Canada' Greenest Employer

I arrived at my college for work one morning and heard machinery and chainsaws. I looked to my left and saw a pile of slaughtered trees, and watched as a machine pressed it's huge claw against a birch tree. There was a loud crack and the tree fell. Are they building a new academic building? A research centre? Student life centre? Nope, it's a new parking lot.

My college was named one of "Canada's Greenest Employers" by the editors of the Canada's Top 100 Employers project.

Here are some of the reasons why Georgian College was selected (taken from http://www.eluta.ca/green-at-georgian-college):

• celebrates the annual Waste Reduction Week and has put in place ambitious waste reduction goals to eliminate 30 percent of its waste (over 2008 baseline audit) that's destined for the landfill
• recently established an Environmental Sustainability Committee to oversee many environmental initiatives and recently updated its procurement and purchasing policies to incorporate environmental considerations
• advocates energy reduction in its offices with no measure considered too small, from adjusting window blinds to using power bars to turning-out unused lights during the day
• is helping to develop the next generation of environmental stewards, completing an 18,000 square foot "Centre for Sustainable Technologies" that will be home for existing and newly introduced courses, skilled trades programs, and an expansion of the college's environmental and technology programs
• celebrated Earth Day last year with nearly 100 volunteers cleaning-up the campus and the introduction of new recycling stations across the campus and participated in the Ontario Power Authority's "Energy Conservation Week" by hosting a trade show and open house to demonstrate energy saving technologies for the home and the office

This all sounds very nice, and I'm glad that businesses are encouraged by this program to take initiatives like this. However, I would like to know how much of it is just PR stunts, and how much is genuinely followed through to a point that it actually means anything.

For example, the college installed a "Hydration Station" at to encourage people to use refillable water bottles instead of buying bottled beverages. That's awesome, but why not hand out reusable bottles with orientation packages and take a step further and actually stop selling bottled water in the school? Why not get a pay-per-use beverage dispenser (like the ones at fast food restaurants but set up like a vending machine) and encourage the sugar-addicts to use reusable bottles too? People who buy coffee on campus should get a discount for using a travel mug every day, not just on Earth day. It goes on and on...adding a few poorly managed recycling bins and adjusting the blinds just doesn't cut it!

But back to the parking lot thing...why does this bother me so much? Obviously the college is growing and needs to accomodate commuters, so why does it put me on edge to see a small patch of forest cleared out and paved over?

It bothers me because the whole concept is backwards.

Trees, as everyone knows, take carbon dioxide out of the air and add oxygen through photosynthesis. I like to breathe, do you? When I ride my bike to work alongside the rushing masses of motor traffic, I try hard not to inhale the exhaust or the suffocating hot stench of fresh asphalt on a humid summer afternoon. It's obviously not a healthy environment to be living in, let alone exercising.

But more to the point, doesn't it seem counterproductive to rip out the trees that filter our air in order to make room for more pollutants? Every business has to smash up a forest and pave it over to accomodate the motor traffic. If more people rode bikes or took the bus (oh the horror!), or simply carpooled, this wouldn't be such a problem.

Unfortunately, driving a car alone is a very enjoyable thing to do, I admit I love to drive alone, but I think it's completely crazy that a whole car is being used to drive little old me around wherever my heart desires. Then a whole car space of pavement is being used to accomodate my car, wherever I take it, while I do what I need to do. Multiply that by the millions and millions of people that drive cars... thats an awful lot of paved over forests. All to accomodate a bunch of dirty exhaust belching motors.