Toronto's Green Initiatives
by Daniel P. Kray, Editor
April 17, 2009
Composting
Toronto is way out ahead of the pack when it comes to hounding organics out of the garbage. The city's Green Bin program allows better than half a million households to separate food wastes alongside their other recyclable materials for curbside collection. A surprising variety of materials, including pet wastes and paper plates, are collected and processed into compost and biogas, a renewable energy source. Landfill use is hugely reduced along with methane otherwise released into the atmosphere, and in the end citizens get to pick up free compost for their gardens. The program has recently begun a pilot project for expansion into multi-family buildings.
Grassroots Efforts
One of the city's most innovative plans is to decentralize the urban greening process. Through the Live Green Toronto Community Investment Program, grants are offered to encourage local, grassroots efforts to corral entire communities into efforts reducing greenhouse gases, improving air quality, and adapting neighborhoods to a climate changing world.
Pay As You Throw
As of November 2008, Toronto has been a member of a growing coalition--communities charging waste management fees based on the total amount of a household's or business's garbage. Instead of a flat fee, Toronto's Solid Waste Management Fee Program creates an incentive for families and businesses to reduce their wasteful patterns and acquire the habits of recycling and reuse. Refuse that is recycled or compostable can be left on the curb free of charge, but the remainder bagged for the landfill entails an additional fee. Toronto Mayor David Miller, who has claimed, "We will be the leading environmental city in North America, without question," has pledged that by 2010, this fee system alongside a number of other measures will see 70 percent of Toronto's waste diverted from landfills and back into use.
Plastic Bags
June 2009 will see the city with it's first fee on plastic bags, a five-cent charge for each bag used by customers in grocery and retail stores.
Plastic Water Bottles
A message from the city of Toronto to plastic water bottles everywhere: we don't want you in our community! With all the drawbacks popping up across the bottled water landscape -- toxic chemicals leaching from the plastic, doubtful water quality, massive trash concerns -- the Toronto City Council voted for a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles to begin in 2011 in municipal facilities from City Hall and the Toronto courts to the public parks and golf courses. The council will, at the same time, improve public drinking fountains to pick up the slack on slaking Toronto's thirst.
05/02/2009: Earth Clinic Staff writes: "In April, the Toronto City Council considered a proposed green roof by-law. Installations would be mandatory on new developments with a gross floor area exceeding 54,000 square feet. Exempt from the by-law would be industrial structures, certain apartment buildings, schools, and affordable housing. If such a by-law is approved, Toronto would be the first city in North America with a mandatory green roof by-law.
Cities around the world with similar requirements include Japan, Switzerland, Germany and France.
Source: New York Times: April 16th, 2009"
 |  |  |  |