Humber Polytechnic was recognized with the "Highly Commended" mention at the 2025 International Green Gown Awards.
The Green Gown awards are given by Sustainability Exchange, which is based in the U.K., putting Humber on the international scale as a global sustainability leader.
The institution received the recognition thanks to its Green Building Standards, a framework that assures new construction and renovations at Humber follow strict sustainability guidelines.
These guidelines exist thanks to the joint work of the Humber’s Sustainability Office and the Capital Development and Facilities Management.
The college applied to the awards early in the year for the Creating Impact category, which rewards institutions for their impact in sustainability using limited or low-cost resources.
Humber’s director of Facilities Management, Spencer Wood, said the recognition is the outcome of all the work done in sustainability for the past 12 years.
“Humber's been working hard on sustainability for many years, and energy efficiency specifically. This award is almost a subset of that,” he said.
Wood said the Green Building Standards are Humber’s approach to its sustainability goals for new infrastructure.
“There's a lot of technical stuff in it, but it looks at all aspects of sustainability in a building,” he said.
Currently, the college is constructing a Cultural Hub building at Lakeshore Campus, which is being built using the Green Building Standards, he said.
Wood said the progress and achievements the institutions have achieved are the best way to confirm they are on the right track.
“Other institutions were very interested in what we did,” Wood said. “They've been very well received, both in Ontario and in Canada, and now this is an international award that we've got.”
He said Humber’s new sustainability project, named Project Switch, intends to reduce natural gas use by the institution by 70 per cent and to achieve zero-net emissions.
“The college has actually committed that we will get there by 2029,” Wood said. “We know what those projects look like. We know what the technology looks like.
“It's a matter of finding the money and the designs and getting on with it,” he said.
Humber’s Sustainability Manager Sandra Leutri said the Green Building Standards are the future of Humber’s path in its climate change action.
“They're standards that not only Humber uses for all of our retrofits, new builds, but they're also publicly accessible,” she said. “It’s all about innovation towards sustainability and innovation for climate action.”
She said these new standards are adaptive and can be recreated or followed with few resources.
“They’re publicly accessible, so anyone can use them. That’s what makes them so impactful,” Leutri said.
She said Humber has shown how sustainability goals can be reached using the right resources, which makes it one of the influential colleges in Canada in the field.
She said sustainability has three fundamental pillars.
“There's kind of three strategic pillars with regard to our vision: educate, enable, and engage,” Leutri said.
She said online courses are available for students to gain knowledge in sustainability, called Introduction to Climate Action.
Leutri said more than 1,000 people have taken the free online courses.
She said Humber has a bright future in sustainability.
“This award and doing this project, it's not where we're stopping,” she said. “It's one of the milestones as to us getting to this much bigger goal and becoming an institution where we're leaders in this sector.”
For more information, visit the Sustainability Office website.
