Zerofootprint is contracted by the Rideau Canal Festival to help make festival history in Canada.
Toronto, ONTARIO – April 18, 2008 – The soon-to-be inaugurated Rideau Canal Festival in Ottawa is set to become the first festival to be made carbon neutral through Zerofootprint, an environmental not-for-profit organization. The festival will also be Ottawa’s first festival to honour Canada’s newest UNESCO Heritage Site Designation. To ensure the preservation of the canal for future generations, festival organizers have made “going green” a priority by partnering with Zerofootprint.
“We are excited to be helping the Rideau Canal Festival reduce its environmental impact,” commented Deborah Kaplan, the Executive Director of Zerofootprint. “As a World Heritage Site, it is important that we help preserve the Rideau Canal and ensure that those attending this event are aware of how they can act to help preserve the area for future generations.”
Zerofootprint will be designing a new Festival Calculator specifically for this event to help minimize the environmental harm resulting from the festival. In conjunction with the Recycling Council of Ontario’s reduce, re-use, and recycle practices, the strategy aims to track the amount of carbon that is used as part of festival activities.
To ensure the sustainability of the festival, organizers are encouraging people to participate in the Adopt-A-Meter campaign. For the price of twenty dollars, participants will be able to adopt a meter of the Rideau Canal and contribute to the event’s sustainability initiatives such as the carbon fund. The carbon fund will be used to purchase ISO-certified offsets that will balance out the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the festival.
Zerofootprint specializes in creating and customizing carbon, ecological and water footprint calculators. Individuals and organizations can use Zerofootprint’s carbon management tools to measure and track their environmental impact, link with others, engage in sustainable initiatives, and form groups around green goals.
About Zerofootprint: Recently nominated for a “Crunchie Award” as most likely to change the world and named “Toronto’s Best Green Organization” by blogTO, Zerofootprint’s goal is to mobilize and empower large groups of individuals and organizations worldwide to reduce their collective carbon and ecological footprint. We do this by harnessing the power of social networking, the Internet and software. Zerofootprint targets large organizations such as collections of cities, multinational corporations, universities, schools and multinational communities, which may span many countries. We enable them with infrastructure that can measure, aggregate, track and manage their individual and combined footprint. With clients ranging from Air Canada to City of Toronto, City of Boulder, City of Seattle and University of Guelph, Zerofootprint is on a mission to empower you to create a sustainable world. www.zerofootprint.net
About Rideau Canal Festival: The first Ottawa festival to honour the Rideau Canal’s UNESCO World Heritage Site Designation. The festival will take place from August 1st to 4th. This free festival will have myriad activities for everyone: Colonel By Heritage Fair, the first Rideau Canal Night Flotilla, World Heritage Flotilla starting from Fort Henry in Kingston, the world’s largest parade of bicylces (aiming for a Guinness World Record), Ecosphere, and more. For more information about the festival visit www.rideaucanalfestival.ca.
Contact
Deborah Kaplan, Executive Director, Zerofootprint (416) 365-7557
Michel Gauthier, President and CEO, Rideau Canal Festival (613) 301-4554