Target Zero
WHAT IS TARGET ZERO?
Why at The Forks? We get nearly 4 million visitors a year. That’s a lot of garbage, a lot of toilets being flushed, a lot of exhaust from cars and a lot of expensive power to heat and cool our buildings. With TARGET 0 we are investigating how we can harness the power of the earth, work on offsetting your car’s effects and reduce our footprint to zero in any way we can.
We know it’s going to be a lot of hard work and we’ll have to be innovative. We also know that we don’t have all the answers yet. There are some great partners and experts we have paired up with to show us the best ways to do things. We’ll need to ask for your help sometimes.
We will look hard at the numbers involved in achieving our goals. With the exception of carbon offsets, there is a cost saving for us involved in each project and our return on investment would be seen in some cases in a few short years.
If we get it right, we will be helping the planet in our own small way and making The Forks a leader in our community.
We've divided our target strategy in to three sections: Consumption, Supply and Carbon Offsets.
CONSUMPTION
What can we do better about the things we consume? For example,
we can convert cooking oil to biodiesel and possibly become a downtown
biocomposting hub.
SUPPLY
We can find alternate, greener supplies for the site’s power, water and
heating/cooling needs.
CARBON OFFSETS
Visitors, staff and tenants produce 5,610 tonnes of carbon on our site. That’s
the equivalent of 1,501 Olympic-sized swimming pools each and every year. By
collaborating on bike routes and facilities, walking paths and improving on
alternate ways to access the site, while offsetting the carbon emissions with
plantings and other initiatives, we can work to balance the effects of the car.