A Grade 8 student has spent months driving around Ottawa at night to measure levels of light pollution in the city.

Stacy Glasburg, 13, started to document light levels in the city as part of a science fair project at her school called “The Dark Side of Light.” Each night she drives around Ottawa with her father, aiming a sky quality meter borrowed from the Royal Astronomical Society at buildings that fog the night sky around them in light.

Truckloads of stinking Windsor sewage have begun rolling down Highway 401 to be tested for drugs at the Environment Canada laboratories in Burlington.

The federal environmental agency is just one of many parties involved in an ambitious new study centred on Windsor that is looking at painkillers, perfumes, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other contaminants making their way into the Great Lakes, the primary source of drinking water for millions of people.

Ontarians can now recycle up to 44 different types of electronic equipment.

The second phase of the province’s ambitious e-waste recycling program was recently launched at the City of Toronto’s Reuse Centre on Cherry Street in the port lands.

Coordinated by the Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES) – a not-for-profit industry organization responsible for developing and implementing the provincewide initiative – the program provides Ontarians with easy ways to safely recycle their unwanted electronic equipment.

STAPLES Canada will expand their requirements for recyclable electronic waste collection at stores, as the retailer enters phase II of its Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES). Effective April 1, STAPLES stores in Ontario will enter the second phase of their recycling program by accepting items such as televisions, desktop and laptop computers, telephones and answering machines, projectors, digital cameras and speakers.

Walmart Canada recently launched a website it hopes will eventually become the go-to resource for green business best practices in the country.

Case studies from companies such as Nestle Water, Stonyfield Farms, Tetra Pak, SC Johnson and Kimblerly-Clark can be found at ShareGreen.ca, which invites visitors to share their own success stories for energy, waste and material management, green products and solution, and green employee engagement.

Ontario’s Green Energy Act, enacted last month, dominated discussions at the 2009 Power of Water Conference, held Oct. 15-16 by the Ontario Waterpower Association.

Green Building and Development as a Public Good
Source: Canadian Policy Research Networks

Governments in Canada are attempting to respond to the challenge of global warming and to the expectation Canadians hold for a healthy economy and enhanced quality of life. Actions include energy conservation, the introduction of a carbon tax (British Columbia) and the possibility of carbon cap and trade legislation (or agreements among some provinces). An area of increasing attention is how we develop communities and build and use residential and commercial buildings.

In Green Building and Development as a Public Good, Mike Buzzelli argues that green building and development faces a classic policy paradox: we collectively agree that improvements are needed in the built environment but we are caught in a whirlwind of information and debate about how to move forward. We are motivated to “be green” but challenged by implementation.

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The Canadian government will reward some pulp and paper producers for making their operations more environmentally friendly.

But the $1 billion Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program also attempts to level the playing field between Canada’s pulp and paper industry and its U.S. competitors.

Radisson(R) Hotels & Resorts today announced the opening of the Radisson Plaza Mississauga Toronto Airport, a USD 24 million, 100-room, all-suite hotel located at 175 Derry Road East in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The hotel was recently recognized with a Four Key rating by the Eco Rating program from the Hotel Association of Canada as a hotel that has taken significant steps to protect the environment.