These Torontonians are making the city a greener, more livable place

Theglobeandmail.com
Aug. 19, 2016
By Madeline Smith

A sustainable kitchen; finding power in zoo-poo and celebrating our city’s laneways and green rooftops: Here are four Torontonians who have gotten behind a project to make their city a more livable place, Madeline Smith writes.

Joshna Maharaj

In her time as assistant director and executive chef of Ryerson University’s food services, Joshna Maharaj changed the food culture of a school where 3,500 meals are served every day.

For two years, she was a “perpetual cheerleader” for the importance of making food a central institutional focus, as well as a more sustainable - and appetizing - experience.

Ms. Maharaj reworked every level of the school’s food system, from buying ingredients strictly from Ontario farms and businesses to asking kitchen staff to cook from scratch as much as possible. (She left Ryerson but has continued her work as an activist chef.)

“I’m test-driving the idea that the sustainable approach to managing your kitchen is just something institutions should do, full stop,” she says. “This is just a proper way to do this - a good way to run a kitchen, and perhaps a more responsible way to manage public money.”

Ms. Maharaj is no stranger to the herculean task of managing institutional-sized food services. She previously overhauled the menu at Scarborough Hospital and the food-purchasing network for Sick Kids. She believes good food policy, at any level, is the starting point for a sustainable approach to everything else, from community health to environmental awareness.

“The beautiful thing that my institutional work has taught me is that when you have communities that are potentially suffering because of a lack of good food connection, you can bring them back to life,” she says. “I see it. Those connections can bring people closer to each other.”

Ms. Maharaj has seen the Ryerson community make a success of Rye’s Homegrown, an initiative whose crown jewel is a rooftop garden on the engineering building. Last November, staff and student volunteers harvested 3,600 kilograms of produce from campus gardens.

Jonathan Silver

Jonathan Silver is a kind of environmental philosopher.

One of his recent projects, the Living Architecture Tour, is a map for Toronto visitors and residents to take themselves on a tour of some of the city’s green roofs and walls - spots where vegetation is incorporated into a building’s architecture.

“People spend their entire day at an office, and there might not even be living plants there. Then they get on the TTC, and they go home, and there’s still nothing,” Mr. Silver says. “They miss all of those really great benefits of green spaces in the sense that they’re life-saving.”

The map, illustrated by urban geographer and Globe contributor Daniel Rotsztain, stemmed from an idea Mr. Silver had while he was interning at Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, where he started to think about how he could increase awareness about the benefits of vegetative infrastructure. Green roofs, for instance, can help absorb storm-water runoff and make heating or cooling a building more efficient.

Twenty-six spots are highlighted where publicly accessible green spaces can be found, from the Gladstone Hotel to the City Hall podium, the largest green roof in the city. Mr. Rotsztain also drew public transit lines and recommended bike routes into the map, encouraging eco-friendly transportation options.

Mr. Silver’s work focuses on finding accessible ways for people to interact with environmental issues. Some of his previous work includes setting up a booth in a park offering free coffee, and engaging takers in a conversation about how sun-grown coffee is linked to the destruction of the rainforest.

While green roofs and walls can be easily missed the city, Mr. Silver believes they represent a prime opportunity for Toronto to make a positive impact on the environment.