Rating: NNNNN
| RYERSON |  U OF T |
 GEORGE BROWN |
 YORK U |
|
| BUILDINGS | Two green roofs, zero-VOC paints, recycled building materials/furniture/flooring green cleaners in use. Keep up the good work. | Two native green roofs, green building design standards in place, two LEED-qualified green buildings, plus a couple of other award- winning eco ones. Lighting retrofits in the works for old buildings, but it’s moving painfully slow. | No green roofs, but green cleaners are used energy-efficient lighting retrofits done upgrading AC/heating system windows all replaced with double-glazed type building materials reused low-VOC paints. | Two green roofs student res voted one of T.O.’s top 10 green buildings by NOW engineering building also uber-eco lighting retrofits complete. |
| PURCHASING POLICY | In the works. (No Sweat policy for student union gear. Bookstore recently took on sweatshop-free policy after much foot-dragging.) | No, but U of T was first to have No Sweat purchasing policy for logo’d clothing and an enviro protection policy. | Huh? | It’s coming, it’s coming. |
| GREENERY | No chemical pesticides used vague commitment to increase trees and shrubs around new buildings. (Do those six potted plants outside the new engineering building count?) Nothing about using native, drought-tolerant species. | No pesticides native plants for new projects target is to double 3,000 trees already on campus cool student-run organic garden. | No green space to speak of, but no pesticides are used on the 3 square feet George Brown does have. | Native plants encouraged, but no real targets large organic community garden open to residents, teachers, staff. |
| RECYCLING / ALTERNATIVE ENERGY | WASTE DIVERSION RATE 60 per cent RENEWABLE ENERGY Deep-lake-water cooling in new business building and student centre. Energy consumption down 30 per cent across campus, putting it at the head of the class. |
DIVERSION RATE 60 per cent RENEWABLE ENERGY Cogeneration plant (capturing steam) produces a quarter of campus energy needs considering wind turbine. |
DIVERSION RATE 65 per cent (the school’s greenest achievement by far) RENEWABLE ENERGY Not really, but it does have heat exchangers. |
DIVERSION RATE Nearly 70 per cent, pretty impressive, really. RENEWABLE ENERGY Cogeneration plant meets 65 per cent of campus needs. |
| FOOD | These keeners just switched to corn- and sugar-based takeout containers catering scraps composted no campus-wide composting program. | Only campus in Canada with local-food-buying policy (coming in this year at some cafs) kitchen waste composted sadly, there’s no campus-wide composting program, only at Innis College. | Nothing local or organic and no bio-corn-based plastic here, but food waste is composted. | Campus-wide organic waste collection in place. Progressive campus should be pushing local foods. |
| BIKES AND TRANSIT | Program promotes student and staff cycling, but for the longest time there weren’t enough bike racks. After much complaining, racks were just added. | Free bike repair shop BikeShare hub gives access to wheels campus cops drive hybrid SUVs (we’d rather see them in Priuses) 5 per cent biodiesel used in diesel cars. | Not much besides some bike parking areas | New bike lanes planned. Hosts a Bikes, Bus And Bagels event. Electric golf carts for garbage pickup, staff shuttling. Shuttles to TTC. Pushing costly subway link when we should be thinking less disruptive light rail. |
| THE SCORE | B : Not sure why it’s promoting the installation of not-so-eco antibacterial soap dispensers on Ry’s sustainability site, and it still hasn’t closed Gould Street to cars, but Ryerson has definitely improved its score with its new enviro initiatives. BONUS Worn-out gym towels get used as cleaning rags. | B+ : Behemoth of a campus makes greening process slow and hard to nail down, but, hey, it’s managed to get a good deal done. Still hear complaints that lights and computers are always on.BONUS Adding HEPA filters on vacuums greenhouse gas inventory project in the works idle-free campaign. | C- : Yes, it’s a smaller institution with less cash than the big guns, but it could use its nimbleness to get green fast. Too bad it’s lagging at the back of the pack. There hasn’t even been an active green student group.BONUS Nifty air-filtering living wall in the works for Casa Loma campus. | B: York is kicking ass when it comes to diversion, but it loses points for its parking-lot culture, upping its greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, it should capitalize on its windy campus by putting up turbines. BONUS Contract with energy audit firm set to slash York’s energy use by 20 per cent. When it’s done. |
