Award-winning accountability: The Town of Huntsville takes home HP’s “Change the Equation” Sustainability Reporting Award

Rebecca Francis is a Living Planet @ Work champion, leading sustainability initiatives with the green team at the Town of Huntsville. Earlier this year, she entered HP’s Change the Equation contest, which encourages businesses to write their sustainability reports. The Town of Huntsville’s report was selected as the 2014 Change the Equation winner.
How do you sum up a year of environmental initiatives? For Rebecca Francis, sustainability coordinator at the Town of Huntsville, Ontario, the answer lies in 64 pages of text, photos, tables and infographics — Huntsville’s 2013 Sustainability Report.
Creating that kind of in-depth document takes effort, but according to Rebecca, it was time well spent. “So much about sustainability is about getting buy-in,” she says. “The report can be used as a public education tool in our community to start the discussion or continue the discussion on what the town is doing.”

The publication — winner of HP’s 2014 “Change the Equation” Sustainability Reporting Award — presents key statistics on the town’s energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste reduction and more. It highlights various community projects, including expanding an apple orchard in a public park, stencilling fish icons on storm drains and hosting Earth Day celebrations.
“Having a report is an avenue to celebrate success,” says Rebecca. “I think for a small municipality we are doing a lot of great things.”
By setting baselines and measuring progress, the report also provides transparency and accountability to taxpayers. Not all municipalities the size of Huntsville have a sustainability coordinator, so the report makes clear how much Rebecca’s work has contributed to the community — both in terms of cutting costs and creating social well-being.
By putting it all on paper, she was able to lay out exactly what has been done, compare progress with goals and bring to light initiatives that are being championed by both local residents and Huntsville staff.
And by highlighting challenges and opportunities, the report also helps to frame the town’s next steps towards sustainability. “I think it sets us up for so much in the long term,” says Rebecca. “Having the report has helped us create projects or build into the projects that we’re already doing.”
Rebecca acknowledges the invaluable support provided by University of Waterloo students Elizabeth Carmichael, Mike Terry, Elizabeth Johnson, Kelvin Chau and Cathy Cheung.
By being among the first to sign up for HP’s “Change the Equation” Sustainability Reporting Contest, the Town of Huntsville benefitted from free consulting from this team of Environment and Business students. Under the direction of Rebecca, they created indicators to track the quality and impact of sustainability projects, conducted surveys, organized materials and developed graphic elements for the report. “I could not have done it without them,” she says. “They drove the project.”
Congratulations to Rebecca, the Town of Huntsville and the fantastic team of students from the University of Waterloo’s Environment and Business program. A big thank you as well to HP, who sponsored this award and provided such valuable sustainability reporting tools.
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