Humber College
PAE-4: Sustainability Plan

Humber hosted two town halls to develop the Sustainability Action Plan. The town halls involved 50 students, staff and faculty who provided their input on what priority areas the college should include in the plan.
The Sustainability Coordinating Committee is comprised of 13 volunteer staff from several different departments in the college and two student representatives (one from the Humber Student Federation and one ‘student-at-large’).

The proposed sustainability goals for Humber stated in the Action Plan are:

Social:
- Make Humber a model sustainable community
- Require compliance with ethical and environmental practices
- Increase understanding of sustainability inside and outside the campus

Economic:
- Ensure ongoing economic viability
- Maintain and enhance the asset base
- Maintain and maximize the utilization of the physical Infrastructure
- Market Humber as a sustainable institution to attract students, academics and staff

Ecological:
- Reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
- Conserve resources
- Protect biodiversity
- Increase instances of effective waste reduction, reuse and recycling

Please see the Action Plan for more details about these goals: http://www.humber.ca/sustainability/humber-sustainability-action-plan

The Sustainability Coordinating Committee continuously reviews new potential initiatives, and relates them back to the Sustainability Action Plan to make sure they are aligned with the goals set in the plan. The Sustainability Strategy will include timelines for key targets. A selection of the many goals met since the Sustainability Action Plan was established:
• Green Teams have been established in many of the college’s departments.
• A “Sustainability at Humber” list-serve has been created to better share information and connect to interested staff.
• Humber students helped to create a Sustainability website for Humber for better communication about initiatives, and provide a place for people to ask questions.
• In 2012, a group of students started a sustainability club, which quickly became the largest student run club on campus.
• In 2012, the college hired a Sustainability Manager to further energize efforts towards Humber’s sustainability goals.
• Since 2005, Humber has reduced our electricity use by 16.5% per square foot and 35% per student. During the same time period enrolment has grown by 20%.

More accomplishments can be seen in our Sustainability Report 2009-2012 found here: http://www.humber.ca/sustainability/how-are-we-doing

The Humber College 2008/2009 Business Plan identified Sustainability as being one of the five values that support Humber’s vision and mission statement: “Sustainability by considering the social and environmental costs and benefits in all of our decision making.” Many of the key elements of sustainability have long been implemented at Humber, so the purpose of creating an Action Plan was to bring them together.
In 2008, the Humber community developed a Sustainability Action Plan for the college. The Action Plan outlines three areas of concern: social justice, economic viability, and ecological preservation and associated goals. The Humber Sustainability Coordinating Committee (SCC) was also formed at this time.
The Humber SCC has begun the process to develop an updated Sustainability Strategy to be completed in early 2014. The new sustainability strategy will update goals; define opportunities for improvement and aspirations across all aspects of the college including operations, administration and curriculum. The Humber community will be involved in the development of the strategy and will be given the opportunity to comment throughout the process.