of Ratan Tata in the 1970s. It is now under the leadership of Dr. Pauchauri, noble laureate winner for sustainability.

The campus is literally in the middle of nowhere, which symbolizes its removal from urban waste societies, but what a retreat it was indeed. Upon arrival, I was given an electronic car which resembled a CNG rickshaw, green in colour obviously. We passed by golf courses, cricket fields and lush vegetation. The retreat itself was a very modern design with high end facilities. Its primary source of light was from the sun, and it had no air-conditioning. In fact, this facility produces no waste.

I got a guided tour of the facility which began with looking at the structure itself, its energy efficient design, its use of wind-air ducts that run 4 meters below the earth and is cooled and shot up through the building with the use of fans. To complement this invention, warm air ducts run up the building so that when the cold air enters the room there is somewhere for the warm air to go. The idea first emerged in ancient Greece and is now something taught in elementary science – hot air rises! So why have contemporary builders not heard of this concept? Got me.

We then visited the waste disposal center, or maybe I should say the waste garden. Here, human excrement is dumped into a pond where plants of the phramites austravlis family grow. These plants stand about 2-3 meters high out of the water, the genius is in the roots, as these are water plants, they actually consume all of the bio-waste, essentially cleaning it and leaving behind clean water. Currently most of that water is used to water the garden and golf course, however some is taken and purified even further so that it actually becomes drinkable. Imagine turning our sewage ducts back into our own drinking water system.

From here I was taken to see their biomass gasification unit, this is the source of most of their power, and it comes from wood chips and bio-mass pellets. Here the pellets are burnt at temperatures of 1200ºC, and the gas is then turned into power generation, or thermal heating which heats water canisters that provide hot water for the campus. There is a small degree of thermal heat loss that occurs, and right now they are experimenting with an addition that will dry the wood chips and thus reduce the moisture to make the system more effective.

The trip ended at a tissue culture plantation where they use GMO plants to replicate thousands of species of plants for commercial use. The admit that they are not working toward biodiversity, but that their product is scattered all over the place and that it wont impact natural eco-systems. As long as they are not creating entire forests out of this replicated genome, they should not have a negative impact on eco-systems. Seems legitimate enough, I’d like to hear your opinion.

This model is definitely a best case practise in architectural genius, and one can only hope that this made in Asia solution can spread to architectural schools all over the continent.

Visit the gallery here to see photos of the entire visit.