Category Archives: SP Partnership

Sustainable Peterborough 2016 Award Winners!

SP award winners group photo In order to recognize the numerous sustainable achievements of our partners in 2016, Sustainable Peterborough was proud to host the 2nd annual Sustainable Peterborough Partnership Recognition Awards!

There were eleven winners, one in each of Sustainable Peterborough’s theme areas. Awards were presented during the Sustainable Peterborough Partnership Recognition Event and Awards on April 20, 2017 at Market Hall. The winners were as follows:

Agriculture and Local Food

Farms at Work
The work of Farms at Work includes protecting farmland, supporting the building and expansion of the local food value chain, and helping farmers in stewarding their land. In 2016 Farms at Work completed five pollinator plantings on farms. They also ran three hands-on, on-farm five-day field courses and hosted two workshops on seed production. Moreover, they developed and piloted a unique Farm Business Planning Program. Farms at Work coordinates the East Central Ontario Stewardship Collaborative who in 2016 completed nearly 100 on-farm projects and hosted a workshop on climate change impacts, source water protection and invasive plants.

Climate Change

Trent University
Trent University, through their new Energy Performance Contract, is in the construction phase of a large-scale energy retrofit project anticipated to save more than 2,500 tonnes of CO2 annually. In 2016 they set an ambitious energy savings target of 11 GWh and have commenced revamping the entire campus for energy efficiency. In 2016, Trent has installed 8 high-efficiency boilers, updated the campus sub-metering system to be linked with an energy dashboard for energy efficiency, and replaced 33,167 lights with LEDs, to an annual savings of over 3 million kWh.

Cultural Assets

The partnership of Lang Pioneer Village Museum, Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation
Lang Pioneer Village Museum with their Curve Lake and Hiawatha First Nation partners completed a video entitled “Aabnaabin: Looking Back to Where We Came From”. A retrospective of the settlement period in Peterborough County from the perspective of both a European Settler and a Michi Saagig person native to the area, the video represents Lang’s efforts to equitably show the settlement period from both cultures’ perspectives. With the help of Tom Cowie, Kim Muskratt and Caleb Musgrave from Hiawatha, Anne Taylor and Tracey Taylor from Curve Lake and others, the First Nation interpretation at Lang has been expanded as part of the regular programming and at special events. The video (produced by Impact Communications and featuring D.J. Fife and Mark Finnan), along with interpretive panels at the Museum, acknowledge the debt owed by the immigrants from the old world to the local First Nations people.

Economic Development & Employment

Kawartha Local
Rob Howard started Kawartha Local to make it easy for people to give guaranteed local gifts. A Small Box Store, their gift crates and boxes are packed with products from the Peterborough area. In 2016 Kawartha Local won the Bears’ Lair competition in the Goods and Services category. Their goal is not just to sell local products, but also to introduce local consumers to local producers, to partner with local producers to create new offerings, and to provide a way for artists and artisans to showcase their works. Not only are the boxes and their contents locally made, the boxes themselves are designed to be reused and repurposed. The gift crate even converts to a book shelf or side table!

Energy

The partnership of Mortlock Construction and Lett Architects
In 2016 the partnership of Mortlock Construction and Lett Architects completed the construction of Lakefield College School’s new Upland Residence. Designed by Lett Architects and built by Mortlock Construction, the LEED Gold Certified building meets stringent environmental and sustainability standards, and combines natural materials into the existing natural bedrock that encases the residence.

Healthy Communities

Seeds of Change
Seeds of Change is a community hub that offers spaces in which everyone, regardless of age, socio-economic status, faith, race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc, can connect with others. Every two months they hold a community meal where everyone is welcome. To support the local economy and reduce their carbon footprint, they source much of their food from local producers. Food waste is composted and cycled into their community gardens. In 2016, in partnership with the Peterborough Chapter of the Canadian Council of the Blind, they developed a Sensory Garden. The opportunities offered at Seeds of Change directly reduce social isolation, while simultaneously improving physical health, nutrition, and mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Land Use Planning

Township of Otonabee-South Monaghan
In 2016 the Township of Otonabee-South Monaghan established the Solar Policy in order to protect agricultural land and areas of environmental protection. They recognize that green energy is an element of climate change mitigation but also that local agricultural production is needed for food security. To balance these objectives, the Solar Policy prioritizes roof-top solar. Several large scale rooftop installations are found on agricultural buildings across the Township. Second priority is given to micro solar with a minimal footprint, followed by small scale ground mounts on marginal lands. Their Solar Policy is an example of how to effectively balance the pillars of sustainability by supporting green energy without compromising the long term sustainability of agricultural land.

Natural Assets

The partnership of Otonabee Conservation, Siemens Canada Ltd. (Peterborough) and City of Peterborough
In 2016, 40 native trees were planted at Kiwanis Park in Peterborough through a partnership between Siemens Canada Ltd. (Peterborough), Otonabee Conservation, the City of Peterborough, and Tree Canada. Kiwanis Park was forested approximately 25 years ago, using Ash Trees which are unfortunately now susceptible to the effects of the Emerald Ash Borer. The trees newly planted ensure that new trees are established as the existing Ash Trees decline and are removed, as it is critical that forest cover is maintained, to provide shade, enhance habitat and increase biodiversity.

Transportation

Fleming College Student Administrative Council
As a result of a student referendum, the Fleming College Student Administrative Council and Fleming College implemented a new transit fee within the student tuition fee. This resulted in a new student and staff carpooling program, a significant reduction of student and staff public transit prices, expanded transit service, cycling infrastructure, bike repair stations and the launching of Zagster, a commercial bike loan program. The Zagster program is a partnership with Fleming College and the City of Peterborough, resulting in the installation of bike loan stations at the Sutherland Campus and in downtown Peterborough. Students have access to these bikes at no extra charge, while staff and the general public can pay a fee to use them.

Waste

Belmont Lake Brewery
Located in Havelock, this locally owned small craft brewery opened in 2016. They produce virtually no waste, as their beer is sold in reusable medicine bottles and growlers and their only waste product, the mash grain, is given to a local farmer to feed his pigs.

Water

GreenUP
In October 2016, in partnership with The Wine Shoppe and Green Communities Canada, the GreenUP run Depave Paradise project transformed 35 m2 of asphalt at the corner of Park St. and Brock St. in Peterborough into a water friendly green space. With support from Peterborough Utilities Group, GreenUP launched the WaterWise program, which recognizes homeowners who reduce water use through their landscape choices. GreenUP is a member of the Peterborough Children’s Water Festival (PCWF), along with Peterborough Utilities Services, Otonabee Conservation, City of Peterborough, Trent University, Ontario Waterpower Association, Riverview Park and Zoo. In 2016, the PCWF, with funding from the Healthy Kids Community Challenge and Ontario Trillium Foundation, launched the Wonders of Water pilot program, extending ongoing water conservation programming beyond the festival, into classrooms and to a broader audience.

SP Annual Event and Partnership Recognition Awards

The 2nd Annual Sustainable Peterborough Event and Partnership Recognition Awards will be held at Market Hall on Thursday, April 20th, 5:00-8:00 pm.

In order to recognize the numerous sustainable achievements that our partner organizations have accomplished in 2016, Sustainable Peterborough is again hosting the Sustainable Peterborough Partnership Recognition Awards. Thank you for all the nominations submitted! Winners will be announced at the event.

We have much to celebrate, please join us as we share our collective accomplishments with our partners and our community at the SP Event and Partnership Recognition Awards on April 20th!

For full event details please see the event invitation and program..

Trent University grad Jessica Correa aims to spread the Random Acts of Green brand nationally

Jessica Correa is excited by all the Random Acts of Green she has posted on her company’s Facebook page and Twitter and Instagram accounts, but one stands out.

“We really liked the Ultimate Frisbee group,” Correa say. “They do the carbon flip.”

To explain: Correa, 24, has a master of environmental science degree, with a focus on sustainable development. She also runs a business, Random Acts of Green, dedicated to promoting environmental activities in the community.

The carbon flip is an Ultimate Frisbee staple the local league adopted. Instead of flipping discs to see which team gets the choice of starting on offence or defence they do a car count.

“They encourage everyone in the league to reduce their carbon footprint by carpooling to get to the game or use active transportation,” Correa explains.

The team with the fewest cars in the parking lot wins the “flip.” At the end of the year the team with the most flip points gets a pizza party or a keg party . . . “something fun,” as Correa says.

But the impact of the carbon flip is limited if no one knows about it. Post a high quality video on social media and the word gets around, one more pebble on a growing pile that could draw everyone’s attention to the possibilities of developing a sustainable lifestyle.

That’s what Correa and her team do.

“In our minds, if it’s not seen it’s not green.”

During grad school at Trent University, Correa looked at car sharing and how to market sustainable behaviour to her millennial generation. The focus groups she conducted led to a disheartening conclusion.

“I was frustrated with it,” she recalls. “I found that we’re all going to follow the same old formula: get a job, have a family, get a home, get a car. The same formula as our parents.”

She kept thinking someone should use social media to promote an alternative formula, one that simplified sustainability and brought it into everyday life. Not tree huggers or hippies or protesters, just regular people.

One day last December she had a “eureka” moment.

“I kept waiting for someone else to do it. Someone else should change the perception of environmentalism. And then I was like, ‘No one is! No one will!’ And then I was like, ‘OK, I’ll do it!'” When she is fired up, which is most of the time, Correa speaks in exclamation marks, an energetic bundle of mental activity shooting out sparks of innovation.

She is also very bright and highly focused. She finished her master’s program six months ahead of schedule while turning the Random Acts of Green concept into reality. She was soon snapping photos of people “doing green things” and posting them on social media, developing her “brand.”

Her posts started to draw attention. She was shocked when someone approached her for a quote on a green issue but it also prompted a second eureka moment – maybe she could make money at this.

“I just started dipping my toe in the world of the entrepreneur,” she says. She had no business experience but took “how to” seminars through Peterborough Economic Development and the Peterborough Innovation Cluster.

Now she pitches to clients who hire her to help them develop and popularize green initiatives. She posts video and photos of the events on her three Random Acts of Green social media platforms. Clients can put links to the sites on their own sites.

The City of Peterborough and the Peterborough Petes are among her clients.

Growing the business has been a struggle, she admits, but she’s confident the concept will work. Confident enough that she deferred her acceptance to a PhD program at the University of Waterloo.

Correa hopes to grow Random Acts of Green into “the number one green behaviour promoting brand in Canada.”

If that doesn’t happen, she says, she won’t have lost anything and will have gained an invaluable experience.

That’s a sustainable attitude, in any colour of the spectrum.

This is one of a series of articles commissioned and paid for by Sustainable Peterborough and published in partnership with The Peterborough Examiner. By Jim Hendry, Peterborough Examiner, original article published Saturday, November 12, 2016.

Old building, new approach as The Mount embraces sustainable growth

Andi van Koeverden is in her office in the oldest section of the former Mount St. Joseph convent, describing the work that has gone into creating the Mount Community Centre in a massive, 120-year old building that sat vacant for four years.

While the story is intriguing, I find it hard not to be distracted by the unusual stand that supports her computer screen.

It’s a used paint can. The screen’s circular base fits perfectly in the lid of the can and sits at just the right viewing height to reduce strain on her neck.

When I ask about it she laughs and says by way of explanation: “I don’t usually do interviews in this office.”

Maybe she should. The recycled can, paint drips and all, is an effective visual reminder of her observation that “sustainability has so many facets.”

That’s something she’s come to appreciate during her two years as strategic advancement director at the Mount project.

“At the end of the day this building is not in the landfill,” she says. “That is nothing short of a miracle.”

Portions of the rambling, 130,000-square-foot complex on Monaghan Rd. are protected under the Ontario Heritage Act so it would not likely have been torn down and replaced.

However, van Koeverden notes, it could have simply fallen apart over time.

When the developer that purchased the complex from the Sisters of St. Joseph in 2009 abandoned its condominium restoration plan, the Peterborough Poverty Reduction Network stepped in.

The non-profit group’s vision of affordable housing and a “food hub” eventually morphed into a grander plan run by a volunteer board, the Mount Community Centre. The complex is now on its way to becoming housing, offices for non-profit agencies, an arts and culture centre and a food centre with community gardens and a commercial-grade kitchen and food processing capability.

The first 43 apartments opened three weeks ago in the most modern wing, renamed Woodland Apartments. The wing had contained 130 tiny residence rooms, not much more than cubicles, that were used by Sisters of St. Joseph nuns.

Volunteer crews tore out 1.5 linear kilometres of cinderblock walls in the process, van Koeverden says, and all if it was repurposed as fill.

Volunteers also took apart, repainted and reassembled large wooden wardrobes that had been the Sisters’ closet space. They are now part of the new apartments.

“When the Sisters came through for their tours, three of then when I told them that story, their eyes filled with tears that we weren’t dumping their wardrobes in the dumpster.”

Along with the old and preserved there is new and high-tech.

A large room on the ground floor is dedicated to storage of e-bikes, complete with recharging stations. Three massive old boilers have been replaced with super-efficient Viessmann boilers that she describes as “literally, the size of a beer fridge” and which can heat half the entire building space.

Peterborough Utilities staff did an assessment of the original building and the renovation plan “and we are eligible for rebates and incentives right down to every bathroom fan in the apartment units, motors for the big air handler units on the roof, even installing low-flow toilets,” van Koeverden says.

“Even something like 50 bucks for every toilet is a huge incentive.”

She takes special pride in the food hub and plans for up to 100 garden plots in 5,000 square feet of space. Tenants will have first call but there will likely be many left for the general public.

“We envision training programs, people learning to grow fresh produce in their own garden plots and then on Tuesday and Thursday nights learn how to make soup, or can it … or what have you.”

The plan has echoes of the community garden plots the Sisters offered on the property 50 years ago.

“We are trying to carry on that legacy as well of service to society,” van Koeverden says, “so, trying to sustain that legacy.”

One more facet of sustainability, one that goes well beyond bricks and mortar.

DBIA doing its part for a greener downtown Peterborough

Cig-urns are sprouting in downtown Peterborough.

Not familiar with the term? It’s the accepted shorthand for cigarette urns, where smokers who have been banished to street corners and alleyways can deposit their butts.

Their appearance downtown is an example of the challenges and opportunities the Downtown Business Improvement Area faces.

The DBIA represents more than 400 businesses and building owners, by far the largest collected mass of retail and office space in the city. Downtown has been described as both the heart and the face of Peterborough.

But even if there is one heart and one face, DBIA members don’t operate with a single mind. They are independent business owners and that independence can manifest as a degree of mistrust of government and reluctance to join collective ventures.

When Terry Guiel, the DBIA’s executive director, outlines the cig-urn program during an interview in his bare-bones Water St. office he touches on all those themes, intentionally or inadvertently.

The cigarette litter problem is a government creation, he says.

“The health unit and the government decides its going to ban smoking. I did 25 years, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year in smoke-filled bars so I was the happiest guy around when they did that,” says Guiel, a longtime local bar circuit staple as a singer and guitar player.

“But there was no residual plan. What happens to cigarette butts? Now everyone is standing just outside the patios or on the corner of the street and cigarette butts are everywhere. Now we have to clean it up.”

His solution has been to attach 21 cig-urns to the sides of buildings. That helped, but created a secondary problem of its own: Who cleans out the urns and where do the toxic butts go?

“We hope the owners of the buildings take it over,” he says, although that hasn’t been happening to the degree he’d like. “We kind of put the cart before the horse because we had to do something right away to start tackling the problem.”

Stage two will be the addition of another 20 urns on downtown lamp posts. A cleaning crew the DBIA pays will look after those, he says, as long as he can work the extra cost into his budget.

Not a perfect system, but a practical attempt to deal with litter that is both unsightly and damaging.

Another project was easier to implement.

After he was hired three years ago Guiel noticed that food vendors at DBIA-sponsored events like Ribfest and Taste of Downtown were dumping waste liquids, including grease, down the drain.

The solution was to provide grey waste bins to collect the liquid. The organization got some positive publicity over that initiative when a Trent University graduate student, Jessica Correa, shot a video and featured it on her Random Acts of Green website.

“I wasn’t thinking I was doing anything green, I was just thinking this is illegal and it shouldn’t go in the water,” he says.

“But when you think about it these are all little steps that improve the quality of life and we should be doing these, everything we can. It’s the right thing to do, thinking of the bigger picture.”

Education, which Guiel likes to refer to as “edification,” is another DBIA focus. A representative of Peterborough Utilities Inc. has spoken twice at monthly breakfast meetings, explaining how business owners can cut electricity consumption and take advantage of subsidy programs.

Promoting cycling lanes and downtown trails, and the now annual Pulse event where a stretch of George St. is closed to cars, are also a high priority.

Pulse is a co-operative venture with Peterborough GreenUP, a partnership Guiel hopes to expand.

“The more these synergies happen, the more positive impact its going to have on the community,” he says. “We’ve got to stop looking at green people as tree huggers, and I think that mentality is shifting thanks to organizations like GreenUP.

“We’re seeing that we’re all in this together, and that there’s only one planet.”