New Brunswick is rolling out there first green school bus while the city of Saint John looks to get rid of bottled water. Both can be a step in the right direction to helping the environment but could potentially just be an additional cost the public will end up paying for, without any real showing of improvement for the environment.
In recent news we have heard that Saint John is considering removing the sale of bottle water in city-owned concessions and vending machines in an effort to promote that tap water is healthy, despite the fact there has been multiple boil water warnings put in effect this year. With this endeavor they are also looking to also help the environment as it takes a tremendous amount of energy to recycle all of the bottles of water and to ship them around the country.
I will say it’s a nice thought but what will be the back up plan for the next boil water order? Hopefully this will work out and that the next time there is a boil water warning in effect we can all count how many of the city owned buildings will be providing bottled water at no cost to the public.
Next on our notice of going green New Brunswick as brought in it’s first hybrid school bus. At a whopping $180,000 with an expectation of about a 20% reduction in fuel consumption and a 90% decrease in emissions, it seems like it might just be worth it. New Brunswick is going to compare it against 85 new regular school buses to see if it meets expectations. This sounds great and unfortunately at the time I was writing this I was only able to find the price tag of $70,000 from US websites for a cost comparison between the hybrid bus and a regular bus, but as with everything I’m assuming it would be more expensive north of the border.
So this investment if it reaches it target could be one of the first, most noticeable investments that I’ve seen by New Brunswick thus far so Two Thumbs up and hopefully we’ll hear more on this front in the future. If it comes in way below these targets and there isn’t a big difference in emissions we will have purchased a very expensive bus which will probably have higher maintenance costs but at least it’s only one bus and not an entire fleet.
I think it’s great that these types of things are in progress and I hope it works out in the positive for everyone in the long run, goes to show not everything in the news is all bad 
.