GreenUP is proud to be celebrating our 30th anniversary.
Since 1992, GreenUP has worked diligently to empower climate action and inspire lasting change. Through programming that reaches over 10,000 children each year, working with 700-plus businesses, and services that have already supported 40 per cent of all Peterborough homes, GreenUP is this region’s leading environmental charity.
We invite you to join us for GreenUP’s 30th Birthday Party on Thursday, August 11th from 4 to 7 p.m. in Ecology Park to celebrate our three decades of inspiring and empowering community.
Fast approaching is the year 2030. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continues to emphasize that drastic emissions reductions must be reached globally by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Knowing this is quickly approaching, GreenUP reflects on 30 years of success and looks to the coming 30 years with the clear knowledge there is an urgent need to ramp up the scope and scale of our collective action on climate change.
If the urgency of the next three decades is eclipsed by anything, it is the overwhelming sense of empowerment and inspiration GreenUP feels when we reflect on all we have accomplished with our partners, residents, and educators in the past three decades.
Together, GreenUP and our supporters have been able to implement empowering and innovative change across our region. As a result, we know that it is possible for positive action and response to happen quickly — especially when we work together as a community.
In the coming decades, GreenUP will grow our reach and support our region in many innovative and exciting ways. Three major areas of focus will be our work with residents, businesses, and youth.
First, we will support residents in building their own knowledge and taking action on issues that matter to them. Secondly, we will engage businesses and provide them with the tools necessary to create positive change. Thirdly, we will continue to deliver exceptional environmental education for young people. In all of these areas, GreenUP will continue to leverage our partnerships with municipalities and serve as community experts in how to successfully achieve needed change.
Supporting residents
Supporting residents is an essential step in achieving our collective impact. Ensuring that people have housing which is safe and comfortable will be increasingly difficult as the climate warms and the frequency and strength of severe weather events continue to increase.
Moving into the next decade, GreenUP will grow our programming that aims to build neighbourhoods that are climate resilient and support people in making their homes more comfortable through energy efficiency initiatives.
GreenUP also plans to continue working with residents, businesses, and municipalities to support installation of neighbourhood green infrastructure such as rain gardens, trees, and DePave projects. We know that neighbourhoods are better prepared for climate change impacts when green infrastructure has been used to reduce flood risk and mitigate the impacts of urban heat.
By offering programs that support residents, GreenUP plans to leverage our own impact and provide our community with the tools needed to reach 30 to 50 per cent emissions reductions by 2030.
Engaging our businesses
Businesses have a critical role to play in acting on climate change and may not understand the potential impact of climate change on their operations or the action required to prevent it.
Within the region, emissions from our businesses make up 17 per cent of total emissions. GreenUP will spend the coming decades working directly with businesses to measure and reduce emissions. Taking a targeted approach to understanding business emissions and creating feasible reduction plans is a critical way to ensure businesses are actively engaged in achieving our climate goals.
GreenUP has taken up the role of educating and empowering businesses through Green Economy Peterborough. By training businesses to develop comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories and identifying practical ways to reduce emissions, businesses become more capable of playing their part in addressing the climate crisis and able to help ensure a good future exists for our economy.
It is GreenUP’s pleasure to support businesses through Green Economy Peterborough and to celebrate businesses who demonstrate impactful climate leadership at our annual Leadership in Sustainability Awards.
Empowering our community through education
Environmental education will be a major priority for GreenUP as we continue to teach and inspire tens of thousands of adults and children to take leadership, foster healthy ecosystems, reduce their waste, and travel in a way that is gentler on the planet.
The GreenUP Ecology Park has been a hub for community programming throughout the last 30 years to continue to inspire the public. Our new accessible outdoor classroom, washroom, and pathway ensure that people of all ages and abilities are able to take part in the camps, field trips, workshops, and events that are held in Ecology Park.
Continuing to build on the infrastructure of the park through the construction of a Net-Zero Greenhouse is part of our strategy to demonstrate climate leadership, propagate native plants, and extend the seasons and topics on which GreenUP is able to teach.
Visionary projects like this one are part of GreenUP’s plan to inspire and empower the climate leaders of tomorrow.
Looking forward
As a trusted leader on environmental issues that has served our region for 30 years, GreenUP will continue to take the action needed to achieve our collective impact and bring to life our shared vision for an environmentally healthy and sustainable community.
During the 30 years yet to come, our work will continue to teach, act, and engage our community. Climate change is a multiplier of all other challenges we face, from housing affordability to food systems to transportation and infrastructure. It is far more cost effective, healthier, and more inclusive to learn about and work together to address these challenges now rather than to delay.
Each step taken by people, businesses, and municipalities to respond to local climate vulnerability is part of building the community resilience we know is needed to mitigate and adapt to changes.
GreenUP is humbled to reflect on the work our community has done already to address climate change since 1992. Looking forward to 2052, GreenUP sees a future in which collectively, we have invested deeply in making necessary changes to stabilize the climate, while celebrating the diversity and success of our region.
We welcome you to RSVP online at greenup.on.ca/30years/ to attend our 30th Birthday Party and we look forward to seeing you there.
