UTM 10-year sustainability plan greenlit for a greener future
More telecommuting, less waste to landfill, opening a plant-based restaurant, cutting greenhouse gases – these are just a few of the plans that will be unfolding at UTM between now and 2030.
UTM is launching its new sustainability plan, which sets the framework for keeping campus initiatives as environmentally friendly as possible.
“These are our priorities for the next 10 years,” says Ahmed Azhari, director, utilities & sustainability, Facilities Management and Planning.
The Principal’s Sustainability Advisory Committee (PSAC) spent a year consulting with students, staff and faculty to set sustainability goals.
“The size and ingenuity of our campus provides an opportunity to take bold action and lessen our environmental impact on a warming world,” says UTM Vice-President and Principal Alexandra Gillespie in the report, noting the campus covers 225 acres, with a student body of 15,000 and 2,500 faculty and staff.
Over the next decade, UTM has committed to, among other goals:
• increasing teleworking by 25 per cent to limit emissions and reduce commuting stress
• ensuring 30 per cent of students across all disciplines graduate with a sustainability certificate/minor
• using air travel mitigation programs
• expanding the carpool program
• creating summer camps focused on sustainability
• reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 37 per cent below 2005 levels (with a goal of a carbon neutral campus by 2050)
• offering a 100 per cent plant-based restaurant on campus
• decreasing single-occupancy vehicles commuting to campus by 10 per cent
• switching 50 per cent of campus fleet to alternative fuel options
Azhari says they have already identified the most immediate demand.
“The pressing need is waste,” he says. “Our first working group is identifying current challenges with waste, to establish a roadmap on what our waste reduction targets should be, and pinpoint who’s going to champion these goals.”
This includes diverting 70 per cent of kitchen waste through composting and encouraging waste reduction, reuse and diversion from landfill.
The plan features 26 goals aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating (STAR) System of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
“We can’t solve global sustainability challenges in isolation. We need to come together, across all parts of the world, and develop meaningful academic collaborations,” says Amrita Daniere, vice principal, academic and dean and PSAC co-chair, in the plan’s report. “We also need to engage sustainability holistically, in its scientific, political, social, cultural and economic dimensions.”
Everyone in the UTM community will have a part to play in meeting the targets, says Azhari.
“This plan is a very overarching bridge, filling the gaps between academics, research, residence, students, librarians, facilities, hospitality… you name it,” he says. “We all have a seat on this plan, because they are institutional goals rather than departmental.”
The new goals complement environmentally friendly initiatives already running on campus, including a Master of Science in Sustainability Management (MScSM) program; UTM BikeShare, which provides free, 24-hour bike rentals and DIY repairs; bee farms that produce almost 1,000 pounds of honey each year; small vertical farms growing produce for on-campus meal preparations and reducing campus greenhouse gas emissions by more than 55,000 metric tons over the past decade.
In 2020, UTM also earned Canada’s first Silver Fair Trade Campus designation in 2020 for Hospitality and Retail.
Progress on sustainability goals will be reflected in annual reports on April 30, beginning in 2022.
For more on the plan, visit https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/green/strategic-plan
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