July 7, 2009
   

Independent Living Canada (IL Canada) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging the notion that individuals with disabilities are only in need of care and ensuring that these individuals have control over the services that enable them to participate in all aspects of society.  Working through a network of member Independent Living Centres across the country, IL Canada provides a focal point in local communities to facilitate this new perspective on disability.

IL Canada’s head office recently joined Ecology Ottawa’s Green Buildings & Workplaces Challenge, a program created to help organizations reduce the environmental footprint of their building.  With a July office relocation from Centretown to Vanier, office coordinator Diane Champagne is focusing on the move as an opportunity to establish new sustainable practices and behaviours among their seven employees and several volunteers.

Champagne and graduate student intern Dale Stevenson have taken the lead on the initiatives; “the move offers us a clean slate from which to foster sustainable behaviours in a new environment rather than trying to break people out of their old habits.”  In the new office for example, electronics in each room will be plugged into a central power bar that can be easily flicked off at night, eliminating the ‘vampire power’ that electronics pull when off but plugged into an outlet, in turn reducing their hydro usage and the associated greenhouse gas emissions.

In advance of the move, the office is performing a waste assessment to gain baseline figures which will be used to target improvement areas in the new office, which they will also be sharing with the IL Canada Ottawa drop-in centre.  Together the two offices are looking for creative ways to mitigate the large amount of waste normally associated with moving; boxes of letterhead with the soon-to-be-incorrect address are set to be cut and bound into memo notepads and Champagne is sourcing recycled packing materials rather than buying new ones.  And both offices will be recycling their outdated electronic equipment through the new Ontario Waste Electrical & Electronics Equipment program that offers ethically responsible electronics recycling free of charge.  More information about this program can be found at http://www.dowhatyoucan.ca/

While the national office is taking the lead on these issues, they’re hoping to set an example for their centres across the country; “We’re going to use what we learn here and teach it to our colleagues across the country.  Regardless of office size or employee numbers, everyone can become greener.”

More information about Independent Living Canada can be found at http://www.ilcanada.ca/