Anglais

Shopping online this Black Friday? Your habits could be good for the planet — or part of the problem

Published

5 années ago

novembre 23, 2018

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VANCOUVER—Think twice before you click “proceed to checkout” in a rush to take advantage of the widespread deals coming online Friday.

Those savings could come at a steep environmental cost. As online shopping continues to grow in popularity, the consequences for waste management and transportation-related emissions are becoming more serious.

Sam Copeland shops online at his North Vancouver apartment on Wednesday. Copeland says he uses Amazon largely for its convenience. (Jennifer Gauthier / for StarMetro Vancouver)

Both are already significant environmental challenges across the country. Transportation accounts for about a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, and millions of tonnes of garbage wind up in landfills each year.

The question is whether increasing e-commerce can be part of the solution or only the problem, especially with people turning to online shopping en masse.

A survey of 5,000 Canadian online shoppers, conducted in March 2016 for Canada Post, found that one in four respondents spent more online than they did in store the year before.

Most online shoppers (48 per cent) were based in urban areas, with 31 per cent based in the suburbs and 20 per cent in rural areas or small towns.

Online shopping is driven by convenience and the opportunity to compare products and prices “without the hassle of pushing through crowds at stores,” the survey report says.

For Sam Copeland, a 24-year-old software engineer who works at a finance company in Vancouver, Amazon is almost unmatched for its convenience. He orders about twice a month. It could be cans of soup, cookies, oatmeal, toiletries — you name it, Amazon has it.

Copeland lives in North Vancouver and commutes by bus across Burrard Inlet to work in downtown Vancouver every day. He doesn’t own a car. He’s also completing a master’s degree in computational finance through the University of Washington part-time.

While the packaging — he said it’s often a lot — lingers at the back of his mind, his busy lifestyle makes the convenience of online shopping pretty attractive.

He used the online service much less often when he lived next door to a grocery store and down the road from a pharmacy in Kitsilano, a Vancouver neighbourhood southeast of downtown.

Now, he said, “I don’t really want to come home and then get on the bus to go to the store and buy toothpaste. I can order it and have it come two days later. Perfect.”

The cardboard boxes that carry online shopping orders may be recyclable, but even in Metro Vancouver, a hotbed of environmentalism, more than 14,000 tonnes of cardboard were dumped in the trash, not the recycling bin, in 2016. (Patrick Semansky/Associated Press)

But online shopping, particularly through e-commerce giant Amazon, has taken considerable heat over the years for wasteful packaging.

While the company says it has come a long way, it’s still not unusual for goods purchased online to come wrapped in plastic air pillows and packed in unnecessarily large cardboard boxes. Those may be recyclable, but even in Metro Vancouver, a hotbed of environmentalism, more than 14,000 tonnes of cardboard were dumped in the trash — not the recycling bin — in 2016, according to that year’s waste composition monitoring report.

A spokesperson for Amazon, Kaan Yalkin, said in a statement that the company has a global team working to reduce packaging waste and increase the use of recyclable materials. Over the past decade, the company has eliminated more than 221,000 tonnes of packaging through various initiatives, he said.

Other companies, including the clothing store Toad&Co, are working to reduce single-use packaging altogether, offering to ship products in a reusable mailer that can be shipped back to the store.

Aside from packaging, the rise of expedited and in some cases same-day delivery raises its own set of concerns, particularly amid the devastating wildfires, floods and extreme weather events worsened by climate change.

Anne Goodchild, a transportation engineer and founding director of the University of Washington’s Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center, has studied the impact of online shopping on travel behaviour. How it affects pollution depends on a variety of local factors.

But delivery services do have the potential to be a “significant benefit environmentally,” Goodchild said. It’s like a bus for goods.

In a best-case scenario, delivery services have the potential to be more efficient than personal vehicle travel and reduce CO2 levels emitted through transportation. (ANNE GOODCHILD / UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON)

Delivery services tend to be well organized, consolidating many deliveries into a single vehicle. Cities use a similar model for services such as garbage collection.

“It’s more efficient to have one person come around and pick up everybody’s stuff, and that’s obvious to us,” Goodchild said.

That’s the “utopian” view: “A very efficient, very consolidated, centralized distribution system that’s like a transit system for goods.”

In this scenario, having goods delivered could reduce pollution from that “last mile” of the distribution system, Goodchild said.

But that’s the best-case scenario. When online shoppers demand their products be delivered as quickly as possible, the opportunities for efficiency go right out the window, along with the environmental benefits.

Even in the best-case scenario, there’s a catch or two.

Using delivery services can reduce emissions such as CO2, which contribute to climate change no matter where they are produced. But other contaminants released by delivery vehicles, which tend to be diesel, can cause health problems locally.

The second problem is that the environmental benefits of delivery services really depend on whether it’s offsetting personal car use, said Alex Bigazzi, an assistant professor in both the department of Civil Engineering and the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.

In cities where people tend to walk, bike or take transit, you would expect to see fewer benefits from online shopping and possibly an increase in local greenhouse gas emissions, he said. In more sprawling areas where people use personal cars for the vast majority of their trips, there’s more potential for environmental gains.

Goodchild agreed, explaining the net impact of delivery in a region depends on the details: the distance a package has to travel from the warehouse, how quickly a shopper is asking for it to be delivered and whether that shopper uses their car for another activity with the time they saved by shopping online.

In a statement, Yalkin said: “Amazon is committed to minimizing our carbon emissions by optimizing our transportation network, improving product packaging to drive efficiency in the distribution of products, implementing energy efficiency measures in our operations and using renewable energy to run our business.”

The company has made improvements to its own fleet of delivery vehicles to improve their fuel efficiency, he added. These measures include installing automatic tire-inflation systems that keep tires properly inflated and maximize fuel efficiency.

It’s also signed the “Sustainable Fuel Buyers’ Principles,” which among other things aim to help increase demand for low-carbon fuels.

But there’s more to be done to reduce the emissions impact of online shopping, Goodchild said. Individual shoppers have a role to play, too.

Here’s how to reduce the environmental impact of shopping online:

Goodchild suggests keeping a shopping list, so you can make one bulk order instead of several. Often, she added, Amazon has an option to consolidate the shipment so your purchases are delivered in one trip when they’re all ready. Choose that option whenever possible, she suggested.

Both Goodchild and Bigazzi said shoppers should resist the urge to ask for expedited shipping if it’s not really needed. A longer lead time means delivery services can plan the most efficient deliveries.

Jo-Anne St. Godard, the executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario, warned shoppers not to get caught up in the hype of Black Friday, regardless of whether they shop online or in-store. “Less is really more,” she said. “I think that’s the No. 1 way of keeping everybody’s waste down.”

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Ainslie Cruickshank is a Vancouver-based reporter covering the environment. Follow her on Twitter: @ainscruickshank

Anglais

Nostalgia and much more with Starburst XXXtreme

Published

3 années ago

août 10, 2021

admin

Get a taste of adventure with Starburst XXXtreme based on the legendary NetEnt Game. The nostalgic themes are sure to capture fans of the classic version as they get treated to higher intensity, better visuals, and features. The most significant element of the game is its volatility. Patience will not be an essential virtue considering the insane gameplay, and there is a lot of win potential involved. It retains the original makeup of the previous game while adding a healthy dose of adrenaline.

Starburst Visuals and Symbols

The game is definitely more conspicuous than before. The setting happens over a 5-reel, 3-row game grid with nine fixed win lines, which function if a succession from the left to the right reel is present. Only those players that that attain the highest win per bet line are paid. From a visual standpoint, the Starburst XXXtreme slots illustrates lightning effects behind the reels, which is not surprising as it is inherited from the original version. Available themes include Classic, Jewels, and Space. The game is also available in both desktop and mobile versions, which is advantageous for players considering the global pandemic. According to Techguide, American gamers are increasingly having more engaging gaming experiences to socialize to fill the gap of in-person interaction. Starburst XXXtreme allows them to fill the social void at a time when there is so much time to be had indoors.

Starburst XXXTreme Features

Players get to alternate on three features which are Starburst Wilds, XXXtreme Spins, and Random Wilds. The first appears on reels 2,3, or 4. When these land, they expand to cover all positions while also calculating the wins. They are also locked for a respin. If a new one hits, it also becomes locked while awarding another respin. Starburst XXXtreme offers a choice between two scenarios for a higher stake. In one scenario with a ten times stake, the Starburst Wild is set on random on reels 2,3, or 4, and a multiplier starts the respin. The second scenario, which has a 95 times stake, starts with two guaranteed starburst wilds on reels 2,3, or 4. it also plays out using respin game sequence and features. The game also increases the potential with the Random Wilds feature to add Starburst Wilds to a vacant reel at the end of a spin. Every Starburst Wild gives a random multiplier with potential wins of x2, x3, x5, x10, x25, x50, x100, or even x150.

The new feature is sure to be a big hit with the gaming market as online gambling has shown significant growth during the lockdown. AdAge indicates the current casino customer base is an estimated one in five Americans, so Starburst XXXtreme’s additional features will achieve considerable popularity.

What We Think About The Game

The gambling market has continued to diversify post-pandemic, so it is one of the most opportune times to release an online casino-based game. Thankfully Starburst XXXtreme features eye-catching visuals, including the jewels and space themes. These attract audience participation and make the gameplay inviting. The game also has a nostalgic edge. The previous NetEnt iteration featured similar visuals and gameplay, so the audience has some familiarity with it. The producers have revamped this version by tweaking the features to improve the volatility and engagement.

That is characterized by the potential win cap of 200,000 times the bet. Starburst XXXtreme does not just give betting alternatives for players that want to go big. The increase of multipliers also provides a great experience. If the respins in the previous version were great, knowing that multipliers can go hundreds of times overtakes the game to a new level.

Players should get excited about this offering. All of the features can be triggered within a single spin. Whether one plays the standard game or takes the XXXtreme spin route, it is possible to activate all of the features. Of course, the potential 200,000 times potential is a huge carrot. However, the bet size is probably going to be restricted and vary depending on the casino. It is also worth pointing out that a malfunction during the gameplay will void all of the payouts and progress. Overall, the game itself has been designed to provide a capped win of 200,000 times the original bet.

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Anglais

‘We’re back’: Montreal festival promoters happy to return but looking to next year

Published

3 années ago

juillet 23, 2021

admin

In downtown Montreal, it’s festival season.

In the city’s entertainment district, a musical act was conducting a sound check on stage Friday evening — the second day of the French-language version of the renowned Just For Laughs comedy festival. Tickets for many of the festival’s free outdoor shows — limited by COVID-19 regulations — were sold out.

Two blocks away, more than 100 people were watching an acoustic performance by the Isaac Neto Trio — part of the last weekend of the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique, a celebration of music from the African continent and the African diaspora.

With COVID-19 restrictions continuing to limit capacity, festival organizers say they’re glad to be back but looking forward to next year when they hope border restrictions and capacity limits won’t affect their plans.

Charles Décarie, Just For Laughs’ CEO and president, said this is a “transition year.”

“Even though we have major constraints from the public health group in Montreal, we’ve managed to design a festival that can navigate through those constraints,” Décarie said.

The French-language Juste pour rire festival began on July 15 and is followed by the English-language festival until July 31.

When planning began in February and March, Décarie said, organizers came up with a variety of scenarios for different crowd sizes, ranging from no spectators to 50 per cent of usual capacity.

“You’ve got to build scenarios,” he said. “You do have to plan a little bit more than usual because you have to have alternatives.”

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Anglais

MELS new major movie studio to be built in Montreal

Published

3 années ago

juillet 23, 2021

admin

MONTREAL — MELS Studios will build a new film studio in Montreal, filling some of the gap in supply to meet the demand of Hollywood productions.

MELS president Martin Carrier said on Friday that MELS 4 studio construction will begin « as soon as possible », either in the fall or winter of next year. The studio could host productions as early as spring 2023.

The total investment for the project is $76 million, with the Quebec government contributing a $25 million loan. The project will create 110 jobs, according to the company.

The TVA Group subsidiary’s project will enable it to stand out « even more » internationally, according to Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau. In the past, MELS Studios has hosted several major productions, including chapters of the X-Men franchise. The next Transformers movie is shooting this summer in Montreal.

Péladeau insisted that local cultural productions would also benefit from the new facility, adding that the studio ensures foreign revenues and to showcase talent and maintain an industry of Quebec producers.

STUDIO SHORTAGE

The film industry is cramped in Montreal.

According to a report published last May by the Bureau du cinéma et de la télévision du Québec (BCTQ), there is a shortage of nearly 400,000 square feet of studio space.

With the addition of MELS 4, which will be 160,000 square feet, the company is filling part of the gap.

Carrier admitted that he has had to turn down contracts because of the lack of space, representing missed opportunities of « tens of millions of dollars, not only for MELS, but also for the Quebec economy. »

« Montreal’s expertise is in high demand, » said Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, who was present at the announcement.

She said she received great testimonials from « Netflix, Disney, HBO and company » during an economic mission to Los Angeles in 2019.

« What stands out is that they love Montreal because of its expertise, knowledge and beauty. We need more space, like MELS 4, » she said.

There is still not enough capacity in Quebec, acknowledged Minister of Finance, the Economy and Innovation Eric Girard.

« It is certain that the government is concerned about fairness and balance, so if other requests come in, we will study them with the same seriousness as we have studied this one, » he said.

Grandé Studios is the second-largest player in the industry. Last May, the company said it had expansion plans that should begin in 2022. Investissement Québec and Bell are minority shareholders in the company.

For its part, MELS will have 400,000 square feet of production space once MELS 4 is completed. The company employs 450 people in Quebec and offers a range of services including studio and equipment rentals, image and sound postproduction, visual effects and a virtual production platform.