Straight to Hell

A favourite song from my youth was Straight to Hell by The Clash.

M.I.A. used the Clash track in her huge hit Paper Planes.

Fittingly, it's the soundtrack for the City of Calgary's quasi efforts to divert waste (resource) from the landfill.

The items below are headed Straight to Hell, aka the Calgary Landfill. 
It will not be sorted. Hello, Sorting Stations!
It will not be reused. 
It will not be recycled.
It will not be used for something useful and thereby eliminating the need to extract those materials from the planet. 
It is a resource that will be turned into a waste by City of Calgary inaction. 
It will decompose over the next 1000 years and perhaps with a methane capture system, 1/1000th of the energy via LFG (Landfill Gas) will be recovered. 

The City of Calgary has waste diversion targets that are almost comedic when juxtaposed with on the ground action. While European cities are implementing intelligent sorting and diversion strategies, achieving 95%+ diversion from landfills, our unused resources (aka waste) are going to Straight to Hell. 

Mini/Micro Homes: 21st Century Sustainable Home Ownership Options

We’ve seen a steady drop in family size since WWII, yet according tohe Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the average Canadian house size has increased from 800 square feet in 1945 to well over 2,200 today. And somehow or another, Canadians are also supporting an $8 billion a year self-storage industry to store the toys and knick-knacks that won’t fit in their growing houses. ~Ashley Lubyk

Home Ownership Matters to Everyone on Facebook

Eggpocrisy

The logo for Edmonton City Council's new food strategy ironically incorporates an egg. (image below)

While Edmonton City Council is heralding this great new local food plan, their bylaw officers are simultaneously attempting to seize Crystal Sherris' hens, as you can read here.

Every Person in Calgary

This is a dot map of every person in Calgary.

Brandon Martin-Anderson created the project to map every person in Canada and the US, using census data. Here's the original project.

ATB Whole-Brainer No Brainer

The NHL had a Make Whole proposal. ATB might want to look into that.

The ATB Sparks propaganda:

Meet our whole-brainers.

In Alberta, you don't have to choose between mountains or prairie, culture or community—you can find it all within our borders.

At ATB, we're like that too. In every corner of the province, you'll find an ATB associate with knowledge, know-how, common sense, and creativity. This unique mix means they're not right-brainers or left-brainers—they're whole-brainers, and we take a whole lot of pride in their ability to help Albertans and Alberta businesses achieve great things.

The "Whole-brainers" are not all quite there...

The Official Whitehouse response to DeathStar Petition

Link to

 The Official Whitehouse response to DeathStar Petition

#Fail on Transparency

The "Corporation" aka City of Calgary, has significant corporate culture and behavioral hurdles to overcome to reach TIRE (Transparency, Inclusiveness, Responsiveness & Engagement) targets.
imagineCalgary targets that include the establishment of an Ombudsman's Office by 2008 are not being met. Numerous official policy documents are completely ignored by the city. Why do we bother to develop, vote and adopt policy if we're not going to follow/implement the policy? Because that's what bureaucracies do. It is up to citizens and politicians with integrity to ensure that the Municipal Government Act 5(b) is enforced.
Here are two recent blog posts on the failure of the City of Calgary (#YYCCC on twitter) to achieve anything close to transparency:
1. imagineCalgary: Open Government Initiative Betrayed by Bureaucrats
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/paul-hughes/open-government-initiative-betrayed-by-bureaucrats_b_2221446.html
2. Alberta: All We Want For Xmas Is A Calgary Municipal Ombudsman
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/paul-hughes/calgary-municipal-ombudsman_b_2259932.html
3. imagineCalgary, Lost in the BureaucraZy
http://paulin8.blogspot.ca/2011/05/imaginecalgary-lost-in-bureaucrazy.html
This is from City website on Engagement:  (Another huge #FAIL)

Onward/ Sustainability Direction: By 2020, The City’s programs and services will reflect the voice of citizens, and citizens can play active roles in their communities and The City’s processes.

As of 2013, the standard is #FAIL, achieved via the deadly bureaucratic combination of incompetence and apathy.