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National Observer
28-07-2025
- Business
- National Observer
How a young leader is building the circular economy
These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity. Abhiudai Mishra (Abhi) is growing the circular economy. This 24 year old Vancouverite is the co-founder and operations director of Mosa Technologies which, in its first two years, has transformed more than 40,000 glass bottles into beautifully upcycled glasses, platters and candles. Mosa also offers workshops for students of all ages to learn about and participate in the circular economy, where they themselves do the upcycling. Abhi is a Starfish Canada 2025 Top 25 Environmentalist Under 25 award winner. Tell us about your project My co-founder Prishita Agarwal and I believe one of the best ways to learn about the circular economy is to engage in it directly. Once you work in the industry, purchase a beautiful affordable upcycled product or make one yourself, you know without a doubt that sustainability can be affordable, beautiful and easy and popular. Our team of ten employees have decent work supplying more than 60 retail stores across Canada. We have engaged 800 students from kindergarten to university in learning about circularity as they contribute to it. We collect bottles and glass fragments from restaurants, bars and landfills. We work with designers and use technology adapted from ceramic cutting to make new things from old. How did you get into this work? I was a student at UBC's Sauder School of Business and had a house party. As I was cleaning up my apartment one of the empty bottles broke. It frustrated me that recycling glass shards is awkward. Prishita and I researched how to do that and encountered the idea of transforming the economy so nothing is wasted and everything is repurposed. We decided to explore how to use waste glass. We bought a small glass cutter online and began experimenting. The first product took us weeks of work but eventually we had enough for a booth at a UBC student event. We sold out in 3 hours! Now just 2 years later we have hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and are finding new markets every day. Abhi Mishra, co-founder of Mosa Technologies, has over the past two years played a key role in diverting more than 40,000 glass bottles from waste bins, instead converting them into beautifully upcycled glasses, platters and candles. What makes it hard? We have a lot of success placing our products with small independent stores like Cultured Coast in Nanaimo, Caribou Gifts in Toronto and Makers Vancouver but it has proved challenging to persuade large retailers to carry them. We are working to remind them it is good for their brand to carry beautiful sustainable products that reach consumers with their meaning. What keeps you awake at night? Is it going to be enough? Is there more we could be doing to spread these concepts more rapidly? What gives you hope? Last week two young women approached me saying they had been inspired by a talk I gave recently and asked me to mentor them with their idea about reducing fast fashion. This reminded me we never know when we will have impact. How did the way you were raised affect you? My family has been one of the noble families in the Indian city of Udaipur for 500 years. Udaiper is sometimes called the Venice of India with canals, rivers and lakes and I was raised to understand stewarding this beautiful place is a responsibility. My Grade One teacher explained carpooling was a way to cut air pollution and I went door knocking to our neighbours with the idea. My parents viewed this as a natural response to new information. I have always known I would work to protect the people and places we love. That houseparty showed me my current path. What would you like to say to other young people? Start. Don't wait for all the stars to align or until you know everything. That will never happen anyway and you will have lost valuable time and experience. Don't wait for funding either. We didn't have any. We just got going. Find a friend or colleague or mentor and just start. What about older readers? Look around you for people who are working to protect our land and water and offer your experience and money if you can. We don't have time to make the same mistakes you made so help us avoid them.
Calgary Herald
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Vancouver native Seth Rogen's TV series The Studio nabs 23 Emmy Award nominations
The 2025 Emmy Nominations are out and Vancouver native Seth Rogen 's comedic skewering of the film business The Studio from AppleTV+ leads the comedy category with 23 nominations. Article content Rogen 's show, which he stars in and co-created, wrote and directed with longtime collaborator and fellow Vancouverite Evan Goldberg, nabbed 23 nominations, including best directing and writing for the partners and best comedy actor for Rogen as well as a best supporting actress nomination for Toronto-born Catherine O'Hara, who also earned a best supporting guest actress in a drama nomination for her turn on the Vancouver-shot The Last of Us. Article content Article content Article content Article content The Studio is joined in the best comedy category by Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Hacks, Nobody Wants This, Only Murders in the Building, Shrinking and What We Do in the Shadows. Article content Topping the most nominated list is Apple's drama Severance with 27 nods, including best drama series, where it will compete alongside Andor, The Diplomat, The Last of Us, Paradise, The Pitt, Slow Horses and The White Lotus. Article content The Penguin was next with a total of 24 noms; followed by The Studio and The White Lotus with 23; The Last of Us garnered 16 nominations. Article content Also getting some Emmy attention is Vancouver's Nathan Fielder who picked up writing and directing nominations for his HBO docu-comedy The Rehearsal. Article content
Global News
29-05-2025
- Global News
Community reeling after Horseshoe Bay bus crash kills child, critically injures mother
Multiple investigations are underway into a horrific bus crash in Horseshoe Bay that left a four-year-old boy dead and his mother in critical condition on Wednesday. The tragedy, which left a third person in hospital in stable condition, has left the community reeling. Students who witnessed the collision returned to the site Thursday morning to lay flowers for the victims. 'Everybody seemed a little in shock,' said North Vancouver teacher Keith Gallant. 'Having a relationship with some of the students, particularly the boys, wanted to try to model some healthy grief and so I bought some flowers and asked them all to take a piece and share a thought for the mom and for the boy that's lost.' 1:30 Child killed by bus in Horseshoe Bay Vancouverite Aaron Golden, who frequently travels through the terminal, told Global News he'd spent about an hour at the site reflecting on the tragedy. Story continues below advertisement 'It could be anyone. We all stand on sidewalks. It's tragic and it hits close to home,' he said. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'It hurts that it could have been you, it could have been someone you loved.' The collision happened around 3:30 p.m., a the bus stop just outside the BC Ferries foot passenger ticket booth. Witnesses say a TransLink bus jumped the curb, striking several people. 'The sudden death of a child is a uniquely tragic event severely impacting the family, witnesses, first responders and the community as a whole,' West Vancouver police Sgt. Chris Bigland said Wednesday night. 'To those who stepped up today and did what they could, thank you.' Police said they had spoken with the bus driver, and that the vehicle has been seized. 0:49 Horseshoe Bay bus crash leaves 1 dead, others injured Investigators have ruled out speed as a contributing factor, but are still trying to piece together exactly what happened and probing whether criminality was involved. Story continues below advertisement Police said they had no additional details to share on Thursday. TransLink declined to comment and referred questions to police. In a statement, BC Ferries thanked first responders for their swift response. 'We want to acknowledge the emotional impact on those who witnessed the incident, including our people, transit partners, and customers,' the company said. 'To our team members who stepped in to help, your courage and compassion mean more than words can express. We are deeply grateful and proud.' Gallant said the incident has left emotions raw across the North Shore. 'Bowen Island is feeling it. Horseshoe Bay is definitely feeling this,' he said. 'I hope people come together and take care of themselves, but particularly take care of our youth and model healthy grief.' Anyone with information or video shot in the area at the time of the collision is asked to contact West Vancouver police.
National Observer
15-05-2025
- Business
- National Observer
Gregor Robertson still doesn't get it
Like many Canadians, I was prepared to give Gregor Robertson a second chance. As a born and raised Vancouverite and someone who has been writing (and warning) about the housing market for almost two decades now, the appointment of Robertson as Canada's new housing minister didn't exactly fill me with optimism. His track record as mayor of Vancouver includes a 179 per cent increase in home prices that effectively priced an entire generation out of that city's housing market — and, in effect, out of that city. In fairness, nobody's track record during that period was very good, and much of the increase in home prices was due to inaction or indifference by the federal and provincial governments. Even so, given his obvious association with the period where Canada's housing market started to run away from millions of people, he was a risky choice as housing minister. His first few days on the job have shown why. For all of his well-documented telegenic charm, Roberston has never been a particularly effective communicator. That was on full display during his interview with the CBC's David Cochrane, where he seemed conspicuously short on answers and long on excuses. 'It's going to take years,' he told Cochrane. 'This is decades of building up a problem, so it's not going to be fixed overnight.' He refused to give a specific date when asked when his government would deliver on its promise to double home building. 'We're years away,' he reiterated. Cochrane captured the stakes of his new job at the end of the interview. 'I think every Canadian under 40 is counting on you,' Cochrane said, to which Robertson replied, 'Including my kids.' But, of course, Robertson's kids will be just fine. In Gregor Robertson's Vancouver, the children of wealthy and privileged homeowners were more than fine, actually; they were lottery winners. It was everyone else struggling — and, often, failing — to keep their heads above the economic waterline. When asked if Robertson's appointment was a signal that housing prices should not go down, Carney said that 'you would be very hard-pressed to make that conclusion.' Robertson then went out and made that conclusion for everyone the very next day, telling reporters that he doesn't think house prices need to go down — and that Canada needs to deliver more supply instead. That, of course, would make prices go down, all other things being equal. This is the truth that most federal politicians are still afraid to say out loud. If we're actually going to address housing affordability in this country, and especially overheated markets like Vancouver and Toronto, prices have to come down. Yes, that might mean that homeowners will miss out on some of the equity that's accumulated in their homes. But as former Housing Minister Nate Erskine-Smith said back in January during an interview with the Toronto Star, 'It's not the government's job to protect a certain amount of equity that has built up in a person's home.' Unless and until Carney and his new housing minister are willing to say the quiet part out loud, as Erskine-Smith did, it's going to be hard to take their housing pledges and policies seriously. No, they're not going to be able to single-handedly transform Canada's housing market overnight. It may well take years, as Robertson said, to see real progress on affordability. But they could change the way they talk about the issue right now, and in so doing let Canadians know they actually understand what needs to be done. Of all Mark Carney's cabinet picks, his decision to name former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson as his housing minister was the most controversial. So far, at least, it's also proving to be his most disastrous. That's why, if Robertson is going to win the trust and confidence of Canadians, he needs to acknowledge some of the mistakes he made as mayor of Vancouver, from his decision to initially downplay the risks associated with foreign investment to his habit of cozying up with the city's real estate developers. (So far, at least, he seems more interested in defending that record than learning from it.) Robertson needs to be honest about the tradeoffs involved, and stop pretending that we can somehow massively ramp up the construction of affordable housing without impacting the broader housing market and its often ludicrous prices. And if he won't do these things, Carney needs to find someone who will — and fast. The next election, whenever it comes, will be a referendum on the progress Carney's team has made on housing and other key cost of living issues. And this time, good intentions and big plans won't be nearly enough to placate young voters. The Liberals were given one stay of political execution on this issue, both because of Justin Trudeau's resignation and Donald Trump's menacing threats. They will not get a second one.
National Observer
05-05-2025
- General
- National Observer
Emma Rae Lierley
Emma Rae Lierley helps communities stop deforestation. As senior communications manager for the forests program at the Rainforest Action Network, this Vancouverite amplifies the voices of communities all over the world contending with corporations destroying their forest homes. By Patricia Lane Emma Rae Lierley
