Omni Forest Mansions is the winner of Mayor John Tory’s first-ever “Towering Challenge” aimed at pushing multi-residential buildings across Toronto to reduce landfill-bound waste.

Omni, a high-rise and townhouse complex near the Scarborough Civic Centre, was among 89 buildings that submitted entries in the competition announced last summer.

The contest was open to buildings with either private waste collection or city service.

An independent judging panel judged the submissions and chose five additional buildings in other categories, such as best resident engagement.

Tory made the announcement Monday morning at the sprawling, east-end complex to the applause of residents, volunteers and condo management. He called their efforts an “inspiring example” of what can be done to recycle and reduce waste.

Omni implemented a number of initiatives over the six-month challenge, including:

Bins were set up to collect substances such as paint cans, turpentine and cooking oil. They picked up and disposed of by the city-operated “toxic taxi.”

Participants organized donation and swaps of reusable clothing and household items

Ran a repair café to divert reusable items from landfill

Raised awareness about recycling

Before the challenge, “Omni said there was a disconnect between recycling and maintenance fees and residents were relatively disengaged,” Tory said.

The condo boards that run the complex estimate the measures will save $53,000 annually, underscoring the “tangible benefit” of reducing and diverting waste, Tory said. That can help “keep pressure off rising (condo) fees,” he added.

That diversion also helps minimize contamination in the recycling stream which is a “huge and very costly problem” for the city.

Almost half of Toronto residents live in multi-residential buildings, but they recycle and compost only 28 per cent of their waste compared to 65 per cent of waste in single-family homes.

Tory said he came up with the idea based on something he did when he was head of Civic Action. That initiative challenged commercial landlords to reduce their energy consumption in downtown office buildings. It was successful and lowered energy consumption by at least 10 per cent.

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The Towering Challenge competition is now over and while it may be revived, Tory wants to encourage buildings to step up efforts to recycle and reduce their waste.

“We simply have to do better. It’s a huge expense for us to transport all this waste to landfill.”

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