Earth 1st - Walker Industries

Goals

By 2012, calculate the carbon footprint of the Walker Industries Group of Companies and set goals for reduction. Our goal is to make carbon efficiency second nature to every Walker employee.

How are we achieving our goal?

We have challenged a cross-disciplinary group of young leaders within our company to develop the approach and complete the task. Representatives from each of our operations, the environmental performance and finance departments are collaborating to meet our carbon footprint goal.

Carbon Update

The Carbon Action Team has been busy touring Walker Industries businesses and learning about the operations represented by its members. Every site we visit presents new challenges due to the diversity of Walker Industries businesses. From compact biosolids and landfill gas operations to large and unique quarry operations, understanding the carbon footprint of each operation is no easy task.

Here are some of the questions that the CAT ponders when visiting a site:

What equipment is onsite and how much fuel/energy does it consume?

Where do we draw the line/boundary around each business? For example – do we include the diesel emissions of an external contractor that strips overburden at a quarry or the emissions from propane that is used to pilot/ignite the landfill gas flare?

Do we have meters that can tell us exactly how much fuel/energy we use? Are there opportunities to reduce emissions?

To date, we have calculated the approximate carbon footprints for Niagara Biosolids and IGRS. Here’s a glimpse at our findings.

The Biosolids plant emitted roughly 805 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2009. This is similar to the emissions of a fully loaded 747 flying return between Toronto and Vancouver. It was also shown that as production increases, so does the plant’s efficiency.

The IGRS gas plant at the East Landfill prevented 340,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being released to atmosphere. This is equivalent to removing approximately 80,000 cars from the road each year. You could also say that the gas plant could offset the emissions from the Biosolids facility for 422 years.

Our goal is to make carbon efficiency second nature to every Walker Industries employee.

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. ~ Yogi Berra