FRIDAY JUNE 29 2012 VOL. 39, NO. 9
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Separating out food waste
Full steam ahead
Light green trumps orange
Next week, organics will be picked up on a separate day
Nine days of celebrating our heritage as the ‘Happy Isle’ lie ahead
Wooden trophy carted away by dark horse
Marshall receives climate change award SUSANNE MARTIN EDITOR
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positive for all the parties involved. “We had lots of meetings with the school district staff and got the sense that neither one wanted to continue in this way,” Walker said. “It was also recognized that the municipality couldn’t continue to subsidize the facility without having some control.” Walker said that taking bookings for the facility will now be the job of the community school coordinator. “It’s a one-stop-shop now,” she said. “The community school coordinator will also continue to be responsible for the community education programs that fall under municipal jurisdiction. And community recreation programming can also be booked at the school.” “The school district is still committed to fund a portion of the wages for the community coordinator position,” Walker said.
on Marshall has dedicated the last 15 years of his life on Bowen Island to resource recovery. He has worked tirelessly to educate himself and islanders about issues of waste reduction and has participated in numerous initiatives dedicated to finding workable on-island solutions. He currently chairs the Solid Waste Resource Management Advisory Committee (SWRMAC) that is working to create public awareness about the upcoming changes in waste collection that require food waste to be separated out. The first organic waste collection will commence on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 4. More information is available at http://bimrecycles.ca. For his efforts and successes in making Bowen Island a more sustainable community, Marshall has received the 2012 Islands Trust Community Stewardship Award for climate change. At the council meeting on June 25, mayor Adelaar said, “We congratulate Don [Marshall]. We really appreciate what you have done and we thank you. The award is well deserved.” Marshall believes that we have to shift our views on “waste” and learn to see it as a resource. He has served on numerous committees whose mandates have been to find a way to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Marshall has been involved with the Bowen Island Recycling Depot Society since 1998, he has worked with Compost Bowen, an initiative that later morphed into Zero Waste, the Knick Knack Nook and Bowen In Transition. He has also advised council as chair of the Sustainability Community Advisory Committee. In connection with his work with SWRMAC, he said, “We have given a lot of thought to a long-range education plan on how to reduce waste. This is a concept we’ve also worked on as ZeroWaste. We have a leg up in that regard as a community because we already are quite successful at recycling.”
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It’s clear that the competitors at the BICS’s sports day were giving their best last Friday.
Debra Stringfellow photo
Municipality will manage after-hours school booking SUSANNE MARTIN EDITOR
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t was just after the beginning of the 2011/2012 school year when the municipality announced that the doors to the community school had to stay closed on weekends for budgetary reasons. Now, after lengthy negotiations with representatives of the School District 45, Christine Walker, the municipality’s community recreation officer, is pleased to announce that a new joint use agreement has been finalized that will now place facility bookings within the responsibility of the municipality. “It was fully endorsed by our council and the [West Vancouver School District] board,” Walker said. “It was a challenge when we had to close the facility on weekends,” Walker recalls, adding that the terms of reference
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in the former agreement were not clear. “We would get invoices [from the school district] but it wasn’t well defined what they were for. But now we worked out an agreement that makes it easy to move forward. It also doesn’t lose the history of our community school as it makes special mention of the community’s contributions.” The new terms of the agreement require the municipality to oversee the rental of the facility and Walker thinks that this will allow for improved community access. “The way it was set up before was that the municipality paid money but didn’t any receive revenue,” she said. “Now we will be responsible for the booking and also get the revenue. The rental fees will be based on West Vancouver School District’s fees.” Updating the agreement took a long time but Walker sees the outcome as
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