Porter Creek Green Team--something to celebrate

CBC Radio 1 AM 570 morning news January 5, 2009 A cleaner environment is the new year’s resolution for a group of high school students in Whitehorse. Porter Creek Secondary School has its own green team. 17 students volunteer their time to make a difference. (Cheryl Kowaja) “We were seeing a lot of pop cans getting thrown out.” But that’s changing. In the cafeteria of PCSS Danny Bohmer(sp) glances over the recycling and compost bins. He wears a T-shirt with the slogan ‘lean, mean, waste reduction team.’ “We check them once a day and if they’re too full or getting too smelly then we go and take them and throw them in the bigger boxes.” As a member of the green team, Bohmer volunteers to rummage through the rubbish. He says it only takes a few minutes a day and so far this year they’re diverting an extra 30 bags of compost a week from the dump. Cathy Andrew helped start the group in 2008. She says after a successful fall semester she hopes the green team can take it even further in the new year. (Andrew) “I would like to see us start a few more projects. We’re looking into getting compost in our bathrooms because there’s so much paper towels that go straight into the landfill.” Andrew says she’d like to see other schools in the Yukon take up the challenge this year. and The Yukon government is greening its fleet of vehicles. It spends almost $2 million dollars a year keeping its cars and trucks running. Its newest vehicles promise to be the most cost efficient on the market. (Vic Istchenko) Purchasing director Carl Rumscheidt shows off one of the newest cars in the government fleet. (Rumscheidt) “We’ve got maybe 15 of these. This is a Toyota Yaris.” There are about 450 vehicles in the government fleet and with a green procurement policy in the works, new purchases are based not on price but the cost of ownership. That’s the sticker price, plus the cost of fuel and maintenance over the life of the vehicle. (Rumscheidt) “Add it all up. The low cost wins the bid. They might be a little bit more on the capital cost but fuel’s a big factor and so they win.” The fleet includes 2 hybrids and one smart car but Rumscheidt says there are fewer American models meeting the new efficiency criteria. (Rumscheidt) “If the big three, the North Americans, start putting out smaller more efficient vehicles they say they’re going to, then maybe they’ll start winning more of the competitions. Right now this model seems to win this class right David?” David Knight is the senior vehicle purchaser. (Knight) “Compared to the bigger vehicles, this is certainly more economic to operate.” Knight and Rumscheidt predict electric cars that plug in over night will soon be part of the government fleet. (Rumscheidt) “We’ll always be trying something new and if it works, we’ll get more. We tried out the Yaris and it took off.”