Submissions:
Hamilton Health Sciences (Winner)
“The [materiality assessment] highlighted the opportunities for improvement in areas such as program collaboration, data capture, performance measurement, and communications.
“…it also highlighted that staff are engaged and concerned about environmental health topics in areas beyond what we presently measure or have the ability to easily capture in a report such as this.”
Royal Botanical Gardens
“…we have been able to make progress towards establishing effective systems for measuring, setting goals and communicating on our performance in environmental areas. We are excited to be positioned to be able to establish greenhouse gas, waste and water reduction targets in the near future.
“While our GRI report has been prepared from a department focused on environmental sustainability, we worked to expand on the information shared in this report in social and economic areas of our operations.”
Walker Emulsions
“We are proud of the progress we have made with respect to our GHG reductions, but know that there is a lot more work to do.
“In 2019, we plan to update our Materiality Analysis and broaden our stakeholder engagement, to include the opinions of our external stakeholders, as we transition our reporting to the new GRI Standards.”
Submissions:
Benefect
One of our staff members volunteered with his wife for over a month helping one of our distributor and contractor partners in Florida after the devastation of Hurricane Michael back last fall. We also had two other staff who volunteered in Florida after Hurricane Michael with No Town Left Behind, a volunteer organization that supports communities after natural disasters. We’ve also contributed thousands of dollars in financial and product support post devastating natural disasters, see our stories on benefectcommunityfund.com.
Hamilton Health Sciences (Winner)
In what has been recognized as an important step towards reconciliation, the launch of Makayla’s room on August 28, 2018, is another way that HHS has led by example by building connections with Indigenous leaders and community members to support open exchange of knowledge and information.
Makayla’s Room is historic, as it is the first space HHS has provided to Indigenous families where traditional healers can work openly with patients inside the hospital; it includes special ventilation to enable spontaneous smudging ceremonies and cultural supplies for smudging and cooking.
McMaster Innovation Park
In an effort to bring tenants from McMaster Innovation Park together, a summer bocce ball league was formed in 2018 with 7 teams socially interacting to meet once a week and get to know one another in this unique environment. This simple idea grew to unbelievable popularity. Suddenly it was drawing attention from on lookers who loved to watch or wanted to participate. Due to increased interest during the weekly matches, a winter bean bag league was formed with 10 teams for 2018. Interest continues to grow with all of the positive impacts including business collisions, social escape and team building are all happening with the creation of these programs. Other events at the park have begun to integrate similar activities. It has become a wonderful platform to get to know people at MIP and has created valuable new business friendships.
Submissions:
ARYZTA
We established a Green Champion program company-wide for our North America bakeries, including the local Ancaster location. Each bakery assigned an individual to solicit ideas from team members and share best practices with all other bakeries. Some focus areas for the year were to complete a treasure hunt assessment to address low hanging fruit and easy wins for sustainability projects. The Green Champion is also responsible for driving sustainability initiatives and reviewing key measures and metrics for energy, water and waste. Our goal is to create awareness and accountability at all ARYZTA bakeries. All Green Champions in the ARYZTA network also participate in a quarterly call to review progress and share best practices. This program has given us the visibility into progress and status of sustainability for all of our bakeries in North America.
Benefect
We’ve recently been acquired by Innovative Chemical Products-Building Solutions Group (ICP:BSG) and are working towards being more environmental by partnering with a US company to provide US manufacturing and shipping from US to reduce GHG emissions in cross-border shipping. Our overall business model is to reduce environmental impacts by sourcing sustainable ingredients for our authentically botanical products. As of January 2019 Benefect’s botanical formulations had displaced 21,731,794 lbs. of synthetic chemicals.
Hamilton Health Sciences
In 2018, Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) partnered with our Volunteer Association (VA) to further reduce the volume of food waste that is sent to landfill. The VA implemented a comprehensive coffee grind diversion program, which has diverted an additional 16.9 metric tonnes of organic material from the landfill each year. The collection process is simple: as coffee grinds are generated at the cafeterias and coffee shops, the waste is collected into small pails at point of use. These small pails are then dumped into larger “green bin” collection containers. These green bins are collected by our organics partner, Davidson Environmental where they are processed as organic waste. See report for more details
McMaster Innovation Park
In 2018, McMaster Innovation Park accomplished initiatives to include completion of a Co-Gen Facility in our District Energy System and upgrades at our Leeds Platinum building at 183 Longwood Road to ensure it continues to achieve the highest standards of energy savings. Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel that would otherwise be wasted. That same fuel is then put to some productive use through combined cooling, heat and power systems that result in higher overall efficiency. Continuous improvements took place across the park to upgrade speed drives for major air handling units and major electrical equipment improvements were also realized. As a result, the analysis of trend data from our building automation system, allowed for an enhanced occupancy schedule that controlled heating and lighting to further reduce energy needs. MIP will continue to display its utility consumption trends on real time for all occupants to view on a central electronic interactive platform. As McMaster Innovation Park continues to expand in growing the park we will strive to further reduce our environmental impact for future generations.
Royal Botanical Gardens (Winner)
The Royal Botanical Gardens’ new earth kind, chemical free rose garden was designed and installed using research proven techniques to provide maximum landscape energy and materials conservation based on real world operational effectiveness and environmental responsibility. By selecting specific, resilient roses, installing a highly efficient irrigation system, using organic mulch, introducing beneficial insects and plant variations, replacing old synthetic fertilizer with organic soil, the rose garden uses significantly less water than a traditional garden while maintaining resistance to weather, diseases and pests, soil erosion and weed growth.
Walker Emulsions
Walker Industries held an Environmental Engagement Contest to celebrate the 15th anniversary EARTH 1st that encouraged employees to complete various activities, grouped around 5 themes – energy efficiencies, biodiversity/wildlife, waste reduction, water conservation and awareness/outreach. We then were able to report back to employees across the company on the impact they had (i.e. kWh savings, water savings, waste reduction numbers, plants/trees planted, etc.). We encouraged participation by having an employee, site and divisional winner who would be awarded a sum of money to donate to an environmental cause of their choice. We saw over 1,800 activities completed, with 115 plants/trees planted, over 7,400kg of waste diverted from landfill, almost 6,000L of water conserved, and more!
This award recognizes a member’s program, product, service, or process that demonstrates outstanding innovation and impact on economic sustainability.
This year, there were no submissions for the economic initiative award. We are working toward providing more guidance to help identify economic contributions through sustainable activities. Potential submissions that would be considered include:
