Climate Action Workshop Series

This free online workshop series about climate change shared big ideas and practical actions in your community. We learned from Saanich staff and expert guests about ways to make your transportation, home, yard, and purchases more resilient and climate-friendly and different tools and rebates available to support you. We came out of the series knowing more about the inspiring climate action happening in your community and with your own personal prioritized climate action plan.

The series has concluded! Contact us at Sustainability to inquire about materials covered during the workshop series or join the Climate Quarterly E-newsletter list to learn about potential future offerings. 

Workshop Series Topics covered:

  • Saanich Climate Action 101: an introduction to preparing your own Climate Action Plan 
  • Lighter Living: tips and local resources, success stories, and ways to get involved in reducing your climate impact with your purchasing choices for food, clothing, consumer goods, and more
  • Naturescape for climate resilience and biodiversity in your yard:  Naturescaping can save you money and time, add greater enjoyment and inspiration to your gardening as well as increasing climate resilience and ecosystem services.
  • Active and public transportation: Learn about what Saanich is doing to support active transportation, e-bikes, bike skills courses, and public transit.
  • Electric vehicles and charging: Learn all about electric vehicles and charging, including incentives and planning support for charging at work, in your condo building or single family home, and road trips, and what switching from fossil fuel to electric vehicles can do for you and the climate.
  • Climate-friendly home renovations: heat pumps are the most efficient, and climate-friendly, heating and cooling system on the market. Learn what a heat pump is, the benefits of heat pumps, how to find a program registered contractor and what rebates, financing offers and supports are available to help you upgrade your heating system.
  • Emergency preparedness: Learn how climate change is impacting the risk of some hazards and the resources Saanich offers to help you prepare. 

Past participants shared some very positive feedback on the series. A few examples include:

  • In these unprecedented and challenging times, I believe this little series provided necessary hope and gave participants actions which are doable, thus strengthening the group which took part. I sincerely hope you will offer this series again I've gotten a lot out of the series as a whole. I'll definitely recommend it to others.
  • Nice to see Saanich is well prepared to answer all our questions on Climate Action. Very forward thinking! Refreshing to get good solid information from all of the speakers over the last 3 weeks. Should offer the course again...will recommend it to others in the future.
  • Very educational series; great information.
  • Each of the six sessions on how to lower our household GHG's was easy to access for the general public, elegantly simple in design so that all main focus areas regarding GHG's were covered, and I was left with a simple plan created through use of the Residents' Guidebook.
  • The series has been inspiring and very educational! Please offer the series again. I wish all communities had this program.

Given the extremely positive feedback from participants, this is the third time the workshop series has been offered, with one session added to address more transportation options.