Feel Good Guru

With more trees than people and about 8,000 hectares of parks, ravines, valley lands, woodlots and waterfront natural areas, it’s no wonder Toronto residents have long been passionate environmentalists.

Mayor David Miller, who has been first to implement many radical green policies, credits the citizens for this success. “Torontonians get it,” he says. “Our green bins program (for composting) has had 90% participation from the beginning. If you make things effective, practical, simple and realistic, people want to participate.”

Toronto is my hometown and one of my favorite cities in the world. In the spring, when all the leaves come out and the parks are alive with people, there is no better place to be.

Toronto, in 1990 was one of the first municipal governments in the world to set a greenhouse gas emissions target of 20% reductions. Since then, the city’s operations have reduced their own emissions by over 40%. Toronto was also the first municipality in North America to implement green building standards, and adopted the first comprehensive set of green roof policies.

Other leading green strides for Toronto include commissioning North America’s first urban wind turbine and developing the Deep Lake Water Cooling Project, drawing water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool large downtown buildings.

In 2005, Toronto was recognized as “Low Carbon Leader” by The Climate Group for a project that reroutes methane from landfills to power plants where it is turned into electricity for 34,000 homes. “Imagine,” says Mayor Miller, “if the whole country did that.”