UniverCity at Simon Faser University on Burnaby Mountain has been hailed over the years as an innovative model for sustainability and community living.
It's already been recognized with awards for sustainability, affordable housing and overall planning and execution and has even been the inspiration for a book on environmentally sensitive community planning.
Adding to its accolades, in June, the Simon Fraser University Community Trust received the 2012 Burnaby Environment Award in recognition for having designed, built and opened the first zero-footprint childcare centre in the world.
"This award is a welcome recognition for the work that we are trying to do on Burnaby Mountain," says trust president and CEO Gordon Harris. "Our mandate has always been to build a community that models sustainable practice, and the childcare centre is probably our greatest success to date. It's wonderful to have this kind of validation for our efforts."
The UniverCity Childcare Centre was designed and built to meet the Living Building Challenge, considered the most ambitious green building standard in the world, designed by the Living Futures Institute.
To meet that standard, a building must
•generate more energy than it consumes;
•collect or recycle more water than it uses; and
•use only local and non-toxic components in its construction and operation.
Jason McLennan, who authored the Living Building Challenge, and who has inspected the UniverCity centre, called it, "the greenest childcare on the planet."
