What’s Canada’s social impact sector doing about its carbon footprint?

Everyone pollutes. 

The Canadian social impact sector is no exception, nor will it be spared from the effects of climate change. In 2018, Canada clocked roughly 729 megatonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs), according to government data. The worst offender was the energy sector, which mainly covers oil and gas production. But plenty of social impact organizations rely heavily on the second largest swathe of pollution: transportation. 

Food banks need a way to ship day-olds to a depot for pick-up. Affordable housing providers depend on concrete production, an incredibly polluting industry, hauled to job sites by cement trucks — and none of them are Teslas. International development and humanitarian organizations must rely on fossil fuelled cargo planes and helicopters to ship needed supplies to disaster zones. And want to take a guess at how much plastic and paper is used at events and fundraisers? 

Environment and Climate Change Canada does not specifically track the sector’s GHGs, but it is not hard to see how its activities contribute to the country’s overall carbon footprint. 

Eliminating GHGs from the social impact sector will be expensive and time-consuming, but critical. A Canadian social impact sector aiming for zero emissions might need to spend a lot on solar panels, energy efficient building retrofits, or other improvements. The results would save them money — and the planet — at a time when the sector is staring down the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic recession. Some of these organizations already have an attitude of conservation and climate mitigation built into their work, but they aren’t environmental NGOs. They are a food security organization, a world-famous housing provider, and an Indigenous postsecondary institute.

Eliminating GHGs from the social impact sector will be expensive and time-consuming, but critical.

Let’s have a look.

When Habitat for Humanity Canada’s contracted builders and volunteers descend on a construction site, they install  an ingenious device fitted to the hot water pipes of a new home. The copper piping that carries away the house’s hot wastewater is wrapped in a second pipe, called Power-Pipe, that carries cold water from the local water system. Copper conducts heat extremely well, so the wastewater ends up heating this fresh water — which is then fed into the home’s hot water tanks pre-warmed. The results speak for themselves. RenewABILITY, who supply the Power-Pipe, says it can save 10 percent of overall utility costs, with some studies saying it saves up to 25 percent of hot water heating costs.

That doesn’t just save a homeowner money; it also means the organization’s housing efforts don’t weigh as heavily on the environment. The federal government’s Throne Speech in September promised billions in green infrastructure, including through retrofitting buildings to be energy efficient. The goal is to reduce GHG outputs to net zero by 2030. “I would like to see us reach those targets much sooner than that,” says Terry Petkau, director of safety awareness and construction at Habitat for Humanity. 

There are a few ways Habitat for Humanity Canada’s various affiliates cut down on their carbon footprint when building homes, Petkau explains. One is simply delivering materials to jobs sites in as few vehicle trips as possible. Another is the use of spray-on rather than traditional fibreglass insulation. Relying on panelized construction, where the individual components of a home — the walls, roof, floor panels — are assembled in a factory and then shipped to a site ready to install also cuts down on construction site waste. “It’s one of those fine lines between, really, saving money and having a proper environmental focus,” he says. “They sometimes come hand in hand.” 

But Petkau says keeping housing builds green isn’t always possible. “Sometimes it’s going to be even more costly to achieve that. That’s a constant balancing act when we’re trying to do as much as we can with the limited resources that we do have,” he says. That doesn’t just include financial resources. Habitat for Humanity depends on unpaid volunteers to help construct buildings, but also needs to pay for contractors to handle skilled work. Energy-efficient houses are a lot more complicated, Petkau says, and the volunteers aren’t always up to the task. (The COVID-19 pandemic has also been a blow to Habitat’s volunteer numbers, he adds). 

Food Rescue Yellowknife, a Northwest Territories’-based food security non-profit, also takes environmentalism seriously. They distribute food to non-profits, schools, and daycares throughout the city. Lesley Allen, Food Rescue’s president, says their energy use is roughly 35 percent lower than comparable organizations in the Arctic Energy Alliance, a not-for-profit society that aims to reduce energy consumption and waste across the Northwest Territories. One reason is their size. Food Rescue Yellowknife has just two part-time staff: a driver who picks up discarded food from Yellowknife’s three grocery stories, and an operations manager who handles preparation. They don’t have any large buildings and don’t run a fleet of delivery trucks. “Our costs are pretty minimal,” she says — under $100,000 a year. 

But Food Rescue’s very mission reduces their environmental footprint. Allen says they accepted just over 141 tonnes of food last year and composted about 6 tonnes. That act alone saves slightly expired but otherwise edible food from clogging up landfills and grocery store dumpsters, while distributing it to the hungry. It also demonstrates the interconnected nature of sustainability. Tackling climate change also spills into the fight against hunger and economic inequality. “We’re protecting the environment and we’re recycling and composting on top of that,” Allen says. “It was a way to build a rationale and support for the idea of taking this food and giving it.” This philosophy is at the heart of many food bank operations in Canada, especially those on a shoestring budget. “One of the things that food banks have always dabbled in in their quest to source healthy safe food for folks is to work with the supply chain to identify where food might have gone into landfill and divert that for people in need,” says Kirstin Beardsley, chief of network services at Food Banks Canada. “We don’t talk about it, but it plays a pretty critical environmental role.” 

Tackling climate change also spills into the fight against hunger and economic inequality.

In other organizations, the philosophy of conservation and respect for the planet is integral to their mission. Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, an Indigenous post-secondary institute located in Yellowknife, brings together cohorts of students across the Far North to teach a variety of university-level courses through “on-the-land” Indigenous-focused instruction. Students live and learn in tents while also drawing water and chopping wood — learning to live in community together. “It’s really about connecting folks to ways of living sustainably in place,” says Kelsey Wrightson, Dechinta’s executive director. 

Dechinta’s whole pedagogical philosophy ties into respecting and caring for the land. But bringing together cohorts of students across the Far North can require a significant amount of travel. Wrightson says Dechinta is based in Yellowknife, but has offices scattered across the territories, which cuts down on travel. “It definitely helps us reduce our environmental footprint when we can make sure that the vast majority of our staff that we work with are from that region and don’t have to travel significant distances to get there,” she says. The institute also prioritizes students who are close to a territory where a particular cohort is taught, but sometimes students come from elsewhere. (This fall, one student drove from Fort Nelson, B.C, to Yellowknife to take part — a distance of just under 1,000 kilometres). 

The social impact organizations Future of Good spoke to all cared about climate action, even if they weren’t directly focused on climate issues. Most said they want to expand their sustainability efforts. And a couple found ways to use sustainability as a way of expanding their mission, or even bring in additional revenue. Habitat for Humanity Canada’s “reStore,” a used furniture store chain stocked entirely through donations, is one such example. The first opened in Winnipeg in 1991 and, since then, have expanded to 108 locations. Not only does reStore fund Habitat for Humanity Canada, it also saves furniture from the landfills. “We work with companies now to be an inventory solution to them so items don’t end up at the landfill,” says Jim Waechter, senior manager of reStore support. 

ReStores also do home salvage and even paint recycling. Last year alone, Waechter says, reStores diverted 42,000 tonnes of waste from landfills across the country. Admirable as that statistic is, however, Habitat for Humanity Canada’s efforts aren’t perfect. All of those 42,000 tonnes of waste had to arrive at the retailer’s depot by truck — and all of those trucks are still releasing GHGs into our atmosphere. 

Food insecurity, housing, and educational institutions may be capable of further improving their environmental footprint. With solar energy now becoming the cheapest form of power on the planet, the Canadian social impact sector could benefit from clean power sooner than anticipated. Energy efficiency retrofits are also a major priority of the Canadian government’s COVID-19 economic recovery plan. However, humanitarian agencies are still reliant on air travel, fossil fuel powered trucks, and diesel generators. How they adapt — while also assisting people affected by the climate crisis — will be the sector’s next major hurdle.