For many reasons, the Agency puts its heart and soul into encouraging our clients to work for environmental sustainability, as far as our mandate allows. Our clients can reasonably ask in return what the Agency itself is doing about its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
First of all, we’re measuring them. For the past five years, the Sustainability Solutions Group has calculated our greenhouse gas output, looking at emissions from work-related travel (air and rail), from staff commuting and from Agency and teleworkers’ offices (heating, electricity, paper consumption and waste).
Not including commuting emissions, the Agency’s total output tracked downward until 2013, but has been increasing since then. The bad news is that this expansion is due to business travel, particularly flights, which were responsible for half the emissions in 2016. The good news is that other emissions have trended downward. In all offices but one, commuting emissions have fallen or are stable.
Our board of directors includes two members from BC, and two from the Prairies, which makes for a lot of air mileage to bring them together three times a year. From Prince Edward Island to Vancouver Island, our managers and staff travel to meet with clients and one another. While we can’t give this up, there are certain things we can do to reduce our greenhouse gases, such as having staff travel by rail as often as possible (within Ontario), rather than flying.
In partnership with the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, we pay our carbon offset funds into the Greener Co-op MicroGrant Program to help housing co-ops launch projects that reduce their environmental footprint. In 2006 this program provided $50,000, sourced from several organizations, to 17 co‑operatives for projects to reduce energy consumption and improve water efficiency. We’ve also helped the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF Canada) to develop a model environmental sustainability policy for housing co-ops to modify for their own use. We believe that these projects will not only help reduce our own effect on the environment, but will encourage our clients to make other investments in sustainability. So we all benefit.