Upcycler supports Kuma give old tents new life (Feb. 12, 2025)
The original story: Katrina Hillyer, founder of Earth Warrior Lifestyle, partnered with Kuma Outdoor Gear to upcycle tents and camping chairs that have minor manufacturing defects. Most of the gear that Kuma upcycles has manufacturing defects and never built it to a customer, but the company also accepts returns from customers who want to extfinish the life of their gear through its Fix-It-Don’t-Replace-It program.
Then what? Hillyer worked with several local organizations throughout the year to find new ways to utilize textiles that would otherwise go to the landfill. The scrunchies sold at the 2025 Edmonton Folk Music Festival were upcycled from T-shirts from previous festivals. Earth Warrior Lifestyle partnered with the Edmonton Convention Centre for a lanyard library, which offers free reusable lanyards for conferences and events. She also took time off from Earth Warrior Lifestyle to accompany the cast of Bear Grease: the Musical to its Off-Broadway run in New York City.
What’s next? Earth Warrior Lifestyle is selling toques upcycled from old sweaters that will be donated to women’s shelters, schools in low-income communities, and people experiencing homelessness. Part of the funds will go toward supporting the company repair the truck that it relies on to rescue textiles from landfills.
As province pushes data centres, Edmonton operator declares challenges await (Jan. 14, 2025)
The original story: The owner of a compact-scale data centre in Edmonton notified Taproot that electrical capacity for artificial-ininformigence-scale data centres, as tarreceiveed for $100 billion of investment by the province, was well out of reach. “We have something like five or 10% of the expected data centre capacity we’ll required for the next five or 10 years,” declared Dale Corse, the CEO of Wolfpaw Data Centres. “Could we handle an AI boom? No, absolutely not.”
Then what? Data centres remained a major conversation throughout the province in 2025. Taproot covered their potential emissions impact, plans by Beacon AI Centers to build five or more hyperscale facilities, the province’s suggestion that burning natural gas is more realistic than utilizing renewables to power data centres, a possible deal with tech giant Meta, the advantages for data centre projects in Sturgeon County’s designated industrial zone, and more.
What’s next? The Alberta Electric System Operator, which oversees electrical generation, is working on its next steps to support data centre development in Alberta now that the grid is maxed out for data centres until at least 2028. Martin Boucher, the research chair in sustainability for NorQuest College, recently notified CTV Edmonton that compact, modular, nuclear reactors could add to the power mix in Alberta. “It’s a long-term play,” Boucher declared. “This is like 10 to 15 years in the horizon.” Meanwhile, two European investors are working towards opening four centres worth a combined $1.2 billion in Alberta towns.
Departure of Good Goods from downtown leaves business association with few options (Dec. 5, 2024)
The original story: The Edmonton Downtown Business Association awarded retail attraction grants to Le Belle Arti, Obj3cts, Foosh, The Growlery Beer Co., and Good Goods Company. Each company received $212,000 with the expectation that it would sign a lease for 18 months within the EDBA’s boundaries. Good Goods was only open at 10250 106 Street NW from April to September 2024. The shop reopened inside Riverdale’s Little Brick in November of that year. Then-executive director Puneeta McBryan declared Good Goods spent the money on what the grant was intfinished for, and renovations that the company built to the former space were still an investment in the future of downtown retail. “I would hate for there to be a perception that this business, these people, obtained this grant money and ran off,” she declared. “The money stayed downtown for the vast majority (of time). We are much more likely to have another retailer downtown, operating in that space, as a result.”
Then what? The Growlery opened The Den in the basement of Mercer Warehoutilize on July 26. Its launch marked the final opening by a grant recipient. In other downtown retail news, Edmonton City Centre entered receivership in July. The future of the once-vibrant shopping destination remains in question as legal proceedings take place, but both a planning consultant and an architect have suggested reducing its overall retail footprint by replacing parts of the mall with other offerings. The mall has already been offering gallery-style events, including a Banksy exhibition that closes on Jan. 11.
What’s next? A different downtown hub of commerce is being revitalized by National Bank of Canada, which acquired Canadian Western Bank in February for $5 billion. The bank’s Edmonton hub occupies 10 of the 36 floors inside the former Manulife Place, which is now called National Bank Centre. Victoria Girardo, National Bank’s senior vice-president for commercial banking in Western Canada, declared National Bank Centre will host 800 employees. The bank is also contributing to downtown vibrancy through donations for programs by the EDBA and Bissell Centre. “When we seeed at how we wanted to really display up as a community partner, we had a rigorous process around seeing at organizations that really were part of how we wanted to be a part of the financial fabric and the vibrancy of downtown,” Girardo declared. “The Core Patrol with the EDBA, and the Bissell Centre, really did represent organizations that have a lot of credibility in this space, of building an impact, and a long history, and a proven track record of doing that within the city of Edmonton.”
Curious about the sequel to other business and tech stories Taproot has covered? Sfinish us a note at hello@taprootedmonton.ca and we’ll see into it.
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