Humber Arboretum earns platinum eco status.
Four Toronto outdoor education centres were among 13 certified as Ontario EcoCentres at an event hosted at Humber Arboretum's Centre for Urban Ecology on Thursday.
Staff photo/CYNTHIA REASON
Four Toronto education centres have earned themselves certification as Ontario EcoCentres.
Humber Arboretum Centre for Urban Ecology took the sole title as a platinum certified centre, while the Toronto Zoo garnered gold, and Black Creek Pioneer Village and Downsview Park both earned bronze as part of the new, nine-month program led by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) and designed to help education centres address the issue of climate change.
"The EcoCentres program is the first of its kind in Ontario specifically developed for environmental/outdoor day centres, residential field centres, museums, zoos, or other centres that provide on-site education programs," said Darryl Gray, the TRCA's senior manager of education. "Education centres have a significant opportunity to influence students and enable them to understand issues such as climate change."
In total, 13 education centres from across the province received the Ontario EcoCentre designation at a ceremony held at Etobicoke's Humber Arboretum Centre for Urban Ecology on Thursday, Jan. 26.
In order to get certified, participating education centres had to reach certain benchmarks, completing a checklist of 10 areas providing clear and measurable ways for them to achieve certification.
Those components include: teamwork and professional development; occupancy behaviour and resource conservation; curriculum and programming; environmental quality and human health; procurement; biodiversity and sustainable sites; infrastructure renewal and new construction; transportation and fleet services; social equity; and carbon neutrality.
To be platinum certified, like Humber's Centre for Urban Ecology, all 10 benchmarks had to be reached.
Reaching such a goal, said Humber Arboretum's director of the Centre for Urban Ecology Melanie Sifton, was both a collaborative effort and a "tremendous honour."
"It proves that our centre has been implementing and promoting sustainable practices from the start," she said. "The perseverance and tenacity of our staff and dedicated students enabled us to achieve sustainability across all levels."
To reach gold status, the Toronto Zoo had to reach nine of those benchmarks - which represented "a lot of work and a lot of hours," said Steve Jones, supervisor of the Toronto Zoo's education programs.
"The zoo has always had a strong environmental mandate. The heart of our organization is animal conservation, but in order to save animals, you need to be saving and preserving habitats, and in order to save habitats, you need to conserve the environment," he said, noting the Ontario EcoCentres program has served to reinvigorate that mandate.
Also recognized at Thursday event were: the Lake St. George Field Centre with silver certification; and Albion Hills Field Centre, Claremont Field Centre, Kortright Centre for Conservation, Crawford Lake Conservation area, Mountsberg Conservation Area, G.W. Finlayson Field Centre, Jack Smythe Field Centre, and Old Britannia Schoolhouse all with bronze.
Any Ontario education centre interested in applying for the 2012 program can visit http://ontarioecocentres.org or email ontarioecocentres@trca.on.ca for more information on eligibility and application details.