The Ryerson Sustainability Office recently announced that it is launching the development of the school’s first-ever Sustainability Action Plan.
The plan will outline Ryerson’s sustainability goals over the next five years.
As a first step, the office invited the school’s students, faculty and staff to share their thoughts, through a survey, on the actions they believe the plan should prioritize.“The feedback… is one of the factors that will help shape our plan,” said Ryerson’s manager of sustainability Stephanie MacPhee.
This preliminary action was well-received by the school’s community. “I am impressed with the efforts being made to reach out to everyone to develop a plan,” said Wendy Burton, assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. “Plans are strongest when all stakeholders are involved.”
The action plan will help the Office better pinpoint the school’s primary sustainability objectives. As of now, an important goal of the Sustainability Office is to help the school become a “carbon neutral campus” MacPhee said. The Office has been quite invested in developing several initiatives to attain this goal. For instance, Ryerson carries out an annual greenhouse gas inventory to track the school’s carbon footprint. Additionally, the Facilities Management and Development team is currently developing a sub-metering project that will allow the collection of more accurate data on each building’s energy use.
“The global climate crisis that we are currently facing is one of the most pressing issues of our time,” MacPhee said. “We recognize the urgency of this pivotal time, and will be developing greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and mapping out our long-term pathway.” The Office recently established a Climate and Energy working group last November to facilitate the process of setting short to long-term emission reduction targets at the school.
Despite the Office’s best efforts to improve sustainability at Ryerson, it still faces challenges, like waste sorting. “People often lose sight of the impact they can have as individuals and how they can contribute to a collective goal to create change,” MacPhee said. “When you have a few people tossing non-recyclables in the recycling bin you end up contaminating a whole batch of good recycles that then ends up in the landfill.”
To help counter this particular issue, the Office plans to amplify its reach to the Ryerson community by “strengthening our programming and education on this topic and improving incentives and infrastructure.”
Beyond setting goals and overcoming challenges, the Sustainability Office organizes multiple events yearly to promote sustainable practices at Ryerson. Their most popular event in terms of engagement is the Waste Reduction Week, MacPhee said, an annual campaign that focuses on “the principles of circular economy, resource efficiency and waste reduction.” This eventful week is filled with various workshops to raise the school community’s awareness of waste management and sustainable consumption.
To find out more about the Office’s initiatives, you can visit their Web page here.
The Sustainability Office strongly encourages students to partake in sustainability at the university, whether it be joining a club, volunteering, conducting research or simply making small sustainable changes to their daily lives.