Chosen as one of Canada's Greenest Employers for 2011:
By Kristina Leung and Richard Yerema, Mediacorp Canada Inc. staff editor
(
Apr 20, 2011)
Some of the reasons why BC Public Service was selected as one of Canada's Greenest Employers (2011):
back in 2007, the BC Public Service set in law its commitment to become a carbon neutral public sector employer by 2010 -- and was the first major political jurisdiction in North America to set such a goal -- recently reaching this milestone through a variety of reduction initiatives and the purchase of high quality offsets through the Pacific Carbon Trust, which is a provincial Crown corporation
and has set longer term goals to reduce its overall emissions by one-third by 2020, and an 80 percent reduction by 2050
over 600 employees volunteer for over 100 Green Teams across the province, with each developing their own conservation programs as well as managing Service-wide initiatives, from green commuting to paper conservation initiatives
has established a requirement that new government buildings be constructed to the minimum LEED Gold (or equivalent certification) standard and is upgrading existing buildings to reduce energy consumption and doing the little things across the service, from putting computers to sleep when not in use to greater use of web-conferencing to reduce unnecessary travel
has updated its vehicle fleet standards, which account for approximately one-third of the Service's emissions, including a hybrid-first purchasing policy where possible (with over 600 new and leased government fleet vehicles being hybrids), conversion from gas to propane for existing vehicles, retrofitting diesel vehicles to accept bio-diesel, as well as an anti-idling toolkit and online carbon neutral driver training courses for traveling employees
launched an online emissions calculator for traveling employees, called "SMARTTEC", which determines the emission levels of different travel modes as well as a "SmartTool" calculator that aggregates and develops emission reports for all sources, including travel, buildings and paper usage -- and is currently introducing the calculator to schools, universities and health authorities across the province
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