WWF-Canada and Loblaw fund community water conservation: Loblaw Water Fund grantees announced for 2015

TORONTO –May 11th, 2015 — WWF-Canada and Loblaw Companies Limited are proud to announce the Loblaw Water Fund grant recipients for 2015, supporting on-the-ground work to ensure a healthy future for Canada’s waters. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s freshwater, and we applaud the hundreds of local and regional organizations working to keep Canada’s waters healthy.

“WWF is proud to support organizations and individuals doing work on the ground, and in our communities, that improve the health of Canada’s waters and connect people to nature. The Loblaw Water Fund recognizes that we can do more together, supporting each other, than we can alone,” says David Miller, President and CEO, WWF-Canada. “Congratulations to all of this year’s Loblaw Water Fund recipients.”

“Loblaw’s commitment to environmental initiatives hinges on our ability to provide not just funds, but awareness, to issues that warrant nationwide attention. Partnering with WWF allows Loblaw to deliver an environmental message to millions of Canadians, while also funding projects that impact watersheds in communities where our people live and work”, Bob Chant, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Communication, Loblaw Companies Limited.

WWF’s Loblaw Water Fund provides grants to registered charitable organizations and not-for-profits working on action-oriented projects that aim to conserve, protect, or restore freshwater habitats and the species living within them. This is the second year of grants in a three-year commitment; the 2016 grants will open for submissions in Fall 2015 at www.wwf.ca/waterfund.

Loblaw Water Fund 2015 Grantees
• Birch Island Creek & Wetland Restoration Project, Healthy Waters Labrador, Happy Valley-Goosebay Newfoundland
• Monitoring Ottawa River Health, Ottawa Riverkeeper, Ottawa Ontario
• J’adopte un cours d’eau – Des jeunes au service de l’eau (Adopt a Stream), the Groupe d’éducation et d’écosurveillance de l’eau, Quebec
• Medway Creek Restoration, the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority, London Ontario
• Assessing Water Flow and Health of Bauman Creek, Rare Charitable Research Reserve, Cambridge Ontario
• Changing Currents: Benthos monitoring with Youth in the GTA, EcoSpark, Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Ontario
• Uncover Your Creeks, Evergreen, Vancouver British Columbia
• Community Rain Garden Project, Save Our Seine River Environment Inc., Winnipeg Manitoba
• Restoration of Freshwater Ecosystems, The Salt Spring Island Conservancy, Salt Spring Island British Columbia
• Building Capacity in Community-Based Water Stewardship Groups in the Canadian Columbia Basin, The Columbia Basin Watershed Network, British Columbia
• Upper Athabasca and Central-Upper Athabasca River Biomonitoring Program, Wildsight Living Lakes, Alberta
• Communities Helping to Grade Canada’s Watersheds, The Community-Based Environmental Monitoring Network, National

The grants are made possible through partial proceeds from Loblaw’s charge-for-plastic shopping bag program, which has reduced the number of plastic shopping bags from their stores nationally by more than seven billion since 2007.

For more information about the Loblaw Water Fund, please visit www.wwf.ca/waterfund.

Freshwater Facts
• Our 2014 Grantees restored over 75 hectares of wetland and riparian habitat for freshwater species, planted over 7,200 native trees and plants, and engaged more than 1,500 volunteers in monitoring and restoration efforts at 770 sites across the country.
• There is currently no consistent way to measure the health of Canada’s watersheds, an issue WWF is working to address with its Freshwater Health Assessments; learn more at www.wwf.ca/waterhealth

About WWF
WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the Earth’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption. 

About Loblaw Companies Limited
Loblaw Companies Limited, a subsidiary of George Weston Limited, is Canada’s largest food retailer and a leading provider of drugstore, general merchandise and financial products and services. www.loblaw.ca

About the Partnership
Since 2009, Loblaw Companies Limited has donated $1 million annually, through partial proceeds from the sale of plastic shopping bags in its stores, to WWF-Canada. This donation is used to help mobilize Canadians to take simple but meaningful action towards sustainable living.  Loblaw has developed one of the most progressive sustainable seafood policies influencing numerous vendors, suppliers and other retailers to transition to sustainable fishing practices, with support from WWF. http://www.wwf.ca/about_us/howwework/business/

For more information, please contact:
Meghan Brien, Communications Specialist- Freshwater
WWF-Canada
[email protected]
416-489-4567 ext. 7307
647-400-3893

Loblaw Companies Limited
[email protected]
905-459-2500