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June Lighthouse award - TD Friends of the Environment
At the June 14 Board meeting, the CBE recognized TD Friends of the Environment Foundation (TD FEF), a valuable friend and partner, with this month’s Lighthouse Award. TD FEF has partnered with the CBE since 2009 to develop an interactive, online ecological footprint calculator designed especially for schools and post-secondary institutional settings. The Lighthouse Award program was created to honour and recognize organizations that make significant and meaningful contributions to our students and schools. The City of Calgary, CBE, and the University of Calgary collaborated on the calculator’s development. It has been piloted in 18 CBE schools during the 2010/2011 school year. TD FEF makes a difference every day by providing a tool that will help influence decision making and behaviour of staff, students and parents at K-12 schools and the university communities. Ecological footprint is an international standard to measure human impact on the Earth’s resources, and works much like financial accounting by telling us if we are living within our means. It measures the amount of resources consumed and waste generated, and compares this to the Earth’s ability to provide these resources and manage waste. “This tool will complement our EcoSites program to help school communities develop a baseline for their behavioural and action campaigns and set a target for ecological footprint reduction,” said Olena Olafson, community projects coordinator with the CBE’s Eco Team. “The collaboration with the University of Calgary and the City of Calgary provides an opportunity for seamless communication in ecological footprint reduction.” “The new calculator is intended to raise staff and student awareness,” said Joanne Perdue, director of sustainability for the U of C. “The tool will be paired with educational programs that show our staff and students the actions they can take to reduce the ecological footprints of their institutions.” The calculator joins the popular personal ecoFootprint Calculator, which Calgarians have been using since May 2009. It is available at www.calgary.ca/footprint. By financially supporting the development of the Ecological Footprint Calculator, TD FEF has helped provide students and staff with an understanding of ecological demand, consumer consumption, sustainability, and environmental stewardship. The development of this tool also provides a new set of resources for teaching and learning that supports students in using their own school and activities as a real-life laboratory to develop a concrete, hands-on understanding of the problem of ecological limits, and how as students they contribute to and can help reduce the footprint of their school. This collaborative, community supported initiative not only benefits our students, but supports a responsible way of being for the world around us. The CBE thanks TD FEF for embarking on this journey with us. “I am personally very proud to represent TD Friends of the Environment Foundation in accepting this Lighthouse award today. We are very pleased to have been able to support the development of this valuable tool that will help our schools better understand how actions and changes in their behaviour help protect the environment,” said Andrew Gartner, Calgary Chapter Coordinator for TD FEF.
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The CBE’s Department of Energy & Environmental Services was created to advance environmental literacy and assist the organization in achieving the vision, mission and goals of the CBE environmental stewardship initiative. The group’s vision is to ensure that the CBE is a model of local and global environmental stewardship. 