How MapleGreen Helps Achieve the Goal
The calamities that climate change can create on a local and global scale are too significant to ignore. That’s why MapleGreen is actively pursuing methods to combat climate change and its impacts. The ways in which the world’s societies, industries, transportation, energy, food, and agricultural systems currently operate are exacerbating the speed at which climate change is occuring. Commonly noted results of this include the increase in global temperature due to greenhouse gases emitted, changing weather patterns, more frequent and intense climate events, food and water scarcity, conflict, population migration, biodiversity loss, among others.
Why this Goal is Important
Not only is acting to mitigate climate change the right thing to do for the health of the planet and people, it is also fundamental to supporting economies. It is in the best interests of all cities, businesses, and industries to become more resilient to avoid the costs of climate change-related damage, which totalled $210 billion (USD) in 2020 as a result of the many natural disasters that occured. Focusing on a business perspective, there are a multitude of practices that businesses can implement to mitigate climate change, such as those described below .
Our Current Action That Directly Align to the SDGs’ Targets
We do our part by aligning to the following targets associated with SDG #13.
| Targets | MapleGreen Action that Supports the Targets |
| 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries | ❏ Considering how global & local climate change can impact MapleGreen through conducting a climate change risk and vulnerability assessment (then develop a management framework to support change going forward) |
| 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning | ❏ Incorporating climate change mitigation practices into our corporate policies including the Sustainability Training Manual, Employee Training Manual, roles and responsibilities of employees, and daily operation processes
❏ Assessing the ways in which MapleGreen is contributing to climate change through research to incorporate methods to reduce this including our solar panel installation project to power all vehicles, equipment, and devices at our yard, measuring annual greenhouse gas emissions to set reduction goals, and pursuing shifting to electric vehicles ❏ Taking part in community and regional climate change initiatives (GreenBiz Caledon, Just Eat It, Caledon!) ❏ Ensuring proper waste management by sorting waste and finding methods to reduce waste |
| 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning | ❏ Generating educational blogs and annual sustainability reports for the public, employees, and other stakeholders about climate change and MapleGreen’s climate-related efforts |
Future Action
Initiatives that fellow arborist companies and those within varying industries can pursue to support SDG #13 include the following:
- Apply for grants to assist businesses with shifting to a state of operations that acknowledge and mitigate climate change such as electrical equipment
- Adapt new company yards and buildings to ensure they are designed to withstand projected climate change impacts, allowing operations to continue throughout such impacts if they were to occur
- Choosing sustainable arborist product suppliers
- Participate in municipal climate resilience activities
- Reassessing supply chains to determine areas of improvement and to incorporate more sustainable and climate-friendly practices
Interesting Resources & Company Examples
The World Counts – Global Challenge Calculator:
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/global-warming/cost-of-climate-change/story
The Natural Disaster Figures for 2020: https://www.munichre.com/en/company/media-relations/media-information-and-corporate-news/media-information/2021/2020-natural-disasters-balance.html
10 Actions Companies Can Adopt to Fight Climate Change: https://youmatter.world/en/actions-companies-climate-change-environment-sustainability/