Parts of this interview will be featured in the upcoming David Chernushenko film, Powerful: Energy for Everyone.

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SPRING INTO ACTION – VISIONS OF LIVING LIGHTLY
A VIDEO CONTEST AND EVENT

Sponsored by Ecology Ottawa and David Chernushenko’s Living Lightly Project

“Maybe it’s time to stop scaring each other and start inspiring each other instead!”
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Overview

Making the shift to a more sustainable economy and lifestyle will be challenging. But many people are on board and are already forging a path towards living more lightly and building strong and vibrant communities. We are looking for short videos that illustrate some of the ways we can all live more lightly and some of the people and organizations that are doing it already.

Tell us your inspiring story or show us solutions that you have uncovered.

Selected video entries will be shown as part of the Spring Into Action – Visions
of Living Lightly Video Festival on April 4, 2009, from 1 to 4 pm at the Library and Archives Canada Theatre, 395 Wellington St.,
Ottawa, ON.
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Contest Rules

1. Length: All videos will be between 2 and 5 minutes in length, including credits.
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2. Format: Contest entries will be on DVD and authored to be played on a DVD player or computer (2 labeled copies, with the title, contact name and running time)
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3. Language: Entries will be in either French or English, or both.
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4. Categories: (i) Under 25 years of age; (ii) 25 years and older [note: changed from 21 years]
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5. Content: Entries may be either documentary or dramatic. What matters is that they illustrate ways of living more lightly — that is, living with a lighter impact on the planet but with a positive, solutions-oriented outlook. We want to see inspiring stories, practical solutions, fun and fulfilling approaches to big tasks or small. We do not want to see stories about problems. We know all that. What can we do about the problems/challenges? Any subject matter related to Living Lightly is appropriate:
   1. Saving Resources (water, energy, materials)
   2. Growing or serving food
   3. Transportation
   4. Reduce, re-use, recycle
   5. Building and rebuilding vibrant communities
   6. Being the change you wish to see – walking your talk.
   7. Art, music and theatre with a message of living lightly
   8. You name it – if in doubt, send us a message and test your idea..
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6. Permissions: All entries must be accompanied by a signed entry form confirming that you have the permission of all identifiable subjects and music rights holders. All identifiable individuals in your film should sign a Release Form. You can download a standard model release form HERE.
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7. Local content:
   1. Films must have been shot within the cities of Ottawa and/or Gatineau.
   2. Contestants must live within the City of Ottawa or Gatineau
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Deadline

Entries must arrive at the address below by March 18, 2009. They must be accompanied by a completed entry form. Click HERE to download.
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Judges

Films will be judged by active members of the Ottawa film/video and environmental community.

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Prizes

Prizes will be awarded to the best films in both the Under-25 and 25-plus age categories. Additional prizes may be awarded to honorable mention recipients in each category.

An Audience Choice Award will also be given based on audience voting at the Festival.
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Contacts

For more information about the contest, contact:

Erin Ellis, Ecology Ottawa, 613-316-7824 or erinlouiseellis@gmail.com

David Chernushenko, The Living Lightly Project, 613-730-0870 or david@livinglightly.ca

Send video entries on DVD to:
David Chernushenko
99 Seneca St.
Ottawa, ON  K1S 4X8

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jay Sinha and Chantal Plamondon launched their business LifeWithoutPlastic.com/vivresansplastique.com to provide people with healthier alternatives to common plastic products such as baby bottles and sports bottles. David Chernushenko and the Living Lightly team visit Jay and Chantal at their boutique in Wakefield, Quebec.

“Living Lightly” is an expression I learned less than two years ago, when I first met David Chernushenko, but it’s a concept with which I’ve been familiar for as long as I can remember.

I credit my mother, who became one of those idealistic, back-to-the-land types in the ’60s. Thanks to her, I grew up on organic vegetables, eggs, meat, honey and maple syrup from our own farm. Our home had no clothes dryer, no processed foods in sight, and I swear the thermostat was never set above 15 C.

In short, I had the kind of childhood that seemed horribly deprived at the time, but which I now appreciate because of the knowledge and values it instilled.

That said, I now own a clothes dryer, eat more processed foods than I should, and only set the thermostat below 15 C at night.

My point is this: Living Lightly can mean many things.

To my mother, it once meant milking the cows by hand, churning her own butter, baking her own bread, making her own cheese, yogurt, jam and pickles. For a while, unfortunately and inexplicably, it even meant buying carob instead of real chocolate. Nowadays, with farm life just a memory, it means composting, drinking fair trade coffee, and using an energy-efficient front-loading washing machine. She still bakes her own bread and grows her own vegetables. She still doesn’t own a dryer.

To me, Living Lightly means cycling instead of driving when possible, installing energy-efficient windows, and plugging the TV and stereo into a power bar that I can switch off to reduce electricity consumption. It means subscribing to the electronic edition of the daily paper. It means being vegetarian and cooking many but not all meals from scratch. I too have a front-loading washer, as well as a clothesline to complement the dryer.

Many of us feel a responsibility to tread more lightly upon our planet, but we follow different paths. The trick is for each of us to do what we can in our own way, and to accept that other people will have different approaches, priorities, opportunities and limitations. That’s the only way we’ll ever make meaningful progress in reducing our collective detrimental impact on the environment.

That sense of responsibility combined with pragmatism and respect for others is what I like about the Living Lightly Project.

Living Lightly is about being reasonable. It’s about celebrating the things we do to live more sustainably, without beating ourselves up over the things we don’t do. It’s about leading by example instead of preaching. It’s about gradual adjustment rather than wholesale, instant transformation.

I don’t want to be told how to live my life, and I imagine you don’t want to be told how to live yours. But that doesn’t mean we can’t inspire each other.

You see, I had not intended to focus on businesses and stores, perhaps as a result of having seen too many people try to use “green-sumption” to purchase their way to a more sustainable lifestyle, and perhaps as a result of my loathing for “greenwash”, whereby companies market themselves and their products as greener, but with little substance to those claims (and sometimes outright false advertising!).

So it came as a surprise when, in my first few interviews, names of local businesses and products kept coming up. My friend Fran Doy was getting her rain barrels and her safer cleaning products from Arbour Environmental Shoppe (see this week’s “rough cut” Living Lightly video about Arbour). Several people mentioned purchasing “green electricity” from Bullfrog Power. Almost everybody was getting coffee and meeting friends at Bridgehead.

Without any prompting from me, people kept mentioning businesses that were important players in their quest to live lightly. When I thought about it, all of these companies are owned by people who are themselves trying to live lightly, at work and at home, in various ways and degrees. They are trying to help by offering useful solutions at a fair price. They are trying to make a “decent” living; or, as the saying goes, they are doing well by doing good.

Some are getting rich, some are getting by. All seem to be getting a reward from the way in which they have chosen to earn their livelihood.

So, while I am not planning to make this into a “green business” film or website, I can see the content easily being 1/3 “corporate”. Which raises another point: are these stories really corporate, or are they more about people? After all, business really is about people, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. Owners are people, staff are people, suppliers are people, and clients are, of course, the most important people of all.

Ultimately, the planetary predicament in which we find ourselves was created by the action (and inaction) of people. So the solutions will be about people, sharing with, inspiring, and sometimes making money from/with other people.

If you know of any businesses (I mean people) who should be featured on this site, or in a film, please pass on their details. Or just as good, why not take a crack at interviewing them yourself? We’ll help you with the technical details.

N.B. Before anyone asks (and you should), the Living Lightly Project does not accept money from subjects we interview (be they businesses or people). We will gladly accept financial and in-kind support for our ongoing work, but we will not feature or in any way promote people, companies or goods wherever financial or material support has been accepted or offered.

David C