Ontario Public Service employees
Chosen as one of Canada's Greenest Employers for 2013:
By Richard Yerema and Julien Gagnier, Mediacorp Canada Inc. staff editors
(Apr 21, 2013)
Some of the reasons why Ontario Public Service / OPS was selected as one of Canada's Greenest Employers (2013):
- released its "Climate Change Action Plan" in 2007 to provide an overall framework for action to help the province reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions -- setting province-wide emission reduction targets, strategies for promoting more widespread use of clean and renewable energy sources, and a range of measures to reduce the carbon footprint of the province's industrial, transportation, municipal and residential sectors
- in support of the action plan, the government established an in-house "Green Office" in 2008 to oversee its efforts to reduce its own environmental footprint -- the office is led by an Assistant Deputy Minister within the Ministry of Government Services -- and is responsible for implementing a multi-year "Green Transformation Strategy" to guide and demonstrate the provincial government's commitment to sustainability for its own operations -- all Government ministries now have their own Green Plans in place
- the Green Office also encourages employee involvement through a educational green intranet site, called "Think Green", and has employee-led "Green Teams" across the Service to help develop and implement new initiatives across the province, including aggressive recycling programs, car pooling, an aggressive print reduction program, and volunteer support for annual events such as Earth Day, Earth Hour, the annual Clean Air Commute Week, the Caught Green Handed campaign, the OPS Tap Water Campaign, National Sweater Day, and the Green Ideas Campaign, to name a few
- in keeping with its overall Go Green Action Plan, the Service has established carbon dioxide reduction targets in (to a 19 percent reduction in emissions below the 2006 baseline level by 2014 and 27 percent by 2020) -- the challenge is to be met through a range of measures, including addressing vehicle use and fuel consumption, paper consumption, business air travel, packaging and waste reductions, water and energy consumption
- recently re-launched its carpool system in partnership with the "Smart Commute" initiative, providing employees with an easy-to-use online tool that helps find suitable commuter matches at locations across the province
- as part of its ongoing reduction efforts, the OPS diverts electronic waste from landfills, continues to move to FSC-certified paper products where possible (and double-sided printing), adopted paperless pay stubs, maintains optional summer attire programs for many employees (reducing the need for AC in the summer), has updated its auto fleet procurement policies with over 1,155 hybrids on the road now (saving over 1,000,000 litres of fuel each year) and adding 25 all electric vehicles into the fleet as well as 4 electric ATV's in Ontario's Provincial Park system
- recently launched a a comprehensive virtual meeting service to help reduce unnecessary travel, introducing webcams for desktops, a multi-user webcast service (called mCAST) for video teleconferencing and targeted two-way video conferencing -- and has telecommuter pilot programs underway in five ministries
- at locations across the province, the OPS has introduced a diverse range of energy saving (and producing) initiatives, including connecting Queen's Park to Enwave's Deep Water Cooling system, adding green and white roofs to existing structures, using solar and wind power generation to power remote airports and park operations, ongoing computer server upgrades and consolidations, banning use of inefficient light bulbs, and optional summer dress code for office employees to help reduce AC demands, to name a few
- maintains a unique re-use and re-deployment program for everything from furniture to computers to paper to heavy machinery to laboratory equipment, ensuring that items that can be used elsewhere in the province are saved, cataloged and shipped to where they can be re-used -- approximately 17,000 items are re-deployed every year, and recently, approximately 13,000 printers, fax machines and photocopiers have been targeted for re-deployment or disposal
- has adopted the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standard as a minimum for all new government-owned office buildings and major renovations (where possible)
Background Information
Major Canadian hiring locations: Toronto ON, Oshawa ON, Peterborough ON, Sudbury ON, Thunder Bay ON, Kingston ON, London ON, Guelph ON, Ottawa ON, St Catharines ON, Windsor ON.
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