Posted by Magda
The city is angling for green building certification, called LEED, for the new city hall. Part of that involves having a plan to throw out as little construction material as possible.
The handmade signs around city hall today seem to represent a grassroots but innovative approach to that.
Posted by Magda
City officals were at Queen's Park last week to update ministers about Guelph's progress on things like saving energy, reducing waste and redeveloping the York lands. They talked about a number of energy saving projects the city is working on:
It's an impressive list. I'm working on a story about what else the city and province talked about. Read all about it tomorrow.
Posted by Magda
On the template city staff use for reports to council, there's a spot for "financial implications."
At a recent committee meeting, Mayor Karen Farbridge suggested staff also report on the carbon implications of proposals. It's an interesting idea -- one that's slowly catching on elsewhere. For instance, British supermarket giant Tesco announced last year it would include emissions on its labels.
Posted by Magda
I've been interested in green roofs since 2004. I was reporting on a new community centre in the Vancouver neighbourhood where I worked, and was surprised to find it was being built with a green roof. The architect said that was the norm these days -- with a condo tower next door, it would have been unacceptable to leave hundreds of people looking down on a black tar roof.
At the time, there were more than 1,000 green roofs in Vancouver. And if calling it the norm was an exaggeration, it wasn't too much of one. But green roofs are yet to catch on here. Part of the reason is climate -- it's so easier to put on a green roof when the temperature rarely dips below zero, and it's not hard to imagine there'd be more support for it in a place where you can enjoy the outdoors year round.
In writing a story about green features on the new city hall building, including a green roof (watch for the story in tomorrow's Merc), I endeavoured to find out how many other green roofs there are in town.
Lise Burcher, a councillor and landscape architect, figures people just need more exposure to them before they appreciate how easy and beneficial they are. "I think it will take off like a house on fire," she says.
Posted by Magda
I just finished calculating my environmental footprint (hint: it's huge!). I feel no better that Guelph's Community Energy Plan shows the average Guelphite with a footprint twice the Canadian average -- 16 tonnes a year, versus the national average of 8.3 (as reported on the UG's footprint calculator).
Of course, there are different ways to calculate the size of a footprint, and it's possible the energy plan and the calculator use different measures. Either way, I was rather surprised after I actually calculated my own impact.
Good luck with the city as it works on implementing the energy plan, which is intended to cut emissions to 7 tonnes per Guelphite per year.
Read more about calculating your footprint in the Mercury tomorrow.
Posted by Magda
The new city hall building is going to have some neat eco-features. In the language of eco-architects, it'll be LEED-silver certified. It'll also have these features:
-a green roof over half the building -- with supplies coming from a local company
-a living wall -- as developed at the University of Guelph
-use of natural light
-75% of construction materials will be diverted from landfill
-building materials have recycled content, and some are reused from past projects
-materials are extracted and manufactured locally -- within 800 km
-promoting alternate modes of transportation by minimizing parking capacity, providing bike lock-up and showers, encouraging carpooling, being accessible to local transit
Posted by Magda
A city committee decided this morning to ban clothesline bans -- more or less. It's a ban on future clothesline bans, and it passed with no opposition at committee this morning. (Of course it still needs to go through council before it becomes official.)
But it doesn't cover existing bans.
"This is not retroactive, unfortunately," said Jim Riddell, the city's director of community design and development services.
When I wrote a story about clotheslines last summer, Richard Gazzola, with Smith-Valeriote law firm, said existing covenants would likely supercede new city bylaws.
Posted by Magda
Councillor Maggie Laidlaw was characteristically colourful last night in her comments about the vacant gas station site at London and Woolwich.
She said Tim Hortons was considering at one point turning the site into a drive-thru.
"I'd love to have it derelict rather than a drive-thru," she said.
There's a proposal on the table for it to be neither -- a company called Quantum Murray wants to buy it to potentially build ten environmentally friendly townhouses, perhaps even to LEED standards, on the site.
(Interestingly, council has no concrete plans to stop drive-thrus at this point, though there is some discussion of the issue.)
Posted by Magda
Some of the 350 residents of Eden Mills are working to decrease their footprint on the planet -- to nothing. The effort is spearheaded by Charles Simon, pictured below.
It's a noble, though staggering, effort, initially attempted by the village of Ashton Hayes, population 1,000.
Some have suggested this kind of effort is appropriate for a small town, but less so for a big city. Is that really true? In many ways, big-city living is better suited to environmental efforts, because it's easier to take transit, and with more grocery stores to choose from, it's easier to find the one that has local produce.
At the same time, I can see how a small town can more easily develop a kind of positive peer pressure.
Here's hoping things go well for Eden Mills -- Ashton Hayes cut its emissions 20 per cent in the first year -- and that they show us reducing our footprint is something we can all contribute to in a very big way.
Posted by Magda
A local environmental program could save the city one megawatt of energy, 1,700 tonnes of coal, 1,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas
emissions and $1.5 million in energy costs over five years, council heard tonight.
Project Porchlight has handed out 30,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs to Guelph homes, and was reporting back to council on the savings that installing all those bulbs would bring.
But it wasn't the only wildly successful environmental program council heard about today.
Green Impact Guelph is also distributing energy-saving kits, and has spun a $50,000 provincial grant to do so into a project worth $600,000 in money and in-kind donations. Plus, they've been hearing from homeowners eager to get the kits and who have installed the items, which include a low-flow showerhead and insulation for piping.
Cutting energy use is an individual thing, but these organizations are helping Guelph residents push the envelope a bit.
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