As part of a broad strategy to reduce energy and greenhouse gas emissions, the City of Victoria is developing an online decision support tool to inform its residents of the potential benefits of investing in solar hot water and photovoltaics  systems for their homes and businesses. This report outlines the details of a solar benefit calculator that will help decision-making and ultimatley reduce energy use, utility costs and carbon footprints.

Partner: City of Victoria
Keywords: green buildings

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2015
Amir Shoolestani

The purpose of this project was to support the Recycling Renewal Project at Lower Mainland Health Organizations by creating news stories based on interviews with Recycling Champions and researching best waste management practices in healthcare. The research also included development of an internal document summarizing the waste impact of the Lower Mainland Health Organizations, including the environmental and health impacts, and mitigations specific to the BC Lower Mainland.

Partner: Fraser Health
Keywords: waste management & recycling

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2015
Michelle Hepburn

This project evaluated a number of standards, technologies and methods for new home construction in the remote communities of the Great Bear Initiative Coastal First Nations in British Columbia. Current home construction in these communities does not address a number of technical, social, economic and cultural needs. Key issues to be addressed in new home construction, and recommended solutions are included in this report.

Partners: Pinna Sustainability, BC Hydro, Coastal First Nations
Keywords: green buildings, social sustainability

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2015
Dylan Heerema

This report includes a draft engagement strategy for the UBC Wellbeing Initiative’s  “Conversations in Wellbeing” program. The strategy proposed in this report is intended to help build and support a network of students, staff and faculty working on wellbeing-related issues, define community-based wellbeing priorities and inform the draft UBC Wellbeing strategy.

Partner: UBC Wellbeing
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainability in education

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2015
Stephanie Aitken and Jenna Dunsby

This report reviews and analyses commercially available biomass technology for the Bioenergy Research & Demonstration Facility (BRDF) at UBC to understand potential plant expansion capacity to meet UBC’s 2020 GHG emission reduction target of 67% below 2007 levels. 

Partner: UBC
Keywords: sustainable development & green economy, green buildings

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2015
Alessandro Deviato

The purpose of this report is to provide a snapshot of local government commitments to renewable energy projects in BC as of early 2015. It provides a reasonable base of renewable energy and district energy initiatives from the past five years, as well as a ‘heads up’ on what to expect from local governments. Additionally it will enable the Province time to ‘tool up’ in proactive support of anticipated local government efforts. Finally, it will provide other agencies with insights into future local government needs for policy, technology or funding support.

Partner: Community Energy Association
Keywords: leadership & behaviour change

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2015
Avis Petersen

The City of Vancouver is interested in reducing or minimizing chemical exposure in City operations. This project is aimed at developing an inventory of toxins associated with materials used in internal City operations.This report contributes to larger project that will seek to reduce and minimize chemical exposure across the City of Vancouver.

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: lighter footprint, ecological systems, social sustainability

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2015
Erika Mak

The purpose of this project was to gain a broad historical perspective on conflict in the workplace, and to gain an explicit understanding of organizational learning and development initiatives as they relate to workplace conflict. 

Partner: UBC Human Resources
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainability in education

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2015
Maggie Castor

This report is a brief summary of the results obtained after benchmarking 22 of City of New Westminster’s corporate buildings using Energy Star Portfolio Manager. The list of buildings includes community centres, swimming pools, a firehall, a public library, a convention centre, and offices (among others). The building performance data includes energy consumption from December 2010 to Dec 2014.

Partner: City of New Westminster
Keywords: green buildings, sustainable development & green economy

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2015
Priyanka Chakrabarti

The GreenCare community works to instill sustainable practices throughout the lower mainland health authorities. This report describes a project to identify where opportunities for sustainable practices could be implemented in the GreenCare community as well as help move the lower mainland health authorities towards zero waste.

Partner: Fraser Health
Keywords: sustainable development & green economy, waste management & recycling

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2015
Shirin Karoubi

This report is a resource for individuals at Musqueam and UBC who recognize the value of effective, meaningful collaboration, and seek to strengthen the relationship between our communities. The insights in this report were drawn from interviews with individuals from the Musqueam Indian Band and the University of British Columbia with success working collaboratively between the two communities.

Partner: Musqueam & UBC
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainability in education

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2015
Aaron Lao

The City of Victoria has a target of reducing community greenhouse gas emissions by 33% by 2020. The purpose of this project was to help the City conduct energy and water benchmarking of its own buildings and explore development of a policy to require the same of large buildings in the community in order to improve data access, transparency, demonstrate leadership and advocate early adoption with regard to building energy use.

Partner: City of Victoria
Keywords: green buildings, water

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2015
Manojkiran Casilingam

This document expands on the initial Conversations in Wellbeing Engagement Strategy project. The first document served as an engagement piece to frame the conversation and to get input from those already working to promote wellbeing on UBC campuses. This report reflects the feedback from the initial document. 

Partner: UBC Wellbeing
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainability in education

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2015
Stephanie Aitken and Pariya Darvishzadeh

This report evaluates the challenges and opportunities of campus engagement. The document includes an explanation of Wellbeing at UBC, the ‘Conversations in Engagement’ project, a literature review, and the lessons learned from three vehicles for engagement including Staff Tune-ins, the Graduate Student Wellbeing Network, and the Faculty Wellbeing Cohort.

Partner: UBC Wellbeing
Keywords: social sustainability, sustainability in education

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2015
Erika Sagert

The City of Surrey has set goals to reduce corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% before 2020 from 2009 levels. Building energy benchmarking encourages organizations to track energy use and compare it with similar buildings, helping to make energy a more salient issue for building owners and operators and to potentially identify opportunities for savings. This project consisted of benchmarking 44 buildings using Energy Star Portfolio Manager (ESPM) to obtain building energy performance ratings.

Partner: City of Surrey
Keywords: green buildings

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2015
Sze Ting Tam

In order to better understand the toxic substances in building materials and furnishing, the Fraser Health Lower Mainland Facilities Management is focusing on the toxic substances in resilient flooring and fire stopping sealants used in acute and chronic care facilities. This report elucidates on the possible toxic substances used in 1) resilient flooring, their installation, care, and maintenance, and 2) fire stopping sealants.

Partner: Fraser Health
Keywords: green buildings, social sustainability, sustainable development & green economy 

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2015
Ivan Cheung

 To support the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions laid out in UBC’s Community Energy and Emissions Plan (CEEP) for residential neighbourhoods on campus, UBC is developing a building energy benchmarking strategy. This report explains one of the first initiatives in the strategy to implement a benchmarking pilot project that focuses on six multi-family rental buildings in UBC’s residential neighbourhood.

Partner: UBC Sustainability & Engineering
Keywords: green buildings

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2015
Joshua Power

This report details a best practices review for building volunteerism capacity to support waste reduction at special events. The objectives of this research include: investigate best practices employed by other municipalities to engage volunteers as recycling educators at special events; and provide analysis and recommendations that could be used by the City to create and maintain volunteer resources and to promote waste diversion. 

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: zero waste, social sustainability, waste management & recycling

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2014
Angie Nicolas

This document combines current knowledge of inclusivity through the engagement of existing community garden guidelines; dialogues hosted by Can You Dig It (CYDI) Possibilities, and community coordinators and gardeners in Vancouver. The aim is to understand inclusivity in the Vancouver context; investigate current attributes of community gardens and their members; and provide assistance to leaders and gardeners in the creation of more welcoming and inclusive gardens. 

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: healthy city, social sustainability, food systems

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2014
Ashley Lowcock

The Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services are exploring options to reduce their fuel usage without sacrificing safety or effectiveness of their fleet. This study identified two strategies to explore: expanding the Medic vehicle program and moving some training from Chess Street Training Grounds to “satellite training locations” including Firehalls 9, 10, 15 ,17, 18, and City Hall. 

Partner: City of Vancouver
Keywords: lighter footprint, transportation

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2014
Bethany Dobson

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