Small Towns in Canada Making Huge Environmental Changes!

Leaf Rapids Manitoba is the first municipality in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags! This is exciting, but there are only 550 residents in this town.... If only Toronto could take this on as an issue, perhaps with the help and advice of the Mayor of San Francisco, who announced just last month it will be banning shopping bags. Toronto recently joined San Fran's Digital City Network, which seeks to connect municipal government's in various hubs in matters of networking, media, film and economic exchange. Perhaps Miller could tap into San Fransico's already in place infrastrucutre for dealing with the plastic bag problem.

Wolfville Nova Scotia announced today it is Canada's first Fair Trade Town. It's a move that will have economic benefits for the town, and I imagine it will significantly reduce it's ecological footprint.
Importantly for the Atlantic provinces, this will mean that more money will be put back into the local economy instead of being invested in importing goods from other provinces or countries.
Mayor Bob Stead says "it's almost impossible to talk about fair trade without in this instance talking about buying local and fair price for local produce as well." When the community was considering supporting fair trade farmers in other countries, it realized it should also be supporting local farmers who are suffering major losses.
And of course, the less goods that are transported across Canada and imported form other countries, the less fuel that is used. Win win.

Good read: John Jacobs on the problem of "Atlantica" (trading scheme between Maritimes and New England).