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MTCC Garners More Recognition for Green Practices International Award for Zero Waste Pioneers
October, 2007
The Metro Toronto Convention Centre has won a 2007 AIPC Innovation Award from the International Association of Congress Centres. These newly launched awards recognize projects or initiatives resulting in new, more creative or more effective approaches to any aspect of congress centre management, operations or marketing. MTCC's emphasis on green issues and leadership through its innovative Zero Waste program helped capture the award.
"Winning this important award from AIPC reaffirms the Centre's tradition of leadership as an environmentally responsible facility and a good corporate citizen," said MTCC CEO Barry Smith as he accepted the award at AIPC's meeting in Austria in the summer of 2007. "We are doing everything we can to reduce our environmental footprint, and we hope others will follow our lead."
The MTCC's Zero Waste program was launched in late 2005 when PM Expo/Construct Canada inaugurated the first ever large-scale Zero Waste convention. The MTCC, together with its long-time recycling partner, Turtle Island Recycling, a highly respected recycling and waste management company, pioneered the concept of recycling all waste generated at large meetings and conventions, thus avoiding adding to the existing landfill burden.
Using its innovative Zero Waste approach, the MTCC is able to successfully divert from landfill a stunning 95-98% of all the waste materials generated during an event. In a typical four-day event with 3,000 people in attendance, a total of approximately 16 metric tonnes of waste materials can be captured for recycling and composting, including organics, plastics, paper, metal, glass, textiles, wood and other materials.
The MTCC calculates this saves 57 trees, approximately 75,000 litres of water, 39,310 kilowatt-hours of energy, 16,200 litres of oil, 77 kilograms of air pollutants, and 85 cubic metres of landfill space. "We are highly committed to being a global leader in this area and providing opportunities for our clients and events to do the same," Smith says.
The MTCC is well known for its commitment to being a leader in environmental responsibility. The Centre has a solid record in recycling (64%), and energy conservation. The building also has an enormous 300,000-square-foot green roof, a partnership with Second Harvest for food leftovers (2,000 lbs. recycled annually), and a variety of other sustainability programs. In addition, the MTCC was the first facility to be on Enwave Energy's Deep Lake Water Cooling system, technology, which provides the Centre's building cooling by using extremely cold water extracted from Lake Ontario.
These efforts have been recognized through a number of different awards in recent years. Last fall, the MTCC won the Gold Award in the 2006 Ontario Waste Minimization Awards competition held by the Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO). The MTCC also was recognized this past December by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada as a national leader in environmental stewardship. The MTCC was awarded BOMA's "GO Green" designation, as well as "Building of the Year" and a "Certificate of Management Excellence." In May 2007 the MTCC won a Green Toronto Award from the City of Toronto.
The Metro Toronto Convention Centre offers more than 2 million square feet of state-of-the-art space, and is considered a world-class, tier-one facility. Since opening in 1984, the MTCC has hosted approximately 12,000 events and entertained nearly 40 million. As an AIPC member, MTCC is part of a global network of the leading international congress, convention and exhibition centres with 157 members from over 53 countries around the world.
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