Looking a little greener every day

We’re working hard to improve our green practices on and off our trains, and we believe that big changes come one step at a time. From major initiatives to smaller gestures, here are a handful of greening projects underway:

As part of our Green Buildings Policy which formalizes our commitment to sustainable station development, we are working toward LEED® certification for several of our larger stations by improving their efficiency and carbon-footprint (such as our Ottawa Station pictured above). And in 2018, we further developed a green buildings standards document and an evaluation procedure to ensure environmental impacts are considered when working on improvements at our stations and maintenance centres and on our infrastructure.

In line with our commitment to reduce waste, we conducted solid, non-hazardous audits for waste removed from onboard our trains. Based on the findings, we will be working toward improving waste signage for passengers, implementing an organics program, training and educating our onboard employees, and purchasing more recyclable products for onboard distribution.

Meanwhile, outside of our stations we are reducing the amount of fuel consumed as well as our exhaust emissions by safely shutting down and restarting our locomotive engines during idle periods. Overall fuel consumption during idling times was reduced by 21.7% since 2012.

Read more: Gold LEED® Certification for Ottawa station