Winnipeg doing well at cutting down water use and waste, study says

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This article was published 21/04/2015 (3968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers deserve a pat on the back this Earth Day.

A Winnipeg-based environmental think tank crunched the numbers in a city study which concludes we’re good at cutting down water and garbage, two key indicators of environmentally friendly cities.

Winnipeg’s doing pretty well, the International Institute on Sustainable Development said in a statement Tuesday.

Earth Day is Wednesday. The institute took the city’s latest water use and waste profile and put the stats under a microscope, as part of a United Way project to track well-being in the city over time.

“April 22 is Earth Day. To celebrate we’ve taken a look at some indicators in the ‘Peg’s natural environment to find out how Winnipeg stacks up,” the institute said.

Over a 20-year period, water use per person has dropped significantly, from 341 litres per day in 1993, to 248 litres in 2013.

And while it looks like one of the biggest dips in a single year was last year — the winter when frozen pipes severely limited water use for some 5,000 households — that’s intuitive logic. The numbers show water use on a steady decline over the two decades.

“Over a 20-year period, Winnipeggers’ water use has decreased 27 per cent,” the institute said.

“I talked to a fellow at the city about the water use because it is a pretty significant drop,” said the Institute’s Charles Thrift, who heads up the United Way project. Thrift crunches the numbers the city collects. “The number one reason is technology, so we’re looking at toilets, washing machines and shower heads.”

We’re sending a lot less garbage to the landfill.

“A lot of this has to do with diversion,’’ Thrift said. “The city has put a lot of effort into yard-waste pickup. During the spring, summer and fall, there is lot of leaf waste and things that did not need to go to the landfill.”

We sent 249 kilograms per person per year to the Brady Landfill in 2013, compared to 355 kg in 1993, down almost 30 per cent.

Finally, from the province’s data base, the institute pulled out some air quality stats. Winnipeg’s level of ground-level ozone is better than the national average, as expected, thanks to our geography.

“Winnipeg’s level of ground-level ozone, a common outdoor air pollutant, is below the Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standard,” the institute noted.

Lower levels are linked to fewer hospital admissions and lower mortality rates.

“The data is based on a three-year average and it’s gone up and down over time. Some years you get more ground-level ozone than others. But overall we’re staying below the Canada-wide standard,” Thrift said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca