LiveSmart BC Community Hero
McMillan sees the future through green-tinted glasses
Shane McMillan believes we're at a global turning point. Populations are surging, resources are depleting and changes to Earth are coming faster than we realize.
McMillan, a 29-year-old Kwantlen Polytechnic University student and Richmond secondary grad, is part of a growing number of young adults keen on saving the planet. Earlier this year, he spoke passionately in favour of saving the Garden City lands--and the need for us to reconnect to our food and where it comes from.
"We need to relearn that food doesn't come from the supermarket, it comes from the soil. As our population grows we need to find ways of preserving what farmland we have left because one day we will need it."
Having already completed a communications degree at Simon Fraser University, McMillan now finds himself in his second year of Kwantlen School of Horticulture's landscape design and installation diploma program.
Besides doing his own landscaping work, he spent last summer as the one before -- working at Richmond's Sharing Farm, which connects volunteers with growing and harvesting fruit and vegetables for neighbours in need.
He also took on a research assistantship with Kent Mullinex, a Kwantlen instructor, involving mulch trials at the new South Dyke apple orchard.
McMillan said he was raised to be aware of his environmental footprint. Recycling and bicycling have always been a part of his family.
What really made him pursue a green career, however, was his deep appreciation of trees and all that they provide, and seeing Al Gore's climate-change film An Inconvenient Truth. "It really hit home and completely changed my trajectory in life."
In the future, he hopes to be part of a non-profit organization dedicated to creating more urban green space, community gardens and promoting urban forestry.
"Some friends and I are starting one up right now, called RUGS, Richmond Urban Green Society."
He also plans to start his own business doing ecological landscape design.
"This would start with residential and smallish commercial sites. One day I would like to work with municipalities to help plan sustainable communities on a larger scale."
