Office of Sustainability gives Humber green thumbs up

Humber's Office of Sustainability has been awarded a gold STARS ranking for its work towards carbon neutrality.

The STARS (Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System) was founded by AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) and is a third-party metric used for measuring sustainability efforts in post-secondary schools. 

It uses metrics like building power consumption, how sustainability is taught in the classroom and even if they pay their employees a living wage. 

The office is currently on track to reach net zero well before 2050 and they are inching closer to their goal every day. 

True to their word Humber Lakeshore campus has a new building that is completely carbon neutral, marking another big step for their goal. 

“We're not adding to our own carbon anymore," Director of Sustainability Lindsay Walker said. “When we go into a build or a renovation, if we need to make a new office, change a classroom around in different ways to teach different things, while we're doing it, we insulate the walls, we change out the lighting.

"We make sure that when we're doing things we don't do them just to do them but when we are already in there, which is sustainable so we're not creating Renovations that go to a landfill," she said.

However, the office is not slowing down following its big achievement.

“There are other things that I'd like to do where we won't get any more points and stars, but we definitely need to do to solve or support and impact our climate,” Walker said. 

In pursuit of this goal, Lindsay says that she and her team are in the process of increasing student engagement and will maximize the amount of work they can do to better the school's carbon footprint.

“Then there are things that are outside of our direct control for carbon,” Walker said. 

Many sustainability systems are already in place throughout campus including the Barrett Centre which has built-in passive heating and cooling systems, high-efficiency HVAC and a green rooftop. 

Most of these accomplishments are due to “written green building standards” that make hired contractors adhere to certain rules and regulations which contribute to the overall sustainability of the project.

 All these efforts are due to Humber's Sustainability plan, a five-year-long blueprint of what happened between 2019 and 2024.

“We are already number one,” Walker said about the next year's Sustainability plan. The new plan will be released on Nov. 6 and will include the feedback and opinions of more than 750 staff and students around Humber.