Latest news with #TonyWalker
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Plastic pollution is still a problem. A UN meeting in Geneva is hoping to change that
On Thursday, Tony Walker will be heading to Geneva. The Dalhousie University professor will be meeting with the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which is in its sixth round of talks over an international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The session started Tuesday and is scheduled to take place until Aug. 14, with 175 countries — including Canada — at the negotiating table. While Walker says Canada has made progress in fighting plastic pollution, he believes the country — and the world at large — can do much more. In terms of global talks, he says he is concerned about countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran blocking a consensus. "Starting next week, if we eliminated all sources of plastic and plastic production in Canada, we're just one country," he told CBC News. "We have a tiny population relative to the rest of the world, and the way that the global economy is established now, we're all trading partners — we still need to procure things from overseas." Walker says Canada's INC negotiating team has had debriefs with experts like him before and after every meeting. The original committee deadline was in December 2024 in Busan, South Korea. However, deep divisions between countries meant they didn't come to agreement. Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the negotiating committee, told The Associated Press, "We are pretty sure nobody wants plastic pollution. Still, we have not been able to find a systematic and an effective way to stop it." Experts say we need to act now "Ever since the negotiations began three years ago, we've learned so much more about the environmental impacts and the health impacts of plastics, especially microplastics," said Walker. He says it's more urgent than ever before that the world come to an agreement about plastic pollution. "It's not just an aesthetic problem on our beaches and in our streets, but it's in every single organism that we've studied so far, including ourselves." He said one of the major sticking points in Busan was a group of petroleum-producing countries with a vested interest in producing plastics. He believes they don't want caps on plastic production because they think it'll hurt their economies. "But that's so incredibly short-sighted when we know we have a plastic pollution crisis, which is actually impacting planetary health and also human health," he said. Other experts and groups are also urging more action. Greenpeace is calling for at least a 75 per cent reduction in plastic production by 2040. The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics, published in Health Policy on Aug. 3, 2025 estimates that less than 10 per cent of plastic created has ever been recycled and that 8,000 megatonnes of plastic now pollutes the planet. Coming to a consensus Canada is one of the members of the High Ambition Coalition, a group of countries aiming to end plastic pollution by 2040. Walker says that Canada's position has always been very strong on plastic pollution, and that they were one of the first signatories to a legally binding global agreement. "On our west coast, we're a petroleum producer," says Walker. "But still, our government negotiators consider human health and planetary health more important." Christa Seaman, vice-president of plastics at the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, is on the ground in Geneva as an observer — listening to the negotiations and answering technical questions, as needed. She's there to represent industry, and is observing alongside environmental groups, Indigenous nations and science coalitions. "There's lots of energy.... All the parties are really committed to working towards finalizing an internationally legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution," she said. "It's really exciting to actually be able to participate and listen in on the negotiations and what's hopefully going to be a historic event." She says CIAC is championing plastic circularity, where plastics are reused, remade and given another life rather than discarded. "The agreement that we're hoping for, as industry, will be one that focuses on ending plastic pollution while allowing society to continue to benefit from plastics," said Seaman. She's heard conversations about waste management, extended producer responsibility and product design. Her main concern is that she doesn't want perfection to get in the way of progress. She said there have been some points of contention in the past, but that the focus — at least on the first day — seems to be on finding points of convergence and agreement between countries. "Having a treaty will ensure that everybody is implementing the same thing, that we are all moving in the same direction," said Seaman, who says she is optimistic about all nations working toward an agreement. "That's going to be critical if we want to not only get the circularity, but end plastic pollution." More than just waste management Tim Rodgers, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, says the current negotiations in Geneva are important because of the existing gaps in how chemicals in plastics are measured and managed around the world. He hopes that a global agreement will help fill some of those gaps. He says there needs to be more transparency around what's in products, like tires, and the whole life-cycle of plastics — not just waste management. "If you have something that's only covering the end of life for these compounds, I think that'd be a real missed opportunity," said Rodgers. "You have to be thinking about what's happening at the beginning in order to have good waste management."
CBC
06-08-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Plastic pollution is still a problem. A UN meeting in Geneva is hoping to change that
On Thursday, Tony Walker will be heading to Geneva. The Dalhousie University professor will be meeting with the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which is in its sixth round of talks over an international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The session started Tuesday and is scheduled to take place until Aug. 14, with 175 countries — including Canada — at the negotiating table. While Walker says Canada has made progress in fighting plastic pollution, he believes the country — and the world at large — can do much more. In terms of global talks, he says he is concerned about countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran blocking a consensus. "Starting next week, if we eliminated all sources of plastic and plastic production in Canada, we're just one country," he told CBC News. "We have a tiny population relative to the rest of the world, and the way that the global economy is established now, we're all trading partners — we still need to procure things from overseas." Walker says Canada's INC negotiating team has had debriefs with experts like him before and after every meeting. The original committee deadline was in December 2024 in Busan, South Korea. However, deep divisions between countries meant they didn't come to agreement. Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the negotiating committee, told The Associated Press, "We are pretty sure nobody wants plastic pollution. Still, we have not been able to find a systematic and an effective way to stop it." Experts say we need to act now "Ever since the negotiations began three years ago, we've learned so much more about the environmental impacts and the health impacts of plastics, especially microplastics," said Walker. He says it's more urgent than ever before that the world come to an agreement about plastic pollution. "It's not just an aesthetic problem on our beaches and in our streets, but it's in every single organism that we've studied so far, including ourselves." He said one of the major sticking points in Busan was a group of petroleum-producing countries with a vested interest in producing plastics. He believes they don't want caps on plastic production because they think it'll hurt their economies. "But that's so incredibly short-sighted when we know we have a plastic pollution crisis, which is actually impacting planetary health and also human health," he said. Other experts and groups are also urging more action. Greenpeace is calling for at least a 75 per cent reduction in plastic production by 2040. The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics, published in Health Policy on Aug. 3, 2025 estimates that less than 10 per cent of plastic created has ever been recycled and that 8,000 megatonnes of plastic now pollutes the planet. Coming to a consensus Canada is one of the members of the High Ambition Coalition, a group of countries aiming to end plastic pollution by 2040. Walker says that Canada's position has always been very strong on plastic pollution, and that they were one of the first signatories to a legally binding global agreement. "On our west coast, we're a petroleum producer," says Walker. "But still, our government negotiators consider human health and planetary health more important." Christa Seaman, vice-president of plastics at the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, is on the ground in Geneva as an observer — listening to the negotiations and answering technical questions, as needed. She's there to represent industry, and is observing alongside environmental groups, Indigenous nations and science coalitions. "There's lots of energy.... All the parties are really committed to working towards finalizing an internationally legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution," she said. "It's really exciting to actually be able to participate and listen in on the negotiations and what's hopefully going to be a historic event." She says CIAC is championing plastic circularity, where plastics are reused, remade and given another life rather than discarded. "The agreement that we're hoping for, as industry, will be one that focuses on ending plastic pollution while allowing society to continue to benefit from plastics," said Seaman. She's heard conversations about waste management, extended producer responsibility and product design. Her main concern is that she doesn't want perfection to get in the way of progress. She said there have been some points of contention in the past, but that the focus — at least on the first day — seems to be on finding points of convergence and agreement between countries. "Having a treaty will ensure that everybody is implementing the same thing, that we are all moving in the same direction," said Seaman, who says she is optimistic about all nations working toward an agreement. "That's going to be critical if we want to not only get the circularity, but end plastic pollution." More than just waste management Tim Rodgers, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, says the current negotiations in Geneva are important because of the existing gaps in how chemicals in plastics are measured and managed around the world. He hopes that a global agreement will help fill some of those gaps. He says there needs to be more transparency around what's in products, like tires, and the whole life-cycle of plastics — not just waste management. "If you have something that's only covering the end of life for these compounds, I think that'd be a real missed opportunity," said Rodgers.
National Observer
01-08-2025
- Health
- National Observer
Is Canada's pollution database hiding toxic spills in plain sight?
Canada's federal database for tracking the toxic chemicals companies and some government facilities dump into the environment is "really very misleading," researchers say. The National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) is a federal database that tracks emissions of more than 300 chemicals from thousands of factories, oil and gas wells, wastewater treatment plants, airports and other industrial facilities scattered across the country. The data are meant to help Canadians determine which chemicals that industrial facilities are releasing into the environment, whether they pose a threat and track if those amounts are increasing or not. But some experts say that quantities alone are not enough to help Canadians keep their health and the environment safe. "Quantity alone is one way to measure trends, but it doesn't account for the relative toxicity of any given compound released to the environment," explained Tony Walker, a professor at Dalhousie University and former environmental consultant. For instance, his lab analyzed NPRI data on the 10 largest chemical releases in Nova Scotia, using 2015 data. The study found that list didn't reflect the actual risks chemicals posed to people in the province. That's because the top 10 chemicals released in the province were less dangerous than other products that companies released in smaller quantities, but which could have more severe impacts. The database currently doesn't offer this kind of interpretation — instead, users need to find and analyse the toxicity themselves — rendering it "virtually meaningless" to the general public, said Walker. Reporting thresholds also problematic Still, some advocates say that efforts to include relative toxicity in the NPRI's data analysis could detract from more urgent problems with the system — namely, that it doesn't track enough things, nor track things well enough, as it is. The data help Canadians determine which chemicals that industrial facilities are releasing into the environment, whether they pose a threat and track if those amounts are increasing, but some experts say quantities alone are not enough. "It would become even harder than it already is to expand the NPRI if they included relative toxicity," said Elaine MacDonald, director of Healthy Communities for Ecojustice. "Proposals to add substances receive a lot of industry pushback as it is." "Reporting thresholds have always been too high, and certainly aren't being used to address the cumulative exposures that occur in hotspots such as Chemical Valley," Cassie Barker, toxics program manager at Environmental Defence, added in an email. The NPRI was created in 1993 to help the government track pollution. Its structure generally mirrors its US equivalent, the EPA's toxics release inventory, explained John Jackson, who works with the Citizen's Network on Waste Management and joined consultations on creating the NPRI. The idea was to make it easier for regulators and the public to use data from both systems, though in practice Canada included more facilities, such as wastewater treatment plants, and potentially polluting facilities with more than 10 full-time employees. Some facilities, such as university labs or drycleaners, are generally exempted from the reporting rule. That leaves plenty of gaps. Take the 10-employee threshold, which in practice means that hundreds of small industrial facilities using toxic chemicals don't need to report. Fracking operations are also exempted from reporting requirements, despite the well-documented health and environmental impacts linked to fracking chemicals. Earlier this year, the government added 131 individual PFAS chemicals to the list, a move environmental groups said was a good step forward, but isn't enough to capture the full impact of the class of about 16,000 chemicals, said Fe de Leon, researcher at the Canadian Environmental Law Association. The reporting threshold for the chemicals is also too high, particularly because even small quantities of the chemicals can be dangerous. Jackson added that Carney's push to cut government spending by 7.5 per cent for the 2026-27 fiscal year, 10 per cent the following year and 15 per cent in 2028-29 could also hurt the NPRI's ability to function effectively — let alone add new types of analysis to the database. A spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada said in an emailed statement the ministry has taken early steps toward including relative toxic impacts of chemicals it tracks, and "continues to analyze the NPRI data from a variety of perspectives, including health and environmental impacts of NPRI substances, to build on what has already been started. Still, Jackson was clear it's imperative for Canada to keep the database. "The NPRI is really important. There is no other place that gives us Canada-wide, facility-specific data on what they dump or what they send off-site to a dump somewhere else. It's an incredibly important thing. And because it's so important, we are dedicated to making it better all the time. So it's not to get rid of it, but to keep making it better.'
11-07-2025
- General
Fishing gear waste is being turned into plant pots and swimwear
Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear — also called ghost gear — is considered to be a leading cause (new window) of marine animal deaths. It can stay in the oceans for hundreds of years and small whales, seals, sea lions, turtles and fish can get entangled in the nets or ropes and suffocate or starve. Here in Nova Scotia, if you walk around any coastline, you only have to go a few tens of meters before you find a trap which has been washed ashore by a heavy storm, said Tony Walker, a professor in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (new window) (DFO) says that 640,000 tonnes of ghost gear enters the world's oceans every year. Discarded nets, lines and ropes make up almost half (new window) of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In Canada, only about half of the gear reported lost to DFO over the past four years was retrieved — mostly traps or pots used in lobster and crab fisheries. In Nova Scotia, Walker says up to two per cent of Nova Scotia's traps are lost per year — often to storms, snags on boats, rocks or other debris — which he says adds up. Wherever there's fishing activity in Canada, there's likely to be some element of ghost gear, he said, adding that a single trap weighs about 40 kilograms and has rope roughly three times longer than the depth of the water. Since 2019, DFO has dedicated over $58 million to the cause through their Ghost Gear Program (new window) , funding 143 projects across the country to clean up and repurpose the gear — making new products from park benches to flower pots. Enlarge image (new window) Rope bales at Ocean Legacy's Plastic Pollution Emergency Response Facility. Photo: BC Coastal Cleanup Campaign Canadian efforts to repurpose ghost gear B.C.-based nonprofit Ocean Legacy is working to gather and repurpose ghost gear. So far, the nonprofit has seven depots, where they accept 11 different types of materials recovered from ocean and shoreline cleanups done by volunteers and funded cleanup positions. We've diverted about 2.9 million pounds of material at this point, said Chloé Dubois, who is co-founder and executive director of the Ocean Legacy Foundation. After doing beach cleanups and gathering the fishing waste, Ocean Legacy works to transform the materials into long-lasting products ranging from zippers, buttons and buckles to construction materials such as boards and lumber. Currently, Dubois says their leading sector is outdoor gardening, notably flower pots and benches made from recycled ghost gear. Enlarge image (new window) These stackable planter pots are made entirely out of recycled marine plastics collected from B.C.'s coastlines and processed in Richmond, B.C. Photo: Mika Heiskanen/Heiska Media Ocean Legacy works with other Canadian companies: Legacy Plastic (new window) which turns the waste into things like compost bins, garden tools, patio furniture and park benches; Good World Materials (new window) which takes waste from B.C. beaches to make sustainable side tables; and New Brunswick-based Plaex (new window) which makes Lego-like blocks for construction and landscaping. The Saltwater Collective (new window) is a Toronto-based, women-owned business that turns abandoned fishing nets into ECONYL swimwear. The ECONYL is created by extracting and purifying nylon waste to create the same product as fossil-based nylon. It can be recycled and remoulded infinitely, without impacting quality. Policy changes needed Despite multiple efforts to clean up ghost gear, policy change is still needed, say Walker and Dubois. Walker points to a policy that doesn't allow fishers to bring back traps that don't belong to them. Each trap has a distinct number associated with it, and if DFO regulators suspect they've been poaching, they risk fines or losing their license. There's been no incentive for fishers to retrieve traps, he said. Dubois is also fighting for rules that require products to use a minimum amount of recycled plastics, so that there is an incentive to invest in the infrastructure needed to produce those goods. Dubois hopes people will start looking at how they can recirculate extracted resources to minimize the impact to the planet. Bridget Stringer-Holden (new window) · CBC News
CBC
11-07-2025
- General
- CBC
Fishing gear waste is being turned into plant pots and swimwear
Hello, Earthlings! This is our weekly newsletter on all things environmental, where we highlight trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page. Fishing gear waste is being turned into plant pots and swimwear Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear — also called "ghost gear" — is considered to be a leading cause of marine animal deaths. It can stay in the oceans for hundreds of years and small whales, seals, sea lions, turtles and fish can get entangled in the nets or ropes and suffocate or starve. "Here in Nova Scotia, if you walk around any coastline, you only have to go a few tens of meters before you find a trap which has been washed ashore by a heavy storm," said Tony Walker, a professor in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) says that 640,000 tonnes of ghost gear enters the world's oceans every year. Discarded nets, lines and ropes make up almost half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In Canada, only about half of the gear reported lost to DFO over the past four years was retrieved — mostly traps or pots used in lobster and crab fisheries. In Nova Scotia, Walker says up to two per cent of Nova Scotia's traps are lost per year — often to storms, snags on boats, rocks or other debris — which he says adds up. "Wherever there's fishing activity in Canada, there's likely to be some element of ghost gear," he said, adding that a single trap weighs about 40 kilograms and has rope roughly three times longer than the depth of the water. Since 2019, DFO has dedicated over $58 million to the cause through their Ghost Gear Program, funding 143 projects across the country to clean up and repurpose the gear — making new products from park benches to flower pots. Canadian efforts to repurpose ghost gear B.C.-based nonprofit Ocean Legacy is working to gather and repurpose ghost gear. So far, the nonprofit has seven depots, where they accept 11 different types of materials recovered from ocean and shoreline cleanups done by volunteers and funded cleanup positions. "We've diverted about 2.9 million pounds of material at this point," said Chloé Dubois, who is co-founder and executive director of the Ocean Legacy Foundation. After doing beach cleanups and gathering the fishing waste, Ocean Legacy works to transform the materials into long-lasting products ranging from zippers, buttons and buckles to construction materials such as boards and lumber. Currently, Dubois says their leading sector is outdoor gardening, notably flower pots and benches made from recycled ghost gear. Ocean Legacy works with other Canadian companies: Legacy Plastic which turns the waste into things like compost bins, garden tools, patio furniture and park benches; Good World Materials which takes waste from B.C. beaches to make sustainable side tables; and New Brunswick-based Plaex which makes Lego-like blocks for construction and landscaping. The Saltwater Collective is a Toronto-based, women-owned business that turns abandoned fishing nets into ECONYL swimwear. The ECONYL is created by extracting and purifying nylon waste to create the same product as fossil-based nylon. It can be recycled and remoulded infinitely, without impacting quality. Policy changes needed Despite multiple efforts to clean up ghost gear, policy change is still needed, say Walker and Dubois. Walker points to a policy that doesn't allow fishers to bring back traps that don't belong to them. Each trap has a distinct number associated with it, and if DFO regulators suspect they've been poaching, they risk fines or losing their license. "There's been no incentive for fishers to retrieve traps," he said. Dubois is also fighting for rules that require products to use a minimum amount of recycled plastics, so that there is an incentive to invest in the infrastructure needed to produce those goods. Dubois hopes people will start looking at how they can recirculate extracted resources to minimize the impact to the planet. Check out our podcast and radio show. In one of our newest episode s: To mark the show's anniversary, we ask what Canada has learned about tackling climate change since our debut in 2020, starting with lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic. And, we discuss what climate action could look like over the next five years. What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador. Reader Feedback Last week, we featured a story about sustainable kitty litter made from flax straw. Elizabeth White of Salt Spring Island, B.C., wrote: "Somewhat surprised to read that flax straw is considered a waste product in Saskatchewan. Flax straw fibres have been valued for millennia and are the source of linen. Flax straw has many uses beyond kitty litter." The Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission says there are currently a few local markets for flax straw — as bales for windbreaks, cattle bedding, horticultural mulch, and as a traction source for oil well sites. Most of the flax grown in Canada is oilseed flax, and there are some challenges to producing flax for fibres such as linen in Canada, the commission says. Also last week, reader Amanda Blain described how she naturalized much of her property and shared a photo of her garden. Bill Priestman of Yarker, Ont., says it inspired him "to add my two cents to the naturalization of personal plots of land." He says he has been working hard to remove invasive species from his half-hectare of land, identifying them with the iNaturalist and Seek apps. "One amazing thing has been happening, and it's what keeps me going over the last few years, [is] native plants have popped up all on their own ... no cost to me other than a quirky labour of love! These include evening primroses, black-eyed Susans, lots [of] asters (American and Ontario), and lots of Canada anemone, which filled in a void after I had pulled out every orange lily I could find. But my most favourite plant is the orange-fruited horse gentian (where do these names come from??) I currently have three! Thanks for connecting us all together." Anita Pane of Perth, Ont., sent us a photo of native plants in her garden, writing: "When I was young, my family grew vegetables at our cottage every year. Almost all of my adult life, I have had a vegetable garden or two. Due to circumstances and overly friendly deer at my current location, I have not grown vegetables for a couple of years. While I was growing vegetables, I did not weed out wildflowers that had spread to the vegetable garden from a nearby wildflower garden. I donated the wildflowers to others for pollinator gardens. Now my garden is completely overrun with wildflowers, mostly black-eyed Susans and a few red bee balm and purple coneflowers. I need people to come and take some away!" Write us at whatonearth@ (And feel free to send photos, too!) The Big Picture: Deadly floods change landscape in Texas Satellite images of before and after the deadly flash floods in Central Texas last week provide a glimpse of how destructive they were. The water in the Guadalupe River rose eight metres in 45 minutes. In the photo above, even after receding from its peak, the water remains high enough to pour over the Ingram Dam, having ripped out huge swaths of trees on the banks of the river. Scientists say a hotter climate helped fuel the conditions that made such an extreme flood possible. You can see more images of how the floods changed the landscape in this photo gallery. — Emily Chung Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web When it comes to climate-proofing homes, a few hundred dollars goes a long way A downburst that touched down on Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park on June 21 downed thousands of trees. Had the storm hit an urban area, the high winds could have caused significant damage to buildings. Connell Miller, the acting director of Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project, said destructive storms are becoming more common because of climate change, but small changes to Ontario's Building Code could help protect homes from the powerful winds. "We think for about $200 to $300 in parts and labour on new building house construction, we can prevent these roofs from being ripped off," Miller said. "Once a roof gets ripped off a house, the house is essentially a write-off at that point." Miller said all that needs to change is for 12-inch screws to be used in wall-to-roof connections, instead of nails. Reinforcing those connections, he said, would allow homes to withstand 95 per cent of the tornadoes that touch down in Canada. But while strong winds can threaten homes, heavy rainfall and wildfires are responsible for the bulk of climate change-related damage. Blair Feltmate leads the University of Waterloo's Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, which looks at ways to mitigate risks from flooding, wildfires and extreme heat to people's homes and communities. Feltmate said that from 1983 to 2008, home insurance claims in Canada related to catastrophic weather events — such as flooding and wildfire damage — would typically total $250 million to $450 million in a given year. But in the last 15 years, that yearly average has shot up to around $2.8 billion in insurance claims. "Things are getting worse faster," Feltmate said. There are now 1.5 million homes in Canada that no longer qualify for basement flooding insurance because they are located in floodplains. Feltmate said provincial building codes have just started to recognize these risks in recent years. But legislation is slow to update. The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation now publishes infographics that municipalities can freely share with residents and give homeowners tips on how to protect their houses from flooding and wildfires. Some of these actions, said Feltmate, are free or cost very little. If a home has a sump pump in the basement, for example, Feltmate said it's important to test if it works before there's a big storm. Sump pumps should also be connected to battery power or a generator in case of a power outage, he added. Protecting homes from wildfires includes steps such as keeping shrubs at least 1.5 metres from the outside of the house and replacing wooden fences with fireproof materials. "Over the last, I would say five to eight years, we've developed very good guidance that's practical, meaningful and cost effective that gives direction on how to prepare homes and communities for flooding and wildfire," Feltmate said. Building more efficient homes Extreme heat is another climate-related risk. According to Statistics Canada, "extreme heat events during the period from 2000 to 2020 were found to be associated with approximately 670 excess non-accidental deaths and 230 excess deaths due to cardiovascular and respiratory causes." Rob Fleury, the owner of HP Home Design in Sudbury, Ont., is certified in passive house design, which is a standard for more energy efficient homes. Through better insulation, strategic window placement and placing large overhangs over south-facing exterior walls, Fleury said it's possible to reduce reliance on air conditioning and cut energy costs by a significant margin. But in northern Ontario, passive houses are 20 to 25 per cent more expensive to build than homes that don't exceed the requirements of the Ontario Building Code. "You're putting upfront costs in the beginning and recouping those costs over time," Fleury said. Those higher upfront costs have meant lower demand for passive houses. Fleury said they only account for around five per cent of his business. But he hopes building more pre-fabricated homes could eventually help lower those costs. "I think the challenge would be having the factories available in the location so that you're not trucking, you know, hours and hours across the province." What on Earth? comes straight to your inbox every Thursday.
