Sustainability in the Town of Innisfil

“The Town of Innisfil will actively maintain itself as a viable and vibrant community that fully embraces the principles of sustainability”.

- Innovative Innisfil Community Strategic Plan 2020-2030

What is sustainability?

Sustainability is a key concept driving human society today. It's used in various contexts to indicate environmentally friendly practices within cities, communities, organizations, and ecosystems. However, sustainability is more than good environmental practices—it's about upholding both the short and long-term quality of life of people and natural ecosystems within social, economic, and ecological systems and processes. It is about ensuring that humans use their available resources efficiently and effectively in a manner that the same, if not better, standards of living are possible for future generations.

Integrated Sustainability Master Plan

At the Town of Innisfil, we are currently developing an Integrated Sustainability Master Plan to meet the challenges of climate change impacting our communities in the present and future and to actively nurture, maintain and enhance the environment, assets and amenities that our residents depend on. The goal of this policy is to create a cohesive strategy across the One Town, One Team that outlines actions we can take at both corporate and community levels, and continuously monitor and improve them.

What goes into developing the Integrated Sustainability Master Plan?

Since sustainability is more a value and a continuous state of being, rather than an end goal, it can be hard to imagine what sustainability will look like. At the Town of Innisfil, our approach to uphold and prioritize sustainability within our operations, functional areas, personnel, and infrastructure begins with establishing a set of objectives:

• Reductions in emissions and energy use
• Adapting to the impacts of climate change
• Reductions in waste
• Minimizing resource use in municipal operations
• Supporting and enhancing placemaking
• Managing growth sustainably
• Supporting sustainable economic prosperity

To support these objectives, we're following a phased approach:

Find out more about environment and sustainability.

Community engagement

Our community's contribution is vital to this process. To this end, we are seeking input from residents and workers in Innisfil on how climate change impacts you and how the Town should support sustainable practices. We encourage people to share their thoughts through our ISMP Survey by October 14, 2022.