Seasonally ploughing and harvesting crops will mash up a few moles, slice through a burrow of field mice and crush any ground-nesting bird chicks. Far more significant, however, is the creation of the field in the first place: an act that replaces entire ecosystems, along with all their animal inhabitants.

In the United States, under 3 percent of municipal food waste - so that's the food scraps that goes into people's garbage cans - actually gets recycled. If you go to a place like South Korea, the exact reverse is the case. It's about 3 percent that doesn't get recycled.

In Kenya, where there isn't the luxury of feeding grains to animals, livestock yield more calories than they consume because they are fattened on grass and agricultural by-products inedible to humans.

We domesticated pigs to turn food waste back into food. And yet, in Europe, that practice has become illegal since 2001 as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. It's unscientific. It's unnecessary. If you cook food for pigs, just as if you cook food for humans, it is rendered safe. It's also a massive saving of resources.

In 'The General Strike,' we celebrate those who bring a new vision for the world to the table. People who stand for workers rights, human rights, a just representative political system, and a new mode of doing business where sustainability is the norm not the exception.

From floods in Iowa and Nebraska to fires in California to hurricanes in Houston and Puerto Rico, we can no longer escape the fact that climate change is not happening in some far-off, distant future.

Care work contributes enormously to the well-being of our societies and to the sustainability of our economies.

If Canada could simply apply the basic principles of sustainable development, such as the internalization of costs and 'polluters pay,' it would have long-term beneficial effects, both environmental and economic.