Interview with Earthday Canada Hometown Hero Jonathan Glencross
Click the audio player to hear my interview with Jonathan Glencross, a recent graduate of McGill University who has been named the National winner of the Earth Day Canada Hometown Hero Award for 2011 for his remarkable contributions to sustainability initiatives on the McGill campus.
His achievements over the past four years include the creation of a new fund for community-based sustainability projects. The fund has already approved 35 projects from the $800,000 that it receives annually – more than double what is collected by similar green funds from all other Quebec universities combined. Projects funded to date include a volunteer-run urban gardening project, a program that distributes produce by bike, an industrial composter, a student-run bike collective, an on-campus farmersmarket and more.
Glencross also played a leading role in the creation of a new Office of Sustainability at the university, which now employs three full-time staff and 11 student interns. He coauthored McGill’s first Greening Events Guide; helped coordinate a Rethink Your Curriculum Challenge for students; and co-founded the McGill Food Systems Project. “Before we existed,” he says, “no one knew where our food was coming from, let alone if it was being grown sustainably.”
If this wasn’t enough, last year, Glencross wrote a proposal that led to the creation of an annual interdisciplinary field-study semester focused on applied sustainability, all while being a full-time student and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life.
Click here to read more about Jonathan or here to watch his presentation on sustainability on Tedx.
