DEPUTATION BY ANDREEA IONESCU
DEPUTATION BY ANDREEA IONESCU
PARKS AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
June 18, 2007
TOPIC: Increase energy efficiency in city daycares and other city buildings and use the savings to increase the food budget allocation for city of Toronto daycares so they can afford to buy local (and healthier) food and consequently cause a further reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Point 1
Energy Conservation Methods for City Daycares and other City Buildings
- put lights on motion sensors for after program hours and weekends/vacations
- decrease the hot water temperature to luke warm water
- put the hot water on a timer (or manually turned off) for after program hours and weekends
These energy conservation methods, common in most parts of the world, would decrease our need for gas and also coal and nuclear derived electricity. It would also decrease our contribution to smog causing particles, greenhouse gas emissions, and radioactive waste. Additionally, these conservation methods would result in financial savings.
Point 2
These savings can be used to allow Children’s Services to afford to buy local Canadian produce, when in season (and as local as possible when not in season, such as produce from BC or southern US), and meat products from naturally and ethically raised animals, like the YMCA daycares have done. The action of buying local would further decrease our contribution to global warming as there would be less emissions from shorter transportations. The children would benefit from less traveled, less fungicide sprayed or canned food, less unknown contaminants, less vitamin depleted and more nutritious food.
Ex: No canned peaches from Greece or fish fillets from China should be served in city daycares (or tuna from the Philippines, pineapple from Thailand, bottled lemon juice from Greece, etc).
So, I am asking to have energy conservation methods put in place and use the savings to bridge the difference in cost between the current quality food fed to kids in city daycares and what the YMCA has started to feed children.
The YMCA daycares, charge less money and they have started to feed kids local produce when in season, organic snacks, hormone and antibiotic free meat products, etc. Since I have started my campaign, many changes have been made to improve the quality of food, but city daycares still have a long way to catch up to the YMCA food standard. With their current budget allocation, city daycares cannot raise their standard to the YMCA level.
It is quite painful for me to hear that there is no money to improve the quality of food products ordered by city daycares, when the lights and the hot water are on all the time.
It is painful for me to know that I’ve been paying $64 dollars a day for the last 9 months and the food budget allocation is about two and a half dollars per child per day and have to witness the energy splurge.
I have written to the Budget Chair Councillor Shelly Carroll and Mayor David Miller about this topic but I have not received a response. More recently, I have emailed the Department of Facilities and Real Estate, and I am waiting for a reply from them.
Here today, I would like to ask for your support in implementing this energy conservation methods and also to ask you if you let me know how can I ensure that these savings will be poured into the city daycare food budget?
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Other suggestions for recommendations the Parks and Environment Committee could make to Toronto Public Health and Children’s Services on behalf of global warming prevention strategies: make city wide campaigns for children in all public or private daycares to eat healthier and more environmentally friendly by:
- switching to fruit and water instead of juice in a plastic bottle (city daycares have just made this switch)
- no canned fruit and other canned food kept to a minimum (city daycares have started moving in this direction, but there is still some canned fruit on the menu)
Just to give you an example of how many cans per child a daycare could use, I will give you a list of all the canned food I found in my daughter’s daycare when we enrolled her: potatoes, mandarins, pineapple, mango slices, fruit cocktail, nectarine, peach, the fruit used in muffins, puree fruit, soup, tuna, salmon (for tortilla rolls), tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, beans, sliced beets, and perhaps some others of which I am not aware.
The juice, the daycares used to serve up to a week ago, was Farlee Apple juice (“made in Canada”, but actually from China). The current switch city daycares have made, to fruit and water, is definitely healthier and less global warming causing. I think it should be promoted in all daycares, private or public, across the city.
In order for cans to be made, metal ore has to be dug up from some part of the world, refined (in a very polluting and high energy requirement process), turned into cans coated with plastic, fruit must be boiled, sugar added, and then the cans get transported half way around the world, and for what – vitamin depleted fruit spiked with bisphenol A at the expanse of children’s health, local farmers, and the environment?
And with respect to plastic juice containers, the process is also polluting and environmentally damaging when the oil is drilled on land or out of the ocean and chemically processed to produce plastic. Recycling plastic is also polluting and energy demanding.
The energy requirement for cans is huge and the nutritional benefit is severely diminished. Canned food is also more expensive than the fresh version.