Banff Leads the Way As An Early Adopter of Green Technology

In the heart of one of the world’s most pristine forests, not just any recycling will do.
So this Canada Day, the town of Banff will store its bear-proof trash bins away and replace them with — count ‘em — four types of blue boxes: for glass, paper, plastics and organics.
In between balloon twisting, kids’ games and sidewalk painting at Central Park, food vendors serving up meals for charity will use biodegradable packaging only; no plastic bags, plates or packaging will be allowed. Volunteers milling around the festivities will remind everyone to recycle.
And that’s just for starters. Banff was singled out recently as one of Canada’s greenest employers for 2009, the only municipality to make research firm Mediacorp Canada’s prestigious annual list.
Tourists and townspeople get around town on an all-hybrid bus fleet. There are organic waste drop-offs throughout the community, whose contents are processed into compost used to reclaim decommissioned landfills, mines and construction sites. There is a commitment to build new public buildings to at least “silver LEED” certification, a measure of sustainable design. Homeowners are given $150 rebates if they book an energy efficiency audit. And the list goes on.
Mayor John Stutz says his council routinely fields requests from companies interested in pilot-testing new products. One of those is the German firm Osram, which partnered with Banff recently to install LED street lighting that has reduced light pollution (streetlight can be directed better to where it’s needed) and electricity consumption by 30 per cent.
Banff has “no problem being an ambassador and an early-adopter” of green technology; the municipality is carving a template for other towns and cities to follow, Stutz explains.
“The fact that we’re a town in a national park within a UNESCO heritage site comes with certain responsibilities,” he says. “We’ve embraced those.”
— Sarah Staples, for Canwest News Service
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